A Guide to Media Manipulation, Republican Style

[Joanne98]

A Guide to Media Manipulation, Republican Style

In recent years the GOP has turned the technique of making hay from their opponents' words into a reliable formula for success -- with a few distortions and a little help from the media, of course.

Paul Waldman | August 29, 2007 | web only


After he lost the 2004 presidential election, it looked as though, like many who had been in his position before -- Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey -- John Kerry might take one more shot at reaching the Oval Office four years after falling short. But then on Monday, October 30, 2006, the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles aired a story on Kerry's appearance that day at a campaign event. The story included a clip of Kerry delivering what quickly came to be known as the "botched joke," in which what was intended as a dig at President Bush's history as an inattentive student and all-around nincompoop came out sounding like an allegation that American troops are uneducated.
One hour later, a popular conservative talk show host in Los Angeles played the clip on his show, complete with the absurd yet predictable allegation that Kerry was intentionally maligning America's brave troops. At 2:34 a.m. Eastern time the next morning, a link to the clip appeared on the Drudge Report. At noon that day, Rush Limbaugh led his show with a discussion of the botched joke. That evening, ABC, NBC, and CBS all led their national newscasts with the story. The next day, Kerry announced that he wouldn't be doing any more campaign appearances before the midterm elections. Whatever slim chance he had at becoming his party's presidential nominee a second time had vanished completely.

From a local radio host to Drudge to Limbaugh to 30 million viewers of the national news, the alacrity with which the botched joke went when from meaningless remark to national story was no accident. Now consider a more recent incident in which media wags obsessed over something that emerged from a Democrat's lips. On the stump in Iowa, Michelle Obama spoke to an audience about the struggles of balancing family obligations with a life in politics. "If you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House," she said, going into a description of the efforts she and husband Barack undertake to minimize the disruption the presidential campaign causes to their daughters' lives.

An article in the Chicago Sun-Times said the quote "could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons," and it was off to the races. Like a pack of hormone-addled 16-year-old boys, reporters and pundits shouted in unison, "Reeowr! Catfight!" Fox News ran a photo of the two women over the title, "The Claws Come Out."

So once again, Democrats found themselves explaining their words, over and over and over, something that doesn't seem to happen very often to Republicans.

It isn't that GOP candidates never get in trouble for their statements. But when they do say something false or ridiculous or abominable, the controversy seems to be much slighter in intensity and shorter in duration. Heard much about Mitt Romney's varmint hunting lately? The former Massachusetts governor got a bit of well-deserved ridicule when, in his almost endearingly shameless attempts to pander to the Republican base, he claimed to be a "lifelong hunter," a history that turned out to have consisted of two outings to blast away at "varmints." Yet what could easily have become an oft-repeated symbol of pandering and phoniness simply disappeared from stories about Romney.

The contrast with what often happens to the other side could barely be clearer. One can come up with a whole list of statements made by Democrats which were used to bludgeon them into submission for weeks or months. Al Gore spent his entire 2000 campaign defending and explaining one statement after another -- many of which he never actually made, beginning with the apocryphal tale that he had claimed to have invented the internet. Four years later George W. Bush practically built his entire campaign around John Kerry's statement that he had "voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it." George Allen's "macaca moment" is about the only Republican equivalent that comes to mind.

Is the fact that Democrats more often suffer through these controversies the fault of the Republican spin machine, or the fault of the media? Ultimately, the two become one and the same when the media so willingly take their cues from people like Drudge.

Media hype over candidate gaffes -- and rival campaigns seeking to push that hype along -- is hardly new a phenomenon. Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign gleefully pounced on a number of outrageous statements Barry Goldwater made, including the suggestion that we "lob one into the men's room of the Kremlin," and his colorful musing, "Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea." The latter was dramatized in a crude but effective Johnson ad in which a saw cuts off the east coast from a cardboard map of the United States floating in what appears to be a bathtub. Other candidates caught grief for ill-spoken remarks; Jimmy Carter created controversy in 1976 when he told Playboy magazine, "I've committed adultery in my heart many times."

But in recent years the GOP has turned the technique of making hay from their opponents' words into a reliable formula for success. Here's how it works: First, find something your opponent said that might be open to multiple interpretations. Next, take it out of context. After that, distort it beyond all recognition (and don't worry, the truth-seeking press will offer you no sanction for this deception). Express your consternation, your anger, your amazement that your opponent has revealed him/herself to be such a deplorable reprobate for whom no decent American could consider voting. Finally, repeat the offending statement over and over, from now until election day.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_guide_to_media_manipulation_republican_style

[The Wielding Truth]

1. I caught this on I think CNN

and they said the Karl Rove's car was wrapped as a going away prank meaning those who did it were trying to make it hard for Rove to leave. NO mention of the Obama stickers or King Karl.Even this little incident is distorted.

Pravda had nothing on our media. It's the compliance by media that is so disgusting to me. When will they find it too complicated to lie?

[insanad]

2. Fingers need to point back at ourselves

The media prostitutes who manipulate and distort are responding to or creating a following for their incindiary tactics. I've seen it on even slightly respectable news programs like CNN and MSNBC between anchors and analysts, doing everything in their power to distort or cause controversary over the piddliest little crap statement or misunderstanding. The fact that we continue to watch and purchase the products of their advertizers is a reflection of our apathy and complacency.

When I hear that someone like Rush Limbaugh has a following of more than one, I'm always in awe. What kind of foolish people need such tripe to help them make descisions or process information? There will always be people in the media and government who will manipulate and distort to gain opportunity and power. We could find a way to get rid of Rush Limbaugh or Bill OReilly or other purveryors of blatant distortion, but as long as people listen and tune in, there will be some other blowhard corpulent gas bag to step in and expound the same kind of garbage and cause dissention.

I used to respect Keith Olberman and the things he said, but of late he's resorted to the same tactics, ridiculing the petty things, distorting or making fun of their names, using cheap Jr. High humor and tricks to poke fun at people on "The other side". This isn't news. This isn't fair. This is just immature, disgusting, and beneath people who should have a higher purpose in reporting the news.

The only thing any of us can do to impact the Media's manipulation is to tune them out. I no longer listen to any of the analysts, to the evening news when it becomes political, or talk radio other than NPR. NPR has remained fair, balanced, and dignified in it's reporting and I trust the information they bring. Unfortunately, they don't have the glitzy following that network tv or the Right Wing Radio shows have, but they do appeal to intelligent people and those are the ones I seek to communicate with.

Sometimes I get very discouraged thinking about how the media will be able to impact the election of one candidate over another, regardless of their qualities and skills. I'm ashamed that the American people buy into this. I'm embarassed that I too have latched onto some snippet that rails against someone I have not researched or given time to understand. WE ALL have culpability in this.