What makes this more than usually noteworthy is that the speaker, Pat Caddell, was a Democrat pollster. I don’t think he is exaggerating.
I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy.
[Via Instapundit]
I thought i had seen it at it’s worse in 2008.
I was wrong.
Which after a moments reconsideration is not surprising
But I agree with Caddell that wrt to the the assassination of Obumma’s ambassador to Libya the MSM crossed another threshold into corruption.
JamesK
29 Sep 12 at 9:45 am
Four years ago:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6099188&page=1#.UGY6X1EkiSo
Ivan Denisovich
29 Sep 12 at 10:05 am
We already know it in Australia, but the American liberal media does not yet understand that it is a laughing stock among anyone who is taking even a remote interest in the presidential election. Only the most deluded Democrat supporter isn’t open-jawed about the barracking for Obama. People are not stupid; the left assumes they are. Ultimately, there will be a terrible price to pay in the media marketplace. In the meantime, media company boards should be agitated about the trashing of their brands by their staff. Heads will roll after November 6.
PS: Ivan, that piece by Michael Malone is a must-read.
Tom
29 Sep 12 at 10:25 am
It’s a form of corruption, quite demonstrably. Yes, that Michael Malone story from 2008 tells it well, thanks Ivan. It’s been going on for quite a few years, not two weeks, although it has become worse.
The analysis of how it comes about is good – I’ll just quote the last little bit, but all of it seems equally applicable here in Oz:
blogstrop
29 Sep 12 at 11:20 am
I find Michael Malone’s analysis unconvincing, a partial truth at best. There’s far more going on than a few aging editors confronting their mortality. What is happening seems more like a mask being dropped to expose a previously concealed evil and malevolence. Perhaps the socialist-fascist parasitoid has finally killed its host.
larrikin
29 Sep 12 at 12:15 pm
The trouble is, I think that for most people, if the MSM isn’t picking up on it, then they assume it either isn’t important, has been exagerated, or can’t be true.
If you point them to a source where they can get the information, they are likely to disparage the source rather than investigate the facts. (eg. ‘Well, what would you expect on Jo Nova’s site’.)
It’s a very effective way to bury the truth.
Ellen of Tasmania
29 Sep 12 at 12:19 pm
Larrikin, I agree Malone’s explanation is unconvincing. It is him thinking out loud; I think Malone, like me, is mystified why his fellow journalists would set out to destroy their businesses and their employment by trashing their only trading commodity, credibility. Forget the politics: what is going on is quite mad.
Tom
29 Sep 12 at 12:30 pm
“free democracy”? The rot set in – in 1968 and has not been removed. MSM will go the way of other dinosaurs.
stackja
29 Sep 12 at 12:58 pm
It is a very similar thing to what has been going on here.
We currently have the most incompetent, fiscally irresponsible, and ideologically corrupt government that this country has seen, arguably since Federation.
The transgression of this government over the last 3-4 years are legion.
And yet, daily, we are treated to cover up and spin in favour of the Gillard Labor government, and instead we get news of things such as Abbott’s supposed altercation with some left wing student hack from 30 years or so ago.
Eventually, this period of media partisanship and gross irresponsibility will end, if only because they have so corrupted the product they are attempting to sell that noone is buying it any more.
Until then, those who have participated in this grotesque Leftoid media Luvfest of the last few years, should be publicly named, shamed, and pilloried.
The following are just a few examples of those who have indulged in this shameless behaviour; no doubt others can add their own names to the list:
Laurie Oakes;
Michelle Grattan;
Phil Coorey;
Peter Hartcher;
Lenore Taylor;
Malcolm Farr;
Everyone from the ABC, save perhaps for Chris Uhlman
The insufferable David Marr;
That slimy smug returnee from the US who they have just started to use on Insiders.
There are hundreds more of these partisan hacks out there, and frankly each and every one of them deserves nothing less than public castigation and humiliation, after a suitably conducted public Show Trial of course.
James P
29 Sep 12 at 1:04 pm
What will All these commo fascist idiots do when newspapers cease and few peoplevwant to subscribe to payvnews on the net,when the abc and sbs are sold to private owners who wont put up with commo fascist crap.
Look out Centrelink! Here they come!
Borisgodunov
29 Sep 12 at 1:12 pm
[...] Media is endangering democracy (Video) [...]
#media-fail … | pindanpost
29 Sep 12 at 2:48 pm
These are among the most professional journalists in the Australian media. They give dispassionate commentaries on all serious issues that occur in this country. We will miss each of them when they retire. You can add Leigh Sales to this list. A most impressive woman who doesn’t let any public figure stand over her. She’ll go on from strength to strength.
Professional journalism is at a high point in Australia. I do think however that the government has to shut down the likes of Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt. They add nothing – quite the reverse.
hammygar
29 Sep 12 at 3:50 pm
Hammerhead didn’t get the memo that your side of politics is outlawing trolls?
kingsley
29 Sep 12 at 4:13 pm
The Libyan incident is a stunning event, imagine an Ambassador getting killed on Reagan’s watch. Fortunately the Libyan govt is telling the truth and the locals seem to have worked out who the real bad guys are too and already acted. Yet to let Ambassadors get killed and do nothing also demonstrates there is something so very amiss with what happened in Libya.
kingsley
29 Sep 12 at 4:18 pm
hammygar sarcasm? or you seem ill-informed.
stackja
29 Sep 12 at 4:18 pm
That’s assuming you regard the USA as a democracy. Given voter turnout statistics, that’s a very dodgy assumption.
1735099
29 Sep 12 at 4:47 pm
Yes numbers, rights are obligations.
Numbers view of what a democracy ought to look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNBPOpIVj0Q
.
29 Sep 12 at 4:58 pm
James
I would certainly add to your list Ch 10′s awful leftie tart, Paul Bongiorno and That prat Mark Riley who set up Tony Abbott–of channel 7– and who caused my whole family to pledge never to watch Ch7 news again, a pledge we have scrupulously kept–also Ch7′s hateful Morning show “hosts” Kochie and Mel and channel Ten’s back of the shelter shed “funnies” on The project–again, my family would turn off their TVs rather than watch those dickheads!
Jazza
29 Sep 12 at 5:03 pm
Western democracies are based on individual rights; which means that there will never be any compromise with islam.
The form of the exercise of the democratic right varies from nation to nation with some nations making the exercise of that right a true right where the individual is free to exercise it or not, such as in the US; alternatively other nations make the exercise of the right compulsory, which is just one gigantic oxymoron; unlike numbers, who is just a moron.
cohenite
29 Sep 12 at 5:06 pm
Hammy, the key to satire is making it sound believable.
Eyrie
29 Sep 12 at 5:17 pm
ABC news presenter Juanita Phillips and climate change minister Greg Combet are Australia’s newest power couple
Can’t help but feel it’s more their sick joke…just rubbing our face in it.
true lilly
29 Sep 12 at 5:26 pm
Hammy hamming it up again. Such pomposity can’t be real, not when accompanied by that gravitar pic. It’s like Big Brother thundering down from on high, 1984 style.
Must ask Winston when he’s next around. Is it Hammy’s the pic that you first see in the opening chapter as you start to walk up the stairs to your flat?
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Sep 12 at 5:51 pm
Well yes I am. I’m also assuming you’re a fucking imbecile. I’m right on both assumptions.
JC
29 Sep 12 at 6:36 pm
Hammy, old love, because it’s impossible for you to extract your head from your Stalinist arse, you simply barrack for the writers whose bias you most like. Newspapers are losing readers because the journalists on your list have ditched the professional ethics they’re supposed to live by and hold the public of this country in contempt. A professional journalist, even in an opinion/analysis piece, can write without soaking you in his/her bias. That’s because journalism was conceived as a public service for the benefit of readers who fork out money to learn stuff. Most of the Australian media is currently treating its paying readership/viewership/listenership like idiots. And make no mistake: you pay for journalism one way or another. It’s not free. And you are not “the public”, Hammy. You’re the extremist one per cent.
Tom
29 Sep 12 at 7:02 pm
Once more with the faeculent bile, Hammy. Give it a break.
perturbed
29 Sep 12 at 7:23 pm
Hammy is a ripper, especially getting into an evening when one suspects medications or medicinal fluids may be kicking in.
If our doctors were as professional as our journalists millions of us would be dead right now.
Chris M
29 Sep 12 at 7:45 pm
Couldn’t give you an answer to that, Lizzie – never seen the picture.
But have read the novel multiple times.
Winston Smith
29 Sep 12 at 7:57 pm
hammmy, I really hate to say this because you used to be almost my favorite troll but you have stepped way over the mark and I will never again be able to approach your comments with gleeful anticipation of some light entertainment. You have gone off the scale of derangement.
Poor Old Rafe
29 Sep 12 at 8:09 pm
Shameless:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/greghengler/2012/09/28/msnbc_caught_doctoring_clip_from_romneyryan_rally
Ivan Denisovich
29 Sep 12 at 8:22 pm
MSNBC employs liars by the bushel. Have a look at Andrea Mitchell here. It also show Romney in rather a good light.
dover_beach
29 Sep 12 at 8:46 pm
” People are not stupid; the left assumes they are.”
Intelligence is normally distributed in a population. Whether the fat bulbous part of the bell curve is merely mildly dull or dangerously retarded depends upon the population.
Big Jim
29 Sep 12 at 9:02 pm
And clearly politicians have the ability to change the population through dysgenic welfare policies and through immigration policies. So let’s not assume that politicians who thrive on a dumb populace will not use these levers of control.
Big Jim
29 Sep 12 at 9:11 pm
The only way to combat bias in the media is to create, support, and subscribe to balancing media sources.
Boris
29 Sep 12 at 9:46 pm
If that were the case, the public would have just switched to News Corp.
Boris
29 Sep 12 at 9:48 pm
They’re already there numb-nuts:
cohenite
29 Sep 12 at 11:11 pm
Rafe, for a minute I thought of suggesting we have a contest for the favorite troll of the month. But it might just encourage them. As when someone eventually breaks and throws a food bone at them and they all pile in and fight over it.
However, before we dismiss or scare off all our trolls, we should consider the issue of unintended consequences: it could be we need them. Maybe they are like bad bacteria or intestinal parasites – you have to be exposed to a few of them in order to stay healthy and build up good immunity to the silly ideas they espouse. Might be why the Cat keeps in such robust good health.
(Using the term ‘espouse’ as above has turned my mind to noting it is not in the leftie mindset to go in for ‘espousal’ much, certainly not for the long haul. Mostly they engage (gosh, another marital term) in serial shacking-up. Given this, it’s strange how suddenly it’s terribly important that gays should now have espousal on demand).
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
29 Sep 12 at 11:59 pm
Does anyone else find it wierd that all the anti-government shows dried up after Rudd won? There doesn’t seem to be anything remotely like the Chasers going after the left.
mundi
30 Sep 12 at 12:30 am
If that is the case, what is the problem? Surely there is nothing wrong (from the right’s perspective) Fairfax etc driving itself into obscurity.
Boris
30 Sep 12 at 12:41 am
Absolutely, Mundi! Australia is built on humour. The rabble running the country and most of the media are Greens or Greens sympathisers, who are the unfunniest sub-species since fascists. (The Cat’s Green trolls are the most moronic drooling mistakes to have ever escaped from the lab.) Australian humour on TV etc has been all but banished since 2007.
Tom
30 Sep 12 at 2:06 am
Things are in a sorry state when trollish lines are the stock in trade of major media, to witness the anti Abbott campaign recently.
As for “serial shacking up”, this is (as I have pointed out previously) something that has been admitted by a large forum on the subject of gay marriage broadcast on their ABC a while back – they really want some new form of arrangement which has both legitimacy and serial shacking rights bound together.
Serial shacking is now the norm for certain brands of pollie and their media boosters.
Blogstrop
30 Sep 12 at 7:03 am
Latest story about the disgusting Alan Jones reported today.
Of course the Liberal Party is encouraging this ratbag.
There really is a good case for legislative involvement against this example of “free speech”.
Unfortunately the Finkelstein moves won’t help here because it was at a private function. Case for broadening the brief?
hammygar
30 Sep 12 at 8:39 am
Hammster. I’ll support your call for broadening the brief on the condition that I will be given the sole and exclusive legal power to decide what can and can’t be said. After all, I’m the only person that I would trust with this power. But you have nothing to fear. I promise I will not abuse my power. Trust me.
It’s not like I’m going to demand that everyone has to wear red underwear on their heads before they can say anything. How stupid would that be.
johno
30 Sep 12 at 9:27 am
Being well past retirement age I guess my time on this earth is strictly limited. But what I’ll be leaving behind in Australia is the demise of conservatism. We are now a smallish mnority and getting smaller. i’ve just turned on Insiders to see who the right-wing quest is today. From the left, they were Laura Tingle, George Megalomania and wait for it, Annabel Crabb, who is presumably deemed by the ABC to be a conservative. Add these three leftists to the left-wing Charge D’affaires Barry Cassidy, and today’s guest, Minister Ludwig, and you have five lefties substantially agreeing with each other (as Gerard Henderson would say).
My concern is not so much that the AbC has a leftist bias, but that this sort of situation isn’t seen as abnormal by the great majority of Australians. We have reached a stage where leftism in the new centre. Anything closer to the centre, and horror of horrors, to the right of centre is seen as fascism veering to Hitlerist.
whyisitso
30 Sep 12 at 9:55 am
Alan Jones is a left wing crusader against cheap energy and food, but he is right. Of course the PM’s Dad died of shame.
She’s a thieving, lying whore.
.
30 Sep 12 at 10:52 am
Lying to the proles about a consumption tax and stealing their life savings might be a one way ticket back to anywhere West of the Maribyrnong River for the lying slapper.
Labor’s incompetence is our new hope, ironically.
.
30 Sep 12 at 10:56 am
Noname inhabits a universe where black is white, left is right, and political discourse consists of compressing fear hate and ignorance into foul mouthed abuse.
1735099
30 Sep 12 at 6:29 pm
[...] first Tim Groseclose’s video providing the evidence of media bias along with the Democrat, Pat Caddell, arguing that the bias now being shown is putting democracy itself in danger. The notion of a [...]
Tim Groseclose on media bias at Catallaxy Files
30 Sep 12 at 7:57 pm
[...] first Tim Groseclose’s video providing the evidence of media bias along with the Democrat, Pat Caddell, arguing that the bias now being shown is putting democracy itself in danger. The notion of a [...]
Tim Groseclose on media bias « Law of Markets
30 Sep 12 at 7:59 pm