Don't you just hate human beings? Especially the ones with opinions and points of view that sometimes differ from your own? I know I do.

Bad KO, bad, bad boy. No more TiVo for you.

Just pointing out the absurdity of some of the media "heroes", who have become little more than shills for the Obama camp.
Can you direct me, pray tell, to any media Hillary shills out there?
My point is valid..
I don't care that they have different views than mine, I care that they are supposed to be unbiased journalists..and they are not.
I eagerly await all of the pro Hillary media figures..
But, I confess, I won't hold my breath.
Joebasic
Recovered DU member

KO has always been extraordinarily biased in his coverage. I started watching him regularly during the Libby trial, and rapidly tired of him because his coverage was so slanted. I was especially annoyed with his habit of asking questions of guests that telegraphed the point he wanted to make (i.e. "But don't you think that...?")

KO functioned as the mirror image of Fox. And in most cases, his "biases" were justified and his "outrage" was legitimate. On issues of the abuse of government power like the Libby trial, FISA, Iraq, etc., the neutral "he said/she said" approach doesn't cut it.

But a political campaign does not rise to the level that justifies his clear bias against and outrage toward Clinton. He's suffering from CDS, and its not pretty.

It sucks when you have to watch Faux News to see "equal" treatment for Obama and Clinton -- maybe its not positive treatment, but at least your hearing both sides.

Really. How KO can continue trying to associate himself as a 21st century Murrow is sad. There really is no comparison.

thank you.

I used to tivo Mathews and Olberman every night and all the Sunday morning news shows. I don't watch anything any more. I visit a few sites that will say it like it is and will go to references that they suggest. I find out what's going on in the mass media on the election through those sites as well. It's sad because I'm a political junkie and I can take critism of HRC, but it's just ridiculous how the media covers this election and a disservice to the process.

I gave up on KO after his coverage of Clinton's notorious non-tears moment in NH (Calculated! She "attacked" Obama by daring to suggest she's better than Him! During a campaign no less!). However, I now find myself struggling to even read the Times not only because the double standard evident in their "serious" campaign (Latest example: their refusal to correct the record on the grab fracas; the BBC also failed on this matter*), but also because I simply cannot stand to see another Dowd, Rich, Herbert, or Brooks bullshit op-ed column to the right of my screen as one of the most popular articles of the day (Currently, Herbert's "Confronting the Kitchen Sink" is #1).

The fact I no longer read The Nation, check out AlterNet, or listen to my former favorite, Rachel Maddow, and now have a bookmarks folder specifically for debunking links is testament to how insane this madness is. The only positive I can possibly glean from this: Maybe HRC is better than I imagine for them to be so terrified of her.

*It has been proven that Drudge got it from Free Republic and yet no apology from the Obama camp who immediately blamed Clinton.
Mark it: http://andrys1.blogspot.com/2008/02/sour...

One happy result of OH and TX is that the result shows that voters know these people suck. Check out this from Krugman's blog:

[T]ake the whole polling enterprise well salted. As it happens, I spent early Tuesday evening [before TX and OH results] with some major insider types, who had exit polls and believed that Obama had put the thing away. I took the train home, got in very late, went to bed thinking that the nomination fight was over, and opened the papers to see that it wasn’t. Nobody knows anything.

So, not only does the Village not know anything, they're assholes. And too many of our A-listers have gotten the same mind rot the Village has: They think they can create their own reality. Good for their resumes, but bad for their hit counts.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Six months ago he was the darling of the Left, our hero, bashing Bush and telling it like it is. Now he’s chewing on Hillary more than some would wish and suddenly he’s worthless. I suggest that he was neither as wonderful as was felt then and is not as awful as is claimed now.

I also suggest that the reason he’s gone hard on Hillary is likely personal. He and others feel she was too hard on David Schuster for his gaffe, and gaffe it was. It's what happens when geeky upper-class white men try to talk ghetto – always embarrassing for everyone and in this case, tasteless and viscerally so. He should never have said it, he needed to apologize, and he needed a spanking. But in my view Clinton could have handled it much better than she did. She should have called him out as she did, then reached out to arrange a face-to-face apology and forgiveness made-for-TV moment and put it behind. Instead she kept pushing, wouldn’t accept an approach for reconciliation, made veiled threats that she wouldn’t be part of any NBC programming unless Shuster was permanently let go, and generally was pissier than she should have been. The result was everyone at NBC got defensive – next time it might be their job threatened – and they’re pushing back. KO especially, because he and Shuster are friends.

Petty, childish, adolescent, unprofessional, well, shockingly, yes. But at this point it will have to be Clinton who reaches out to Shuster to start healing this particular rift and she isn’t doing anything of the sort. In my view, dumb and shortsighted. I may do a separate post on Clinton’s treatment of the media, in comparison to McCain’s. Very striking, and it isn’t a one-way street.

Holy shit, is that really how some people view the smearing of Chelsea Clinton and Hillary's response?

The relationship was already rough, and I'm not apologizing or covering for Shuster, he was wrong wrong wrong and callous and stupid and pick your condemnation. If there is any other explanation of why the NBC crew, especially KO, suddenly went openly harsh on Hillary, I'd like to hear it. It was clear to me from KO’s attitude that he was embarrassed at first, then pissed off when Clinton said that an apology and suspension weren’t enough and hinted she’d use appearing on NBC for debates as a lever to get Shuster canned. She’ll have to make the next move or the ragging will just keep on at this level.

@Lambert: I just hate how influential the Village is (now joined by "liberal" blogs). And it is (see: Obama phenomenon; Edwards' candidacy).

After Gore, I no longer trust that the public will see what's behind the curtain. I want to, but I just can't. Most people assume the information (facts, quotes, evidence, etc.) given to them is true--especially by the Times or other supposedly reputable sources. And they don't know of relevant information not given them nor do they have the time or care enough to scavenge around online (Assuming they know to avoid the likes of TPM).

...voters know these people suck
I know exit polls in OH (or TX?) show how even HRC supporters falsely believe she's been the "negative" and "unfair" of the two, but maybe her campaigning in person has been critical to voters' ability to get past that nonsense.

Good for their resumes, but bad for their hit counts
Really? Their hit counts have suffered? I thought they had enough of the Hillary is Satan crowd to counter the rest of us.

Three Blind Mice

Now he’s chewing on Hillary more than some would wish and suddenly he’s worthless.
Yeah, that's what I'd call ruthless smearing. And that letter was more than about Shuster's remarks, who immediately responded by refusing to admit he did anything wrong (prior he had rallied around Matthews' misogyny and smacked down those who protested him), but about the blatant pattern of bigotry at MSNBC. God, all she said was that they should look at their pattern. That's it. She never called on Shuster to get fired. She wrote:

Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient.

I would urge you to look at the pattern of behavior on your network that seems to repeatedly lead to this sort of degrading language.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/9/1...

And what other leverage does she have other than threatening not to be at a debate? Mind you, at the time, she desperately needed the publicity.

Media Matters on MSNBC:
"The Mess at MSNBC"
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/...
"The Pattern of Sexist/Misogynistic Outbursts at MSNBC"
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/...

Shuster: No regrets:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/msnb...

Hells sakes, Davidson, try to read what other people write before you start attacking, pain in the fucking ass trying to have a discussion with you when you won't even bother to read for content. You want to have a conversation, invest enough time into reading what others write to be at least minimally respectful.

Here's what you quote from Hillary:

"no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient."

Can you not see how this could be interpreted as a demand that Shuster be fired? Reads that way to me, and it damn sure read that way to the people at NBC.

My principle point, to reiterate and for the last time so read it slowly, is that this is a practical problem, and it is Hillary's problem - How to get the press to be less attack prone. It has been a problem for the Clintons for forever. She needs to do a better job of managing her relationships with the press. No one can do that but her. Maybe she can make things better, maybe not. If she doesn't do a better job of trying, it damn certain will not get better. Complaining by itself won't do anything positive at all, and as in this case will most often make things worse.

This is just First Principles: If you have a problem, fix it. Whining and moaning about fair and unfair and who did what first to whom gains nothing and moves away from progress and resolution. Positive interaction, and what that should have been - and still could be - I outlined above. There's a straightforward suggestion that would do much to defuse the situation. Practical solutions are helpful; whining about the mean, mean press is not.

If that truly is what is going on and KO's response is inspired by what you surmise I think I really have only one response to KO, with some serious sadness that he won't likely ever understand:

Fuck You Keith Olbermann.

If he can't quite understand that, well, then I should never have trusted him in the first place.

phat

So that's sorted then.

He's a hired talking head, not a working journalist. Just a reasonably affable human being who can read a teleprompter, with flaws and misplaced loyalties like everyone else. All things considered he's better than most, but the quality of most in the MSM is pretty damn low.

There are no pure sources of information. Trust no single source on anything. Most people are honest, but that does not mean they are accurate - earnest ignorance is honest, but it is still ignorant. Everyone on television is working an angle. Never choose television personalities as heroes. KO is not worth more than a paragraph of outrage. All IMNSHO.

JB: "supposedly responsible media outlet" First I have to stop laughing. There are no "responsible" major media outlets, so let's don't pretend that there's some pristine ethical standard that NBC has fallen from. Your upset seems to be largely that KO is not the person you had projected him to be. Whose fault is that?

Please read me for content. Pain in the ass repeating and repeating. I never said, repeat, never said, that I thought it was a valid position for Olbermann or any of the staff of NBC to take, what I said was that THEY think it is a valid position and what THEY think is what Hillary has to deal with. Her problem, she'll have to figure out a way to deal with it or it will continue on as it is, bad for her.

She has a problem. It is her problem. She has to figure out a way fix it. She is not doing as well at that as she needs to.

The world is full of flawed, arrogant people in positions of power. You can avoid them, or you can engage them. Running for president, better to engage them. I'll do a post tomorrow on the different approaches being pursued by Hillary and McCain with the press. Tom Leher wrote that "Life is a sewer; you get out of it what you put in it." Amazingly apt for the current situation.

PS: Where did I claim there are places with pro-Hillary bias and why am I somehow responsible for identifying them? Not my obligation, I'll take a pass, and thanks in advance for not presuming to assign me research projects in the future. Taylor Marsh might qualify on some days, but I like Taylor so no, strongly partisan but not biased.

Your whole flawed premise seems to be that it is the responsibility of the Clintons to see that they get fair coverage from the media..
That is absurd..and frankly stupid.
You say that KO is not considered a journalist, yet MSNBC puts him out there every night to cover the news on every primary night. He then proceeds to sit there and sneer, and make snide comments all night long as part of the "news" coverage.
Let me give you a small example of "news" coverage:
Covering the news is making a statement like this, "In Texas today, the Clinton campaign hit Senator Obama on his experience".
Covering the news is NOT making the following statement: "in a move reeking of the current desperate flailing and smearing tactics of the Clinton campaign, Mrs Clinton again attacked Barack Obama on the experience question, leaving behind the fact that the only experience she can claim is being first lady while her hisband had an affair in the White House"
If you honestly can't..or won't see the difference, no one can help you.
You should also be thankful that the mods here are not like those at the clownhouse kn own as DU, or you would have been banned for disagreeing.
Perhaps you would feel more at home there.
Joebasic
Recovered DU member

... is that she didn't ask for enough of 'em to be fired.* Why stop at one guy? Aux Duck Pits, citoyens!

Ha ha, only serious, or maybe 50% serious. Fortunately, as I commented elsewhere, the voters seem to be firing these guys all by themselves; one of my takeaways from TX and OH is that everybody knows these guys suck, and the networks are in diminishing returns mode trying to get people to pay attention (and attention is what they are selling, after all). Now, that's a recipe for a humongous false flag operation in the general, of course--something people will pay attention to--but then, they would never do that...

NOTE * Honestly, I don't think that the "no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient" equates to firing. Surely major corporations possess various varieties of tumbrils besides firing: Demotion, promotion off the air, taking his bonus away, game show hosting, public self-abasement, becoming a pool boy at Jack Welch's house, or whichever fantastically over-paid CEO rents the guy's services.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

...but in Joebasic's original post above, which of the several Olbermann quotes do you think contains items that either were not true, or that omitted pro-Clinton information?

Clinton does desire to paint Obama as unready to lead; the 3AM commercial is ample proof of that. You can argue that it's really "I'm more ready to lead than he is," but in a binary campaign like this primary, it's either her or him, and she says we should pick her. If she's more ready, he's less ready.

Sen. Clinton does have the problem that if she touts her own foreign policy experience, she's saddled with her Iraq and Iran war votes.

The Clinton campaign did tell reporters to look at Obama's "foreign policy credentials," and for whatever reason, they did so, resulting in a Washington Times article that was, as usual, patently unfair against the progressive candidate it examined (Obama in this case).

Dana Milbank did hear Clinton campaign officials say that they'd be throwing "the kitchen sink" at Obama; that's where the description of this style of campaigning came from.

I don't know the context of the short "stages of grief" quote, so I can't really comment on it, but I try to refrain from commenting on tiny snippets like that anyway without context. They often look worse than they are.

I don't blame Senator Clinton for not dropping out of the race after winning Ohio. She is still listed as winning Texas even though the delegate count from the caucuses now shows it very likely that Senator Obama will come away with more Texas delegates, but she won the vote in the primary, which isn't easy either. But as a bazillion stories and blog posts have pointed out, it's all but mathematically impossible for her to win enough of the remaining contests to win the nomination outright, and her hard-fought campaign now includes messages about Obama that would likely damage him vs. John McCain if Sen. Obama becomes the party's nominee.

Whether you believe such campaigning is justified or not, it is happening, it is unusual for the Democratic party, and it is news. Why is reporting on this somehow "bias" on Olbermann's part? What did he leave out? What did he say that wasn't true? What did he slant against Sen. Clinton or in favor of Sen. Obama?

--Matt

JB, about me: ”absurd, and frankly stupid” C’mon, Joey, tell us how you really feel.

What could provoke such an assessment? What I said, oh so clearly and repeatedly in several different ways, is that the Clintons have mishandled their relationship with the press, that the result of that mishandling has had negative consequences for the Clintons, and that they can and should do better. Which JB misrepresents as my saying that it is all Clinton’s fault, something I never came close to saying, but for Joe its easier to make stuff up and attack his self-created falsehood than it is to deal with what I actually wrote.

Joe likes his world to be cleanly divided between good and bad, like in a fairy tale. Actual complexity and especially the idea that one person’s behavior can influence the behavior of others, that is just absurd, and stupid. Good guys, bad guys, all there is; you’re either one or the other. It’s all as simple and straightforward as a Saturday morning cartoon.

As to the moderators here, I am extremely grateful for their forbearance - among many other things. You should be too, Joe, considering how it’s gone for you elsewhere.

I had the good sense and moderately good taste to not ever get involved at DU, and I stopped reading them quite a while ago. Not my cuppa. I do comment on several sites unrelated to public office politics, and if you think I’m harsh here you would be appalled by what I write on the science threads. In that world we deal exclusively in subtlety and nuance, uncertainty of varying degrees is all there is, and broad sweeping shallow statements claiming absolute truth like the ones you put out are universally greeted with great hilarity. You wouldn’t be happy there at all.

Oh, and (snort, cough, giggle) thanks for the invitation to leave, JB, but on consideration I’ll stick around a while longer. Deal with it.

This is not my space..I can't ask you to leave, nor would I because I do not believe in shutting out dissent, no matter how illogical or ill thought out it may be.
I do indeed, and will continue to, find it stupid that a presidental candidate must kiss up to the media in order to get fair coverage..that is perhaps, one of the most ridiculous things I have seen posted on a blog. (DU aside).
I do want to thank you however, for the thoughtful ananlysis however..the next time you put out that little can for the 5 cents and put up the sigh that says "the DR is in", please do give me a call.
you just can't get away from the absurd notion that a presidental candidate is responsible for the way the media treats them.
Do you prefer the Bush way, of giving ootsey cutesy nicknames to the members of the press and inviting them to BBQ's to get them to cover you in a fair manner?
I participate in may other blogs..and with the exception of DU..and you..I have never encountered anything but thoughtful, well thought out debate.
Perhaps you should stop talking, and listen..and maybe we can advance the dialouge. (Big word there meaning conversation..sound it out).
Joebasic
Recovered DU member

And the OFB used it constantly over at the Obama 527 formerly known as Daily Kos. Let's try for originality!

Let's have a good clean fight here. No holding, no low punches, no biting, gouging or rabbit punches. You'll break when I say break. And if you're decked, you'll get a count of ten to get back on your feet.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

That's because I never go there..I have a great deal of respect for this board and would never intentionally do anything to cheapen the good atmosphere here. I'll be on my toes to make sure I do not.
You do good work here, and while I might not agree with some of Bringitons notions or ideas, I do have a high level of respect for the board and its moderators.
Joebasic
Recovered DU member

We prefer hand-crafted snark ;-)

That's because we aren't in some warehouse that Axelrod rented out in Obama, playing first person shooter against [not Obama] supporters.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

when selectively applied, and I am completely not bothered in this particular case. Readers, if there are any besides lambert this far down-thread, can decide for themselves what has been said.

You are more than welcome, JB, for the analysis; I sincerely hope it will be helpful. Keep the nickel and spend it on a spell-check program, especially useful when lecturing others on vocabulary:

"maybe we can advance the dialouge. (Big word there meaning conversation..sound it out)."

It is a big word, isn’t it? And in this case, unfortunately, phonics is of no help.

This is all too delicious to allow it to remain way down here, and a full rebuttal deserves more than the tag end of an already complex thread. As promised, I’ll advance my thesis on the importance of individual responsibility and bilateral relationship interdependence in a new post.

Some may consider yet another discussion on Clinton and the MSM to be unnecessarily duplicative but I am hopeful that it will inspire some sprightly and, ah, “thoughtful, well thought out debate.” I for one can’t ever get enough of redundancy.

Thanks for the spell check..
Those who can, refute..
Those who cannot..spellcheck.
I've said my piece, people can judge my words on their own..
You seem to waste a lot of words saying that in order to get fair coverage, candidates should kiss the collective asses of the media, and if they recieve biased coverage, it is all their fault.
I maintain that political figures should get fair coverage without having to kiss the collective asses of the media.
You may pucker up at will..
I will continue to seek fairness.
Joebasic
Recovered DU member

Because it seemed to me Edwards was put on ignore bigtime. I'm haven't been a big consumer of MSM for a while, but I'd see things like Dem. poll results listing only 2 candidates when Edwards was still at 15% and 4 Rep. listed when one of them was at 9%. When you're campaigning, seems like total indifference could be almost as bad as open hostility. Short of getting arrested, which might not even have done the trick, what could/should JRE have done differently? I honestly don't know the answer which is why I'm asking the question.

Apropos of nothing, KO's attempt at Murrow-ness drives me crazy especially when there's Strathairn's finely tuned portrayal in Good Night and Good Luck around not to mention plenty of film of the original.