In an article outlining the tactical wisdom of the GOP just refusing to govern for the next two years, this remarkably derp paragraph:
If Republicans set high expectations for themselves, they are bound to fail. After all, Democrats can block legislation at will by using the filibuster. As we’ve seen from the past few years, the media will not report that Democrats blocked legislation that had support of more than 50 senators. They’ll report that Congress failed—and the blame will fall squarely on the GOP. Democrats learned this the hard way over the past few years.Witness once again, a national media outlet which completely fails to understand the very basics of our national media.
So repeat after me: Until they are made to pay a terrible price for ever doing it again, when it comes to reporting, our national media template is always IOKIYAR.
It's OK If You're A Republican. Always. Forever. Also too it's lesser known cousin IACIYAD – It’s A Crime If You’re A Democrat.
For the slower children in the room, let me explain how this works in real life vis-à-vis Congressional obstruction.
When the GOP filibusters everything in sight, the story is "Congress is broken."
When the GOP filibusters everything in sight, the the that "you need 67 votes to pass anything" is shrugged off as a factual aside -- as if it's written into the Constitution that way.
If Democrats filibuster, the story will be that Democrats are obstructing the clear governing mandate which the people of Murrica gave to the GOP in order to continue to fuck up the country and the planet
If Democrats filibuster, the story will be how Democrats are unprincipled douchbags who used to bitch about the very tactic they are now using.
And if, somehow, some Democrat somewhere has the presence of mind to ask the reporter about where all this concern about comity and cooperation was back when the GOP was lobbing cinder-block into traffic, the answer will be, "We're not here to re-litigate the past. Clearly the Murrican people have spoken and yadda yadda yadda..."
This has been another episode of How The Fuck Do Professional Journalists Not Understand How Their Own Profession Works?
Next up: Stupid Shit Charles Blow Says
2 comments:
I expect that Drifty's last question is rhetorical, and that he already knows the answer--but just in case:
Journalists do understand.
They understand that the real purpose of their profession is to serve the people who pay for their services, in this case the plutocrats and their higher-ranking servants.
The journalists serve their plutocratic customers by slanting truth and spreading lies to make the middle-and-lower-income victims of their customers think their suffering is their own fault, and/or the fault of people even lower on the ladder of income and respect than the middle class: down-and-out Murkans, non-conformist Murkans, and/or foreigners.
At some point in the history of journalism, newspapers started making more money from their advertisers than from their readers. The resulting necessity of not offending advertisers compelled newspapers, and later forms of media, to adopt a pro-business attitude, whether or not they wanted to do that anyway. This began the long dreary decline of journalism.
They understand that the real purpose of their profession is to serve the people who pay for their services, in this case the plutocrats and their higher-ranking servants.
Or, as the not-so-apocryphal-after-all John Swinton put it, probably around 1880:
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
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