February 16, 2006
2/16: Fair, Balanced And Unafraid?
VP Cheney remains the big story today. The big development is, of course, his FNC interview, and once again new stories creep onto the radar screen, still not getting the attention they otherwise might have. The new Abu Ghraib photos did get plenty of comment, as did the new tapes of Saddam discussing WMDs during the '90s, which seem to have been a bit of a bust. After that, we have an unusual number of stories from SEN and GOV races, where blogs are interacting with -- and changing the direction of -- campaigns and the state parties as well. And we bring you our latest Blogger Spotlight.
CHENEY I: Fox Guarding The Veep House?
Cheney's taped interview with FNC's Brit Hume is the big deal; Fox news made both the video and transcript available online. From what we could tell, more commentary came from the left, which largely remains skeptical. Bloggers on the right were more likely to link to the video -- also hosted at Expose the Left -- without offering much comment.
Like most conservatives, Ed Morrissey was satisfied: "I think Cheney did an admirable job in the interview. Cheney took responsibility for the shooting itself. He went over the steps taken at the hospital to care for Whittington and some of the efforts taken to notify his family. His explanation sounds quite reasonable, and his actions appear to be understandable under the circumstances." 
Andrew Sullivan was not: "He has a calming demeanor and an under-rated TV presence. But two things he dodged. The first was the question of whether he had been following the usual hunting protocols," and "his formula of taking full responsibility, and giving the bottom line as "I shot the gun," doesn't answer the question of whether he was negligent in the way he was hunting." More: "As for the press strategy: completely unconvincing. He waited, he argued, for accuracy's sake. First reports are always wrong, he claimed. So what? He knew that he'd shot someone accidentally ... and that's all he needed to report to the national media."
On the left, Cheney's acceptance of responsibility was too little, too late. The Carpetbagger Report doesn't buy Cheney's defense of not announcing the incident earlier -- Cheney: "Are they going to take my word for what happened?" -- commenting: "This has to be the best Cheney line since "last throes." The Vice President of the United States worried that an official statement about a hunting accident would be rejected by the public. In effect, by suggesting Americans would not "take his word" for it, Cheney suggested most people would assume he was a murderer." Arianna Huffington: "One good thing about your conscience no longer functioning is that you are comfortable with everything. Especially with whitewashing the truth. So, taking a page from Orwell, Cheney assured us -- again and again -- that by keeping the story hidden he was only trying to make sure the truth got out. Indeed, he used the words "accurate" and "accuracy" 8 times in his short chat with Hume." World O' Crap also goes the Eric Blair route, headlining a post: "We Have Always Been At War With Quailasia."
Conservative Betsy Newmark offered praise for Hume's interview, and even liberal Ron Brynaert was pleasantly surprised at a more skeptical interview than he expected: "It was obvious from Hume's body, face and verbal language that he wasn't satisfied with Vice President's 'utterly unapologetic' stance regarding -- assumingly -- every single action taken by the entire staff of the White House since he accidentally shot his friend. There were other questions Hume could have asked, but it certainly was better than I expected." But Kevin Drum names one in particular, asking, "did Cheney ever speak with George Bush about this? Hume never asked. That's some serious journalism, Brit."
Based on Cheney's admittance of having a beer at lunch Markos Moulitsas headlines a post: "Cheney drank before shooting his pal." Conservative Mark Coffey scoffs: "[Y]eah, by the same token I drank before I came to work today -- it was weeks ago, but it was before I came to work today."
Washington Post's Howard Kurtz argued that the 3-day story was a "Monumental Misfire" for the Bush WH, but NYU j-prof Jay Rosen disagrees: "How does it hurt Bush if for three days this week reporters are pummeling [WH spokesperson] Scott McClellan over the details of when they were informed about Cheney's hunting accident? That's three days this week they won't be pummeling" McClellan over new questions about the admin's handling of pre-war intel.
CHENEY II: The Vice (President) Squad
Earlier, Drum sized up the "consensus conspiracy theory." Here's his version of the media angle: "An interview with a sheriff -- or anyone else -- is considered imprudent at that point, so the sheriff is told to come by the next morning after Cheney has sobered up. Karl Rove decides that silence from the White House is a good idea too and the president goes along. Scott McClellan isn't even informed. That's the way Dick wants it, so that's the way it's going to play. Unfortunately, there are several witnesses to the shooting, including [Cheney friend Harry] Whittington, and there's no telling what they're going to say. So Cheney decides to hide. If he doesn't answer questions, after all, he can't be caught in a lie. Once everyone has gone on record and the White House is sure that Whittington isn't going to contradict the VP's story, Cheney will take questions from the press."
NRO's Byron York: "I just watched the news conference by Harry Whittington's medical team. On three occasions, they refused to comment on how many shotgun pellets are in Whittington's body and on the composition -- steel? lead? -- of those pellets. Perhaps they don't know the answers. But that's not what they said; they said they could not comment on those particular questions while, at the same time, they answered many others."
Lefty Digby does not think the situation is resolved: "I know it's unseemly to bring this up but shouldn't there be at least a teeny-tiny little investigation about this now? People are smouldering in jail for decades for drinking and injuring people with guns." And Firedoglake is encouraged: "So Dick Cheney is admitting he had a beer before he shot a 78 year old man in the face? Sounds like he's doing damage control from the MSNBC scrub of yesterday. Neil Cavuto and the other concern trolls over at Fox are now discussing 'Politicizing Hunting Accident: Big Mistake For Democrats?' We must be on the right track."
Conservative radio talker Brian Maloney thinks the lefty bloggers are wasting their time, not to mention hypocrites. In particular he addresses "West Wing" producer Lawrence O'Donnell, the highest-profile person to raise the drinking question: "Evidence, who needs evidence? On the left, it's conspiracy-huntin' season. Without hesitation, one could easily expect the left to go ballistic were conservatives to make similar baseless charges against a Democrat. Yet the Huffington Post went right ahead and published O'Donnell's sloppy, tinfoil hat-like conspiratorial speculation."
Prior to the interview, Hugh Hewitt posted a lengthy and much-noticed post titled "The MSM Campaign Against Cheney." He quoted WH-skeptical headers from the major dailies, and argued: "The MSM is unhinged, a victim of its Bush hatred, which includes of course hatred of Cheney. The idea that failure to tell the White House press corps of a hunting accident for 14 hours is in anyway similar to leaving a woman to die in a submerged car while fleeing the scene or the cover-up of Watergate is just nuts. ... This episode doesn't resemble Chappaquiddick. It resembles Rathergate and Eason Jordan's overreach, episodes where legacy media allowed its massive blind spot to lead it into a collision with the public it seems not to understand is fully informed and mostly contemptuous of its preening and screaming."
ABU GHRAIB: A Double Standard For The Second Batch?
Michelle Malkin: "Readers have been e-mailing all day the question the MSM needs to answer: Why the Abu Ghraib photos, but not the Mohammed Cartoons? We're listening..." The Poor Man Institute responds: "Yeah, really! Come to think of it: why does the CNN insist on covering 'the news', but won't show that episode of Bugs Bunny where he beats up the Martian? ... Do you understand the difference between 'really happening' and 'a drawing'?" Sister Toldjahthis story is not new news, outside of showing 'new' photos of the same abuse we saw when this story first broke last year. So why the need to pile on?" In the Bullpen: "I am not against running them but I really don't know what more photos add to the story." The Debate Link: "I humbly submit that we should continue talking about these abuses until we see some real accountability for the perpetrators, the superiors who authorized the tactics, and a real commitment from the Bush administration to categorically stop using torture as a policy." Andrew Sullivan: "Just remember what this president has said: 'We do not torture.' That blood you see below will be explained away. More scapegoating of low-level grunts will occur."
The Jawa Report: "As bad as these images are, they pale next to the genuine torture and murder committed by the Saddam Hussein regime." Booman Tribune is angry the photos were leaked, and not released by the gov't: "What the ACLU wants -- and what we should want -- is the U.S. government suffering the intense embarrassment of having to show the photographic evidence of its torture policies. Nothing less will do."
With more than a twinge of sarcasm, Matt at Blackfive posts "New Abu Ghraib Photos!" His photos show U.S. soldiers caring for Iraqi children at an on-site medical facility and U.S. and Iraqi soldiers distributing food and supplies. Along the same lines but not intended as a specific rejoinder, Michael Totten shares photos of Kurdish model homes -- presumably not built by the Bluth Company -- and says: "It goes without saying that none of this was possible when Saddam Hussein did everything he could, with the fourth largest army in the world, to destroy these people."
IRAQ: Shouldn't Geraldo "Al Capone's Vault" Rivera Have Landed This Scoop?
Conservative blogs were abuzz yesterday when ABC News announced they would broadcast '90s-era tapes of Saddam Hussein and his advisers discuss terrorism against the U.S. But the tapes didn't live up to some early expectations. A major swarm never materialized, but the right-blogosphere found them interesting nonetheless, and expects more information to come. Though the tapes probably not a "smoking gun," Captain's Quarters considers it significant: "The recordings show that Saddam and his henchmen actively hid their WMD programs from UN inspectors, and also show that he had no intention of getting rid of them if he could help it." John Hawkins take is about the same, but he argues that by snipping part of an interview with Tarik Aziz, they distorted the meaning to make Iraq sound less threatening. Liberal Atrios is amused, headlining a post "Wingnut Reboot": "And they lose another round ... Nothing new."
There are more archives from the Saddam regime to be analyzed, and Power Line hopes the sooner the better: "The two heroes of this effort so far are [GOP Rep. Peter] Hoekstra and the Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes. We join in their plea to make these documents and tapes public so that the truth about Saddam's regime can be more fully known."
MIDTERMS: A Talent For Intrigue
MO Dem consultant Roy Temple reports that lobbyist Jack Oliver, who has ties to Bush and is finance chair for Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), received $10K from a client of Jack Abramoff's while serving as RNC dep. chair. Temple: "This is despite the fact that Oliver's bio shows nothing about his having private clients during his tenure with the RNC, and he certainly never registered to lobby for the Coushatta." More: "I said I was surprised that Talent defended Oliver so strongly, but then again, given all that Jack knows, Talent probably doesn't want him angry and talking to the press."
Via VT-based Seven Days columnist Peter Freyne, SEN candidate/Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) employee Kagro X brings to Daily Kos the case that the VT SEN-focused blog Vermont Senate Race is actually an "astroturf" blog -- made to look like it's by an interested citizen but actually controlled by someone connected to a campaign. In this case, it's Jeffrey Bartley, a "salaried employee" of GOP candidate Richard Tarrant. Kagro X compares the situation to the controversy over Sen. John Thune's (R-SD) payments to conservative SD bloggers during his challenge to then-Senate Min. Leader Tom Daschle.
IN THE STATES: OR GOV Is Almost Interesting
Corvallis Gazette-Times reports, state Rep. Deborah Boone (D) "complained" to the House clerk's office 9 years ago that then-state Rep./now-state Sen. Ben Westlund (I), whom she was an aide to, had given her "an unwanted hug." Rumors of the incident appeared in the comments on Blue Oregon on 2/14 -- the same day Westlund dropped out of the GOP to run for OR GOV as an indie. Westlund has acknowledged the hug, says he doesn't remember why, and apologized "profusely" after. Blue Oregon proprietor Kari Chisolm wrote on 1/15: "It seems pretty clear -- to me, anyway -- that this rumor is much ado about nothing." Because he can't "police" the comments himself, Chisolm asks readers: "If you see an unsupported claim made here, challenge it. Demand facts, demand proof, demand sources, and demand details. And if you're one of the drive-by commenters -- posting allegations and running, well, don't expect to get believed."
Following up on our extensive but not-extensive-enough OH coverage in the 2/15 edition, we should have noted the rumor that OH Dem OH House Dem Caucus comm. dir John Kohlstrand is the blogger behind High and Broad. That blog featured a controversial post about state Sen. Eric Fingerhut's conflicts with the OH Dems (since removed). Michael Meckler wrote: "I telephoned Kohlstrand yesterday and asked him directly whether he was the author of the blog. He denied it, but he said he did know who the author was. Kohlstrand declined to comment further. When I spoke to Kohlstrand around 2 p.m. yesterday, the H&B blog post was still up. When I spoke with [Fingerhut manager Anthony] Fossaceca two and a half hours later, the post had been removed and replaced with the message that the blog was on hiatus." Fossaceca addressed the matter of the H&B post at Brewed Fresh Daily. And at Writes Like She Talks, Jill Miller Zimon notes that Fingerhut's camp responded to OH Dem chair Chris Redfern's version of events to her; in the comments, Fingerhut aide Jessica Colombi defends her boss.
MISCELLANY: The Day The Blogging Died?
- Mark Blumenthal of Mystery Pollster highlights a new Gallup poll. As a blogger, Blumenthal writes, he is 'certainly appreciates [Gallup editor] Lydia Saad's final acknowledgment that despite the relatively low readership, blogs may still exert a "disproportionate influence ... on opinion leaders, political insiders, and modern news media.' But oh for some empirical data to test that hypothesis." Chris Bowers: "Of course, even without Pew and Gallup, I already knew, or at least strongly suspected, that this had happened. Political blog traffic hit its all-time high in early September around Katrina. ... However, since that time, blog traffic has been generally flat. It could start to rise again, but a nearly six-month plateau is worrying." GWU law prof Daniel Solove considers what this means for legal blogs, aka blawgs. Comments from Left Field notes the recent meme going around about how blogs (particularly those on the left) are analogous to punk rock in the 70's, notes that a similar plateau occurred in 11/03 where bloggers could bring no more support to Howard Dean, and notes: "Once growth stops, the nature of the conversation and interactions changes."
- Following up the revelations about the RNC's un-implemented online tools (see 2/15 Blogometer), Matt Stoller continues an argument he's been making in recent weeks: "The issue here is that the RNC is making the correct strategic choice because they understand how toxic their base really is. ... I spent seven months in New Jersey going through right-wing message boards, I've read FreeRepublic.com, and I've been to Townhall.com Meetups, and I can tell you that there is a substantial portion of the right-wing base that has, as Redstate community-leader Blanton does, a vicious racist mentality." Winds of Change's Armed Liberal rolls his eyes at this claim, as well as a post from Stoller's fellow MyDD contributor Chris Bowers, who announced in a post last p.m. that "what the progressive netroots wants in Democratic candidates is also what the general public wants," pointing to them as an examples of Mickey Kaus' recent complaint about the "B.S. of the sort that consistently hurts Democrats."
- John Hawkins of Right Wing News writes an "open letter" to Ann Coulter: "[Y]ou're intelligent, gutsy, and have a knack for saying things other people know are true, but don't have the guts to say. Unfortunately, you've always had one major flaw: you have the same sort of case of foot-in-mouth disease that people like Pat Robertson and Howard Dean have and regrettably, it seems to have gotten much worse of late." More: "So, in your latest column, the first one you wrote after CPAC, you took the opportunity to talk about 'camel jockeys.' What will you be doing for an encore next week? Will you be slurring Muslims again or will you be branching out to different groups? ... Take it from a long-time supporter Ann: Your best days are behind you unless you snap out of it and start making some changes."
- Salon's Peter Daou offers a "A Challenge to Rightwing Bloggers Who Blame the Media for the Cheney Mess" -- "Back up your claims. With concrete examples of bias. And without the tautological crutch that any story critical of the administration is proof of liberal bias. I'll back up mine." Daou lists a whopping 32 instances where the MSM took the GOP line on an issue, citing examples.
- On 2/14, ex-Hotliner/ex-"Hardball" prod. Howard Mortman launched the 1st in a series of interviews with bloggers in the early primary and caucus states. First up is with Thomas Niblock of Hawkeye Republican.
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Info, Please
Today the Blogometer talks to left-leaning Yale law prof Jack Balkin, who leads the legal group blog (or blawg) Balkinization.
What is your full name?
Jack M. Balkin.
What is your age?
49.
Where did you grow up?
Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City; at age 8 my family moved across the state line to Kansas City, Missouri.
Where do you live now?
Branford, Connecticut, about 13 miles east of New Haven.
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
I'm a law professor at Yale, and I'm the director of Yale's Information Society Project. I've never worked on a political campaign or the mainstream media.
When did you start blogging and why?
I started in January 2003. The ISP held a conference on blogging in the fall of 2002 and I met Glenn Reynolds, who later convinced me that blogging would be good for me. As in so many other things, Glenn is irresistible.
I started blogging because I was increasingly concerned about the direction of the country and I wanted to express my views about law and politics in public. This concern started, I think, with the Clinton impeachment and the 2000 election. I thought it was important to take public stands on matters that I had pretty much been silent about through most of my adulthood. However, I found the system of submitting op-eds to newspapers and magazines quite constraining; it was very hard to get access and when you did there was a lot of rewriting to please editors (who often continued to edit without one's permission); the result often wasn't worth the extra effort and annoyance. I loved the format of blogs, which allowed me to do political commentary one day, and pretty serious academic writing the next.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
I don't have one favorite post, but I've enjoyed using the blog to think out loud about constitutional law; I often use the blog as a scratchpad for my scholarly writing. Some of my favorite posts show how something happening in politics stems from how the larger constitutional system works. I'm surprised that I have ended up blogging so much about constitutional law, because my scholarly (and non- scholarly) interests are much more wide ranging.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
I often blog early in the morning when I get up, or late at night before I go to bed. My output is notoriously variable. Some weeks I'll publish something almost every day, and there have been times when I've gone for weeks without publishing anything at all. That's one reason why I converted what was originally a solo effort into a group blog, with some very fine people, who, I think, have made some wonderful contributions to public discourse.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
Fafblog, on both counts.
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
I don't really have one; but I enjoy Paul Krugman's polemics on the left and David Brooks and George Will on the right always say something that gets me thinking, even when I disagree with them, which I often do. Rosa Brooks, who I've known for many years, is a recent entrant who I think is doing splendid work.
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
I seem to watch news on television less and less these days, because the quality is increasingly disappointing, but every now and then I check in on the Jim Lehrer "Newshour," "Washington Week in Review," and "The Daily Show."
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
I read the New York Times and the Washington Post almost every day.
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
I don't have a daily list, but I tend to check in regularly with The Volokh Conspiracy, Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall, TAPPED, How Appealing, Legal Theory Blog, SCOTUS Blog, and TPM Cafe (including Matthew Ygelsias).
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
Perhaps only once or twice a week, usually on Sundays.
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
Although bloggers like to think of themselves as bravely checking and critiquing old media, and parts of old media still regard bloggers as uncouth, unaccountable, and unreliable, in fact new media and old media (viewed both as a set of distinctive technologies and as a set of persons and social practices) have effectively merged much more than either would care to admit.
Reporters now regularly use bloggers, particularly expert bloggers, as sources for their stories. Newspapers, television networks and newsmagazines increasingly incorporate interactive elements in their online versions, sponsor their own blogs, and provide linkbacks to the blogs that discuss their stories. These trends, which have begun in earnest in the past year or so, will only accelerate as time goes on, as traditional media organizations work out the kinks of how to integrate interactivity into their business models. (Eventually, of course, broadcast television and internet video will merge as content delivery methods, and online delivery of text will increasingly dominate paper delivery.)
The most heavily linked to opinion and expert blogs, and aggregator blogs (i.e., blogs which primarily collect links to what other blogs are doing) make it increasingly easy for mainstream media to know what is going on in the blogosphere and to use this as information sources, as ideas or raw materials for new stories, and as a rough estimate of public opinion.
Interactivity will transform old media, which will not give up the ghost, but will instead use its considerable political and financial clout to draw important elements of the blogosphere ever closer to it, coopting and transforming them, even though many parts of the blogosphere will always remain beyond old media's grasp.
What mainstream media has to offer the blogosphere are money, advertising and links (i.e., traffic). Although the structure of the Internet guarantees that bloggers can generate some degree of traffic on their own, mainstream media platforms, because of their prominence, will help secure a disproportionate share of traffic and attention, and therefore will become (even more than today) important nodal points in the blogosphere, much to the chagrin of some bloggers and the delight of others.
Of course, the more that old media tries to coopt the blogosphere, the more it will itself be transformed. The result, I am afraid, will not be an unalloyed victory for decentralization or democracy, nor will it represent the end of powerful shapers of public opinion who occasionally abuse their power. Rather, it will instead produce a different distribution of power and a different set of dangers and responsibilities.
Just as political parties learned how to manipulate mainstream media in order to structure public debate and deliver their preferred messages, they are learning how to coopt, manipulate (and in some cases become part of) the blogosphere in order to shape public opinion. Increasingly, opinion makers (both in political parties and in the business world) have a multi-pronged strategy that attempts to influence both old and new media. Although the blogosphere regards itself as far too large and too diffuse to be manipulated by powerful political and financial interests, this is surely not so, and the degree of this influence will become even more obvious as time goes on. Nevertheless, the decentralization of the blogosphere and its characteristic architecture (of log normal or powerlaw distributions) allows a degree of countervailing power, which, I continue to hope, will not be extinguished. The revolution is real.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Prudence At This Juncture
A few weeks ago, we suggested the Washington Post add a registration system to their comment sections to cut down on the invective they receive. While they haven't done this, we did notice that the St. Petersburg Times is giving this a try themselves -- and letting Blogger do the work for them: "We're trying out a new system for Buzz that we hope will add a little more accountability in the comments while maintaining the free-wheeling nature of this blog. Beginning tomorrow, posting a comment will require you to create a blogger account. Click on "sign up here'' and you'll go through a quick sign-up process much like registering to access some web sites. You still can withhold your name, but you need to register an identity and valid e-mail address. We will keep these addresses private. You don't have to be nice, but we want to weed out the nasty personal attacks." The decision was a controversial one -- especially from the many anonymous commenters who got in to register their displeasure before the registration requirement was implemented.
LEST WE FORGET: I Wish I Knew How To Quit Bidding On You!
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Posted by at February 16, 2006 12:41 PM
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