A friend, who’s an astute observer of American journalism, told me recently that there are two real priorities for reporters holding down mainstream media jobs: get the basic facts right (names, ages and such) and never let anyone pin the “liberal” label on you.
That gritty perception was on display in the lead story of the New York Times on Jan. 25 as reporter David D. Kirkpatrick crafted an article about Samuel Alito’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court that bought wholeheartedly into the Republican spin that Democratic opposition to Alito is just politics.
The story is devoid of the constitutional concerns about Alito, such as his role as a chief architect of the radical theory that the President possesses nearly unrestrained power as the “unitary executive” and – in time of war – as Commander in Chief.
Instead of those weighty constitutional issues, New York Times readers got a heavy dose of the Republican view that the Democrats were just trying to score political points with liberal interest groups, even if the Democrats' opportunism threatened congressional comity and non-partisan evaluation of judges. ...
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Media Imbalance
Yet as galling as it may be for some readers to see how the Times and other major mainstream media outlets are framing the Alito confirmation, the broader problem has been the failure of well-to-do liberals and progressive foundations to finance a media infrastructure that can act as a counterweight to the right-wing media machine.
The Right’s media now rises like a giant vertically integrated corporation from newspapers, magazines and books to talk radio, cable news, TV pundits and Internet sites. The machine is lavishly financed at each level and can turn even fringe issues (like the “war on Christmas”) into questions that dominate the national debate.
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