Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics by Glenn Greenwald
Authors: Glenn Greenwald
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helped defeat Al Gore by turning up the volume on such stories as Al Gore’s fund-raising appearance at a Buddhist temple. In 2004, he did more than anyone to upend Kerry by playing up a small ad buy by the Swift Boat Veterans. In this campaign season, he has made a virus of the John Edwards $400 haircut….
His audience is decidedly right-wing. According to the online advertising company linked to his site, the audience is 78 percent male, 60 percent Republican, only 8 percent Democratic.
For all the ink spilled on media criticism, the fact that the most potent influence on our political press is a right-wing dirtmonger specializing in often false personality smears is all one needs to know about the state of American political discourse.
Willing Puppets
When confronted with this shameful reality, the reaction of our leading journalists is quite telling. In October 2007, there was an intense debate over whether to expand a government health care program for children, known as S-CHIP. In defense of their efforts to expand the program, the Democrats put forward a message from Graeme Frost, a twelve-year-old whose life was likely saved by virtue of having S-CHIP health care coverage after he was in a near-fatal car accident. Almost immediately thereafter, a slew of right-wing bloggers and pundits unleashed a vicious attack on the Frost family, depicting them as wealthy defrauders who deserved no government-supplied insurance, culminating with Fox News’s Michelle Malkin driving to the Frosts’ home, writing about their house, and speaking to their neighbors.
The right-wing bloggers’ attacks on the Frost family proved to be based on multiple falsehoods about the family’s economic status, and those hit pieces generated widespread revulsion. Soon thereafter it was revealed that—contrary to the false denials of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—McConnell’s office had sent to various journalists a memorandum about the Frosts disseminating the false attacks in order to encourage reporters to highlight the smears.
CNN’s John Roberts dutifully went on the air and mindlessly repeated what he read in the McConnell smear memo, provided to him—“off the record,” of course—by McConnell’s top aide. This is how our journalists report on the political issues they cover. From the McConnell memo sent to Roberts:
Apparently, there’s more to the story on the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on S-CHIP…. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?
This claim traveled from the off-the-record Republican dirtmongering machine out of the mouth of CNN’s Roberts, with no stopping for investigation. Hence, Roberts, after quoting from Malkin’s blog, reported:
Some of the accusations [against the Frosts] may be exaggerated or false. But did the Democrats make a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child?
In language taken almost verbatim from the McConnell memo, Roberts’s story then flashed to a “CNN political analyst,” who placed the blame squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders: “I think in this instance what happened was the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done on this young man, his situation, his family.”
This was but one instance—a highly illustrative one—demonstrating how so much of our press coverage is shaped by petty, personality-based dirt and smears fed by anonymous Republican operatives to gossip-hungry, slothful journalists, who then uncritically repeat it all. About this right wing/press synergy, the widely quoted liberal political blogger Digby wrote:
Journalists will say that using political “oppo research” is a legitimate way to get tips, as long as they always check them out before they run with them. Fair enough. But what they fail to acknowledge is that this allows the best story-planters to set the agenda for coverage, and the best story-planters are
His audience is decidedly right-wing. According to the online advertising company linked to his site, the audience is 78 percent male, 60 percent Republican, only 8 percent Democratic.
For all the ink spilled on media criticism, the fact that the most potent influence on our political press is a right-wing dirtmonger specializing in often false personality smears is all one needs to know about the state of American political discourse.
Willing Puppets
When confronted with this shameful reality, the reaction of our leading journalists is quite telling. In October 2007, there was an intense debate over whether to expand a government health care program for children, known as S-CHIP. In defense of their efforts to expand the program, the Democrats put forward a message from Graeme Frost, a twelve-year-old whose life was likely saved by virtue of having S-CHIP health care coverage after he was in a near-fatal car accident. Almost immediately thereafter, a slew of right-wing bloggers and pundits unleashed a vicious attack on the Frost family, depicting them as wealthy defrauders who deserved no government-supplied insurance, culminating with Fox News’s Michelle Malkin driving to the Frosts’ home, writing about their house, and speaking to their neighbors.
The right-wing bloggers’ attacks on the Frost family proved to be based on multiple falsehoods about the family’s economic status, and those hit pieces generated widespread revulsion. Soon thereafter it was revealed that—contrary to the false denials of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—McConnell’s office had sent to various journalists a memorandum about the Frosts disseminating the false attacks in order to encourage reporters to highlight the smears.
CNN’s John Roberts dutifully went on the air and mindlessly repeated what he read in the McConnell smear memo, provided to him—“off the record,” of course—by McConnell’s top aide. This is how our journalists report on the political issues they cover. From the McConnell memo sent to Roberts:
Apparently, there’s more to the story on the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on S-CHIP…. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?
This claim traveled from the off-the-record Republican dirtmongering machine out of the mouth of CNN’s Roberts, with no stopping for investigation. Hence, Roberts, after quoting from Malkin’s blog, reported:
Some of the accusations [against the Frosts] may be exaggerated or false. But did the Democrats make a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child?
In language taken almost verbatim from the McConnell memo, Roberts’s story then flashed to a “CNN political analyst,” who placed the blame squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders: “I think in this instance what happened was the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done on this young man, his situation, his family.”
This was but one instance—a highly illustrative one—demonstrating how so much of our press coverage is shaped by petty, personality-based dirt and smears fed by anonymous Republican operatives to gossip-hungry, slothful journalists, who then uncritically repeat it all. About this right wing/press synergy, the widely quoted liberal political blogger Digby wrote:
Journalists will say that using political “oppo research” is a legitimate way to get tips, as long as they always check them out before they run with them. Fair enough. But what they fail to acknowledge is that this allows the best story-planters to set the agenda for coverage, and the best story-planters are
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