Saturday, November 07, 2009

Election 2009 Trash Talk

If NPR's Repulican dominated discussions of the 2009 elections (e.g. Inskeep's Nov. 5 ME schmooze with Mike Murphy, Don Gonyea's afternoon friendly with Murphy, and Fox New/NPR "analyst" Liasson's lie fest with Frank Donatelli) have you scratching your head - it's nothing new. The 2006 national elections should have removed any doubts about NPR's rightwing tilt when it comes to electoral coverage; in 2006 NPR hammered away at the made-up claim that the clear repudiation of Republicans was actually a national call for bipartisanship.

I've posted below on Inkseep's pathetic interview with Murphy, and I was pleased to find a withering post at Daily Kos concerning Mara Liasson's hackery. Beyondleft writes,
"I didn't know it was possible to pack so many lies into a 5 minute radio report, but Mara Liasson surpassed my expectations."
Indeed! Besides flogging Liasson the dKos piece contains a link to Randy Lobasso's Philly2Philly.com wrap up on the elections. It's about the best summary I've read. After reading it you can't help notice the utter lack of NPR/corporate media coverage of the John Garamendi victory in the CA-10 House race where a progressive democrat won a seat formerly held by a rightwing democrat. Guess that kind of result just doesn't fit in the GOP landslide - warning to Democrats spin that NPR and other conventional press outlets are trying to sell.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's way too early to be drwaing ANy conclusions from these elections, other than perhaps that people tend to vote with their pocketbook when the economy is not going well.

While i think a lot of republicans are eager to jump on the "Obama repudiation" bandwaggon, I think the obvious observation about the relationship between the economy and the way people vote is certainly valid and Obama and the rest of the Democrats ignore at their peril.

it is a fact that to date, Obama's stimulus has been far less effective at reducing/keeping down unemployment than he originally claimed it would be. Christine Romer origincally claimed unemployment would peak at 8% with the stimulus. She was obviously completely OFF (not even close).

People who actually understand this stuff (Paul Krugman and dean baker) were calling for a much bigger stimulus and it certainly looks like they were correct.

The question remains whether Obama will heed the warning -- not from the recent elections but from the actual unemployment number.

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

The press--among which I regrettably must include NPR--does not tell the people what to think. That is a canard. The Press's job is to tell the people what to thing ABOUT, and thoughtfully to provide the language in which to think about it. Clearly you can see th difference.

The SCUM (SoCalled Unbiased Media) are merely doing their jobs as reliable corpRat flacks and lackeys, driving the Dims rightward. That's their job.

Life As I Know It Now said...

I want Democracy Now in our area. Our local public radio stations do not carry this of course. They do have the BBC on late at night so sometimes when I wake up at 2 am I listen to the BBC.

You are absolutely right on target when it comes to the new FOX station we have which they call NPR.

I still call it Nationalistic Public Radio!

biggerbox said...

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one nauseated by the Liasson spew. I'm trying to limit myself to only one or two NPR-rants a day, so I hadn't written anything about it, but I was quite impressed by her bald-faced assertion that next year's elections will be hard for the Democrats. Talk about her wishful thinking!

biggy!pinky!fuzzyy!bunnyy! said...

^ And to cap that all off, I bet you can still get a clear picture of her eyes bugging out even across the radio waves!

Kevan Smith said...

As FAIR points out, this isn't unusual to NPR. Anytime the Democrats win, the mainstream media message is it signals "they should move to the right."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2985

Anonymous said...

It doesn't matter what Obama does now.

He's toast politically. A one termer for sure.

He had 1 chance to get the stimulus right (to create jobs) and blew it.

Instead of using money to create jobs he handed trillions to the bankers who squandered it on bonuses, mergers and pretty much everything except lending that would get the REAL economy rolling again (and create jobs)

The only thing that means anything for Obama now is unemployment:

According to someone with a clue, (economist dean Baker)
"In all likelihood, the economy will continue to shed jobs, at least through the rest of the 2009 and probably into the first months of 2010. The unemployment rate will probably not peak until the spring of next year, at close to 11.0 percent." -- Dean baker.

Got that?

11% unemployment in spring of 2010:

I'd like to see how Obama is going to spin that one when he is campaigning.

Unknown said...

This morning Steve Inskeep and Cokie Roberts were talking about the healthcare bill passing the House. And at the end of the report, Cokie said, "that's where Tuesday's elections really has had an effect - people are so worried about the economy."

You can almost hear them nodding like a couple of cows...

Excuse me, ladies and Cokie, but the lesson of last Tuesday's elections is that the Democrats picked up TWO VOTES in Congress...

NOBODY on NPR will EVER PUT IT THAT WAY... because the conventional wisdom is that it "means something" in 2009 when VA and NJ went to the non-presidential party, even though it meant nothing when the same thing happened to Bush 8 years ago...