Peter Daou calls MSM "Tabloid Tactics" the "elephant in the room"

[ProSense]

Peter Daou
05.25.2006

Tabloid Tactics: It's Open Season on Gore, Clinton, Kerry...

Folks, it's open season on Democrats. Rightwing extremists and various media cohorts are ratcheting up their anti-Dem offensive. Not content with revisiting the Clinton bedroom, rightwingers are going after their favorite targets: Al Gore and John Kerry. Media Matters tracks the anti-Gore assault. The Daily Howler adds perspective: "Al Gore was right about global warming--way back in the 1980s.

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A new journalistic low (if that's possible) was reached with Patrick Healy's sneak peek into the Clinton bedroom, a crass attempt at tabloid journalism. Healy, for those who don't recall, was the one of the chief traffickers of anti-Kerry narratives.

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Mr. Broder, here's an easy question: who determines what is and isn't a hot topic? When cable news nets spend countless hours discussing a missing girl in Aruba, is it a hot topic because the viewers want it or because it's been shoved down their gullets? When Swift Boat liars are given an unlimited forum to smear a decorated vet, was it a hot topic to begin with or does it become one after the fact? And when Patrick Healy decides to dissect the Clinton marriage, was it a hot topic before he wrote it or is it a hot topic now that people like you amplify his filth?

"The very fact that the Times had sent a reporter out to interview 50 people about the state of the Clintons' marriage" says one thing alone: damn the polls and damn the public, the media want to suck up to Bush and stomp on the Dems, to sanctify McCain and slander Hillary, to re-Gore Al and to celebrate Rudy, to mock Kerry and to laud Bill Frist.

Mr. Broder, the "elephant in the room" you refer to at the conclusion of your piece has nothing to do with the Clintons. It's this: that you and your ilk are prisoners of your own storylines, hustling your wares to a public that has moved past you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-daou/tabloid-tactics-its-ope_b_21592.html

[ProSense]

1. Apparently, Broder can't get enough

Apparently, Broder can't get enough

It was discouraging enough for the New York Times to run a 2,000-word, front-page article this week with salacious speculation about the Clintons' love life, but for the WaPo's David Broder, the "dean" of the Washington press corps, to follow up on this nonsense is mystifying.

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This is entirely self-fulfilling. The NYT wrote a pointless story based on gossip from the Clintons' alleged "friends," David Broder is mentioning it in his nationally-syndicated column, and therefore the issue of their love life is "a hot topic." Why? Because the Times and Broder say so.

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