Media Narratives

Digby attempts to synthesize the recent discussion of media narratives.

Media narratives are storylines that mainstream media editors, pundits and some reporters use to provide the meaning of each item of news they need to deal with. They are a method of fitting today's news into long-term patterns that they can then explain to their readers. Such narratives permit the editors and pundits to provide the context the reader should use to interpret today's news into a predictive model of an expected future, and they are supposedly based on historical experience the news-gatherers have with the newsmakers.

Media narratives are based more on the common and generally accepted wisdom of the editors and pundits than on what any single person thinks. A well-written editorial that explains recent events in terms of the common wisdom will get positive recognition for the pundit, while one that runs counter to the common wisdom will get negative recognition. Whether the editorial is later proven right or wrong does not matter much. Pay raises, promotions, etc. are based on the immediate reaction, and if the editorial writer is later proven wrong, so what? No one can be expected to predict the future. Editors, many of whom would like to become pundits, take their direction from the editorial writers regarding what the common wisdom is. This is the nature of the political reporting class in the mainstream media.

This is how Digby sees the situation.

"We must not forget that a great many people are infected with these media storylines (although according to this fascinating analysis by Stirling Newberry, they are less infected than we think.) But there is one group that is almost completely controlled by it and that's the political establishment. The blogosphere and other forms of alternative media provide some other voices, but in the main, the beltway's relationship to the people is almost entirely constructed by the media narrative. And it's killing Democrats."

Then Digby goes on to excerpt some items from each of the writers he was reading:

"Jamison Foser from Media Matters:

The recent media treatment of Sen. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in. To illustrate this, we look back over the last dozen or so years.

This is very important. It is an American impulse to recoil from losers, but it's a Democratic weakness that they consistently belittle and degrade their politicians for the sins of the media. Foser's long post takes you on a trip through time that should convince anyone that there is more at work here than congenitally bad candidates. From Howard Dean to John Murtha to Hillary Clinton to Al Gore and everything in between, there is no such thing as a "normal" Democrat in the eyes of the political media.

Peter Daou, on the WaPo's revisiting today of Bush's manly certitude. Steve Benon on the same. Christy too.

Stirling Newberry on the two narrative streams, public and private.

TBOGG on the press's reluctance to call Republicans liars.

He excerpts this incredible paragraph from Eric Boehlert's incredible new book Lapdogs:

The MSM's unique brand of journalism, unveiled just for Bush, represented precisely the kind of clubby, get-along reporting that would have been roundly mocked by journalists themselves just a few years earlier. During the Clinton years, the D.C. newsroom sin was to be seen as soft on Democrats -- "a Clinton apologist" -- and journalists went to extraordinary lengths to prove their mettle by staying up late chasing Whitewater rumors and trying to prove the White House gave away weapons secrets to the Chinese in exchange for campaign contributions. The phrase "double standard" barely begins to describe the titanic shift that occurred in how Bush and his Republican administration were covered by the suddenly timorous press corps. It's hard to believe the Bush-era slumbering press was the same one that a decade earlier shifted into overdrive when bogus allegations flew that President Clinton caused commercial airplanes to back up at Los Angeles International Airport while he received a $200 haircut from a celebrity stylist aboard Air Force One in 1993. Federal Aviation Administration records later showed no such delays occurred, but that didn't stop the Washington Post from referencing the silly incident fifty-plus times in less than thirty days, treating the hoax as a serious political story. (The Post staff managed to squeeze in nearly one hundred Clinton haircut references during the 1993 calendar year.) Then again, just four months into his first term, the Post published a lengthy, mocking feature on Clinton's soft approval ratings. ("The Failed Clinton Presidency. It has a certain ring to it.") Yet in 2005 when Bush's job approval rating plunged into the 30s, the Post refused to print the phrase "failed presidency" to describe Bush's second term. To do so would simply invite conservative scorn; something the newsroom seemed to go to extraordinarily lengths to avoid.

"

This is the way the mainstream media is killing Democrats nationally. So the real question is how Democrats deal with this form of unconscious but institutionalized discrimination?

Step one is to recognize it when it occurs and confront it. An example is Talking Points Memo's direct and timely confrontation of the Associated Press's John Solomon when he went after Harry Reid for getting in to a boxing match for free in spite of voting against the Nevada Boxing Commission. Solomon was equating it with the Republican corruption, while the fact is, it would have been illegal for Harry Reid to have paid to see the match, and he voted against the position the Nevada Boxing Commission wanted anyway.

I'm not sure what step two is. That is for the future.

Maybe we can build media narratives that show the Republicans are incompetent and corrupt, and should never be allowed to control government again. Recent history sugests that might not be so hard to do.