More on Maliki comments - Updated
I’m wary of writing too much about this since it isn’t a local issue, but it really is quite remarkable: the national media is largely ignoring Iraqi PM Maliki’s endorsement of Obama’s withdrawl plan except for when it’s repeating Republican spin about it. Here’s the New Republic on Time magazine’s The Page (probably the most influential blog other than Drudge for driving media stories) ridiculously pro-McCain take on it.
And here’s something even more striking: screen shots of the front page of the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Drudge Report. It’s been famously said by political reporters that “Drudge rules our world.” This line is trotted out by reporters to explain why the media cared more about Clinton’s extramarital affairs than about torture and corruption in the Bush administration. Here, we see Drudge fronting the Maliki story while the Times and Post ignore it.
What gives? As I pointed out earlier, this is not isolated. Bush is negotiating with Iran, as Democrats (especially Obama) have urged. McCain is talking up the fact that Afghanistan may be more dire than Iraq right now (as Obama has done for weeks), and yet the public continues to believe McCain is stronger on foreign policy. Gee, I wonder where the public might get ideas like that.
Update: btp here. There is most definitely a local connection. Last week we reported that Rochester’s own D&C, like the other papers Exile noted above, edited a nationally syndicated column to puff up McCain and take out text favorable to Obama. The “edits for length” were in one direction only– pro-McCain. Either the traditional media want McCain to win, or they want a closer race to increase readership, or both. I would like to trust that the D&C and other traditional media isn’t biased, but it is. Liberal media. Yeah, right.
[...] to be Barack Obama’s timeline, but any way you slice it, they want the U.S. out. As RT points out, you could hear a pin drop on the subject, here or [...]