There is a very good piece in Talking Points Memo that makes very vivid an argument I've made a lot lately regarding media framing and narrative.
The media is all about deciding on a narrative. And this is why I talk so much about the 'Beltway media.'
We know the old Rush Limbaugh saw that the media is liberal. What this Right wing narrative misses is that there is a difference between being a liberal media and having a lot of journalists who happen to be liberals.
But in any case, whatever the ideological makeup of the media is, the ideology displayed in its reporting and commentary has never been about pushing a liberal agenda and more about pushing it's preferred narrative.
And once a narrative is decided on there is a very strong pack mentality in the press. You see this same narrative pushed repeatedly across the cable news channels, the print journalists, the network news, everywhere.
It's David Brock's echo chamber.
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Messenger-Right-Wing-Hillary-Government/dp/1455533769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441941325&sr=8-1&keywords=david+brock
Like with Hillary's emails, almost everyone with very few exceptions-I can literally count how many on one hand-the only one coming to mind is Michael Tomasky and to an extent Kevin Drum-who haven't totally bought into Emailgate.
Because the media narrative is that this is serious-even though no one is very able to explain why it is or even what this is. At a minimum it shows she had very poor judgement it is intoned piously-the implication being that maybe this is enough to disqualify her from being President.
Again, everyone in the BM picks up this narrative to varying degrees. All of MSNBC has done so even if this is the allegedly liberal station.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/melissa-harris-perry-and-could-it-be.html
Some are worse than others. Lawrence O'Donnell has been the worst. Chris Hayes at least lately has become a little more skeptical of it but even he isn't willing to totally dismiss it
It's not liberal vs. conservative ideology but Beltway ideology that is at work here .
We see the same thing at work with Carly Fiorina. The media simply decided after this debate that she was the home run winner-and by extension Trump is the big loser. The claim that Trump is the loser was what really mattered. Carly was the means to get to that.
To be sure the polls don't seem to bear out what the pundits have been saying. They've been saying Trump is done or at least the unravelling has begun. The polls do reflect that Fiorina did well but Trump is held to have done very well too-many have him actually beating Fiorina though she is a strong second.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-tale-of-two-debates-beltway-vs-gop.html
"Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina won Wednesday's Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, according to a poll released Friday."
"The poll from Morning Consult found that 29 percent of registered voters who watched the debate said she was the winner."
The media is all about deciding on a narrative. And this is why I talk so much about the 'Beltway media.'
We know the old Rush Limbaugh saw that the media is liberal. What this Right wing narrative misses is that there is a difference between being a liberal media and having a lot of journalists who happen to be liberals.
But in any case, whatever the ideological makeup of the media is, the ideology displayed in its reporting and commentary has never been about pushing a liberal agenda and more about pushing it's preferred narrative.
And once a narrative is decided on there is a very strong pack mentality in the press. You see this same narrative pushed repeatedly across the cable news channels, the print journalists, the network news, everywhere.
It's David Brock's echo chamber.
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Messenger-Right-Wing-Hillary-Government/dp/1455533769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441941325&sr=8-1&keywords=david+brock
Like with Hillary's emails, almost everyone with very few exceptions-I can literally count how many on one hand-the only one coming to mind is Michael Tomasky and to an extent Kevin Drum-who haven't totally bought into Emailgate.
Because the media narrative is that this is serious-even though no one is very able to explain why it is or even what this is. At a minimum it shows she had very poor judgement it is intoned piously-the implication being that maybe this is enough to disqualify her from being President.
Again, everyone in the BM picks up this narrative to varying degrees. All of MSNBC has done so even if this is the allegedly liberal station.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/melissa-harris-perry-and-could-it-be.html
Some are worse than others. Lawrence O'Donnell has been the worst. Chris Hayes at least lately has become a little more skeptical of it but even he isn't willing to totally dismiss it
It's not liberal vs. conservative ideology but Beltway ideology that is at work here .
We see the same thing at work with Carly Fiorina. The media simply decided after this debate that she was the home run winner-and by extension Trump is the big loser. The claim that Trump is the loser was what really mattered. Carly was the means to get to that.
To be sure the polls don't seem to bear out what the pundits have been saying. They've been saying Trump is done or at least the unravelling has begun. The polls do reflect that Fiorina did well but Trump is held to have done very well too-many have him actually beating Fiorina though she is a strong second.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-tale-of-two-debates-beltway-vs-gop.html
"Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina won Wednesday's Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, according to a poll released Friday."
"The poll from Morning Consult found that 29 percent of registered voters who watched the debate said she was the winner."
"Real estate mogul Donald Trump came in second with 24 percent.
"Third place went to retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson at 7 percent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush each polled at 6 percent."
"However, Morning Consult found Trump still led the primary race with 36 percent support of registered voters who watched the debate. Carson polled at second with 12 percent and Fiorina took 10 percent. All other candidates polled in single digits."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/carly-fiorina-donald-trump-post-debate-poll
If this poll is accurate, then Trump has an even stronger position post debate than prior and Carly's rise was mostly at Ben Carson's expense. It's just so great seeing the BM wrong again.
Ok, now this great TPM piece I was talking about,
"Press failures, especially massive ones, tend to be right there in plain site and yet totally invisible, entirely ignored. And yet we have a massive one coming out of Wednesday night's Republican debate that the press seems inclined or insisting on totally ignoring. Commentators are toasting Carly Fiorina as the break-out winner of the debate. And yet she not only made a string of false statements, or claims that showed a willful disregard for or ignorance of reality, she almost certainly manufactured a bogus memory entirely out of whole cloth. And all of this is cast into particularly high relief since Fiorina went into the debate intent on branding Hillary Clinton as a liar. "Her track record of lying about Benghazi, of lying about her e- mails, about lying about her servers," is something Hillary will have to answer for, Fiorina bellowed in the debate."
"Now it may seem odd to call this a press failure when I'm about to cite several press organizations that quickly noted all these distortions and outright lies. But this is always the case with a press failure of this magnitude. Someone is always making the point here or there. But it doesn't take shape as part of the narrative of what happened in the debate or the campaign. That's certainly the case here. Vox, ABC News and Esquire have each in one way or another been all over this. But the reality of what Fiorina did in this debate and a number of earlier press encounters is totally absent from the basic themes of the post-debate coverage."
"Fiorina has a habit of simply making things up. In the case of the parts of the Planned Parenthood videos, the way she made it up seems to verge on the pathological. Again she says she saw something in these videos that completely wasn't there. And she doubled down on it the next day. This is just lying through your teeth or just being so indifferent to whether things are true or not that it amounts to the same thing."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/keeping-carlys-secret
Now what I like about this piece is it hits all the cylinders. I mean one of the more tired Carly lines is that she is the one to kick Hillary's but because she's a woman and the claim that the GOP has a war on women won't work with her.
Why is that exactly with the GOP debating shutting down teh government right now to defund Planned Parenthood?
If the GOP has even one woman in its party this is proof it isn't sexist? Actually the real feminist achievement for Carly is proof that you don't have to be a man to be a vile misogynist.
And it's really rich that Carly of all people is calling Hillary a liar when Ms. Fiorina seems to be the Mother of Lies.
And I know what TPM means as Chris Matthews tonight was bending over backwards to give Fiorina the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe she's not a liar, he argued, maybe she did see a video but didn't have the whole picture or misinterpreted it. You have to put this next to how unwilling the BM has been to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt on any point on Emailgate.
When she mentioned the word convenience, the Beltway almost spit it snorted so snidely. But every attempt here is made to suggest that maybe Ms. Fiorina was simply mistaken.
And Mathews is not by any means the worst offender. Not by a long shot. At least he has talked about the fact that what she said about that video was totally false. Many media pundits totally gloss over this.
This is because the media narrative for right now is about elevating her and-they hope-bringing down Trump-though the early polls suggest it's not working.
So basically the media points out lies in misinformation when doing so conforms to the current narrative. If tomorrow for some reason-maybe if she became the last candidate standing who could deny Jeb the nomination-then suddenly these facts seemingly hidden in plain sight would suddenly miraculously be remembered and would matter.
But for now at least she's the woman who is supposed to have brought down Trump so to point out her lies is seen as nitpicking.
P.S. When you understand this narrative dynamic so much of the media cycle begins to make sense.
A lot of time something that someone has done and everyone knows about is treated as a nonstory until suddenly it sin't anymore.
Hillary's' private email was known about for years. No fuss at all. In 2011 the media narrative was the inverse of today. Back then the media was razzing Biden mercilessly for all manner of gaffers real or imagined and finally President Obama had to deny the countless stories-and even a book-claiming that he was considering dropping Biden and replacing him with Hillary.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/remember-when-media-wanted-obama-to.html
Because the narrative back then was about Obama bashing-by bashing Biden this was an implicit rebuke of Obama. Now the narrative is Hillary bashing so now Biden is wonderful.
Right now Fiorina is wonderful as this is how Trump is supposed to be felled so the GOP can get to Jeb. As things change however, the narrative on her may change as well.
Often what the media reports is fact based just selective in order to frame its chosen narrative.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-selective-outrage-over-trump.html
"Third place went to retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson at 7 percent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush each polled at 6 percent."
"However, Morning Consult found Trump still led the primary race with 36 percent support of registered voters who watched the debate. Carson polled at second with 12 percent and Fiorina took 10 percent. All other candidates polled in single digits."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/carly-fiorina-donald-trump-post-debate-poll
If this poll is accurate, then Trump has an even stronger position post debate than prior and Carly's rise was mostly at Ben Carson's expense. It's just so great seeing the BM wrong again.
Ok, now this great TPM piece I was talking about,
"Press failures, especially massive ones, tend to be right there in plain site and yet totally invisible, entirely ignored. And yet we have a massive one coming out of Wednesday night's Republican debate that the press seems inclined or insisting on totally ignoring. Commentators are toasting Carly Fiorina as the break-out winner of the debate. And yet she not only made a string of false statements, or claims that showed a willful disregard for or ignorance of reality, she almost certainly manufactured a bogus memory entirely out of whole cloth. And all of this is cast into particularly high relief since Fiorina went into the debate intent on branding Hillary Clinton as a liar. "Her track record of lying about Benghazi, of lying about her e- mails, about lying about her servers," is something Hillary will have to answer for, Fiorina bellowed in the debate."
"Now it may seem odd to call this a press failure when I'm about to cite several press organizations that quickly noted all these distortions and outright lies. But this is always the case with a press failure of this magnitude. Someone is always making the point here or there. But it doesn't take shape as part of the narrative of what happened in the debate or the campaign. That's certainly the case here. Vox, ABC News and Esquire have each in one way or another been all over this. But the reality of what Fiorina did in this debate and a number of earlier press encounters is totally absent from the basic themes of the post-debate coverage."
"Fiorina has a habit of simply making things up. In the case of the parts of the Planned Parenthood videos, the way she made it up seems to verge on the pathological. Again she says she saw something in these videos that completely wasn't there. And she doubled down on it the next day. This is just lying through your teeth or just being so indifferent to whether things are true or not that it amounts to the same thing."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/keeping-carlys-secret
Now what I like about this piece is it hits all the cylinders. I mean one of the more tired Carly lines is that she is the one to kick Hillary's but because she's a woman and the claim that the GOP has a war on women won't work with her.
Why is that exactly with the GOP debating shutting down teh government right now to defund Planned Parenthood?
If the GOP has even one woman in its party this is proof it isn't sexist? Actually the real feminist achievement for Carly is proof that you don't have to be a man to be a vile misogynist.
And it's really rich that Carly of all people is calling Hillary a liar when Ms. Fiorina seems to be the Mother of Lies.
And I know what TPM means as Chris Matthews tonight was bending over backwards to give Fiorina the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe she's not a liar, he argued, maybe she did see a video but didn't have the whole picture or misinterpreted it. You have to put this next to how unwilling the BM has been to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt on any point on Emailgate.
When she mentioned the word convenience, the Beltway almost spit it snorted so snidely. But every attempt here is made to suggest that maybe Ms. Fiorina was simply mistaken.
And Mathews is not by any means the worst offender. Not by a long shot. At least he has talked about the fact that what she said about that video was totally false. Many media pundits totally gloss over this.
This is because the media narrative for right now is about elevating her and-they hope-bringing down Trump-though the early polls suggest it's not working.
So basically the media points out lies in misinformation when doing so conforms to the current narrative. If tomorrow for some reason-maybe if she became the last candidate standing who could deny Jeb the nomination-then suddenly these facts seemingly hidden in plain sight would suddenly miraculously be remembered and would matter.
But for now at least she's the woman who is supposed to have brought down Trump so to point out her lies is seen as nitpicking.
P.S. When you understand this narrative dynamic so much of the media cycle begins to make sense.
A lot of time something that someone has done and everyone knows about is treated as a nonstory until suddenly it sin't anymore.
Hillary's' private email was known about for years. No fuss at all. In 2011 the media narrative was the inverse of today. Back then the media was razzing Biden mercilessly for all manner of gaffers real or imagined and finally President Obama had to deny the countless stories-and even a book-claiming that he was considering dropping Biden and replacing him with Hillary.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/remember-when-media-wanted-obama-to.html
Because the narrative back then was about Obama bashing-by bashing Biden this was an implicit rebuke of Obama. Now the narrative is Hillary bashing so now Biden is wonderful.
Right now Fiorina is wonderful as this is how Trump is supposed to be felled so the GOP can get to Jeb. As things change however, the narrative on her may change as well.
Often what the media reports is fact based just selective in order to frame its chosen narrative.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-selective-outrage-over-trump.html
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