March 27, 2008 at 14:01:57

View Ratings | Rate It

Media's Swooning Over McCain Echoes MSM's Love Affair With Bush In 2000

By Marc McDonald (about the author)     Page 1 of 1 page(s)

opednews.com     Permalink

For OpEdNews: Marc McDonald - Writer

By MARC MCDONALD

In case you haven't heard, it's now official: John McCain is the darling of the mainstream media. And as reporters swoon over McCain, some of us are experiencing deja vu.

Where have we seen this sort of fawning MSM coverage before? Oh, that's right: it was in the 2000 campaign, when the MSM fell in love with George W. Bush.

Although today I'm sure they'd like to forget it ever happened, the fact is, reporters fawned over Bush in 2000. And while this love affair was going on, the media was sharpening its claws to attack Al Gore over GOP-invented bogus controversies like "I invented the Internet."

As Al Franken pointed out in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, the media just plain didn't like Gore:

"Somewhere along the line, the pack decided that Al Gore was a sanctimonious, graspy exaggerator running against a likeable if dim-witted goof-off."

As Franken notes, the widely respected Pew Charitable Trusts foundation documented that the tone of the media coverage was decidedly anti-Gore and pro-Bush during the campaign.

As Pew notes, a comprehensive survey of 1,149 news stories from 17 leading news sources in 2000 showed a "positive" slant in 24 percent of the stories about Bush (versus only 13 percent for Gore). By contrast, the "negative" slant was 56 percent for Gore versus 49 percent for Bush.

And now a MSM love affair for a GOP candidate is happening all over again. As Gabler points out, "reporters routinely attach 'maverick,' 'straight talker' and 'patriot' to (McCain) like Homeric epithets." As Chris Matthews of MSNBC put it, the media is now "McCain's base."

 

 

View All Book Recommendations

Share this page: (what's this?)                   Tell a Friend:

                                                      (More...)

 

Most Popular Articles in the Last 2 Days (by Recommend Emails) Teflon Dick: How Cheney Uses Media For Protection by Linda Milazzo Australian camel killing plan angers animal welfare groups; 6000 to be shot! Posted by Stephen Fox The Obama Puppet -- The world's least powerful man by Paul Craig Roberts Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade by Glen Ford An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore by Michael Moore The End of the Obama Administration by Stephen Soldz Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate Version 2.0 by Dave Lindorff Divided We Fall by Joe Parko Failure to Embrace Power; Obama's, Democrats' Betrayal by Rob Kall Tonight Obama's escalation will be IMMEDIATELY opposed by Harvey Wasserman Go To Top 50 Most Popular