Wednesday, August 27, 2008

All the Media Loves a Feeding Frenzy


David Folkenflik at NPR offers his thoughts on the media's current feeding frenzy on each other.

He talked to Joe Scarborough about his recent dust up with David Shuster:

"I get frustrated by people who have an obvious partisan bias that don't proclaim that bias," Scarborough told me. "I'm not uncomfortable with a guy like [Sean] Hannity, or [Bill] O'Reilly or [Keith] Olbermann, because anybody tuning in can tell they're not passing themselves off as objective journalists."

Scarborough says a lot of journalists who are registered as independent voters aren't being honest that they often have biases that affect their reporting. I asked him whether he included Shuster in that category, and Scarborough said no.

He also takes on Lou Dobbs at CNN:

Dobbs blasted away any notion of professional comity the night before. "My colleagues in the national media are absolutely biased, in the tank supporting the Obama candidacy while claiming the mantle of objectivity, whether they're on the front page of The Washington Post, New York Times or on any one of the newscasts," he told his viewers on Sunday evening. "I mean, it's ridiculous."

Dobbs, of course, surged to great ratings success in recent years by explicitly abandoning the mantle of anchor objectivity. Interestingly, Obama, on one of his biggest issues — protecting American jobs by maintaining trade barriers — has sounded more sympathetic to Dobbs' positions than has Republican candidate John McCain.

I fear I can already hear Dobbs' new job platform: taking over the Media Circus.

There's more. It's a great read.

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