For personal attacks and "character issues," Contessa Brewer/Corporate Mainstream Media is BuzzFlash's Media Putz of the Week

THE BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

http://mediaputz.com/08/05/putz0508.html

Contessa Brewer and the Corporate Mainstream Media

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

We received so many nominations for individual members of the corporate "Big Media" that we decided to just present a group BuzzFlash Media Putz this week. The occasion for the recognition is that until the Indiana/North Carolina primaries, the corporate press focused for weeks on tin lapel pins, Jeremiah Wright, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other issues that have no relevance to the problems facing America.

In fact, as recently as last Sunday, Tim Russert, the "dean" of insider D.C. broadcast-journalism "respectability," grilled Barack Obama yet again on Rev. Wright, taking up a large part of an hour interview with a topic that was old news, a distraction, and had no bearing on the severe problems facing our nation.

There have been variations on the theme of nonsense "journalism." As BuzzFlash reader Dennis McCain of New Orleans noted in his nomination, "Contessa Brewer of MSNBC deserves this week's award for her completely fabricated report that Barack Obama shot Hillary Clinton the bird. It seems to me if a 'reporter' is going to report an outright lie, it should not be one so easily disproven by an accompanying video. If members of the media wonder why their credibility is at an all-time low, Ms. Brewer is this week's Exhibit A."

But Brewer is only one of the media herd who become obsessed with distracting issues that divert the attention of the American public from the pressing public policy issues facing our nation.

Our colleague, Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews.com captured the destructive inanity of the corporate mainstream media - particularly the broadcast press -- in a recent commentary, "US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008":

Some clever political operative injects "oppo" into the campaign -- some little "scandal" that supposedly speaks to the "character" of a candidate -- and the press corps obsesses on this marginal issue nearly to the exclusion of all substantive matters.

This all-consuming event distorts the campaign, turning the targeted candidate into a laughingstock or someone who isn't quite American enough. Pundits pile on with criticism that the guy should have reacted faster or slower or answered this way or that.

Millions of voters become convinced, amid this intense negativity, that they simply can't vote for this loser and the outcome of the election changes.

Then, in the election aftermath, the American press corps goes through a period of self-reflection; some excellence-in-journalism group issues a scathing report about the superficiality of the news coverage; political journalists vow that in the next election they won't get suckered again.

Then, the process -- which dates back at least to 1988 and Lee Atwater's savaging of Michael Dukakis -- begins anew, albeit always with some slightly new twist.

All this might be quite funny if one doesn't consider the consequences for the Republic. When historians try to figure out how the most powerful nation on earth managed to end up under the control of someone as unfit as George W. Bush for eight years, they will have to take note of this media phenomenon.

In 2000, Al Gore was transformed from a thoughtful, even far-sighted government official into a delusional braggart who claimed "I invented the Internet" (though he really didn't say that), a traitor who sold nuclear secrets to China (though he didn't), and a phony who wore earth-tone sweaters and cowboy boots.

John Kerry also had many strong points -- as a genuine Vietnam War hero (a decorated Swiftboat captain in the Mekong Delta) and a gutsy investigator (Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking and BCCI) -- but saw his war heroism smeared by the misnamed Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and his Americanism mocked because he "looked French."

At key moments in these campaigns, the press let the "oppo" define Bush's opponents and thus millions of Americans went to the polls believing fiction was truth, up was down.

In their daily media phone calls with the press, the Clinton campaign has been pushing just this type of guilt-by-association character assassination of Barack Obama for weeks and weeks. Phil Singer, Harold Ickes, and Howard Wolfson have been the main morally defective Clinton operatives on the calls, but other Clinton "consultants" have also been using Rovian attacks on personality on a daily basis, often using right-wing screeds to press their point. And Hillary Clinton herself has advanced the attacks through sly innuendo.

And the corporate mainstream press took the bait, because personal attacks and "character issues" are now what pass for political journalism.

For this lamentable reality, BuzzFlash.com awards this week's Media Putz Award to the entire corporate mainstream media. There are some exceptions, but they're as rare as an NAACP member at a Klan rally.

THE BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

Bookmark/Search this post with:

buzzflash | delicious | digg | technorati