Democrats – Can’t See The Forest For The Trees

The day after it was revealed that former ABC News Capitol Hill correspondent Linda Douglass was going to be joining Barack Obama's presidential campaign, "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace said this was a perfect example of how liberal and biased the mainstream media are. Image Credit: NewsBusters

Democrats – Can’t See The Forest For The Trees

It is funny to pick up the paper, or turn on the computer and read what political reporters, writers, and political operatives have to say about each other and further, what they have to say about the landscape they operate in.

On one hand, they all speak in the highest deference about how they respect people who are able to draw the line between personal opinion and respecting the point of view of others, while on the other, they view the world as a mine field … even when they know the communications world is so totally committed to left focused politics.

We, at MAXINE, don’t get it. Many, in the media communications field, think that tough questions are the bulwark of fairness, yet when these very same people make the decision to play a role where they may actually have to field a question, they invariably respond as though they are having to enter a war zone as opposed to actually respond with reasoned counterpoint … and fairness to the question and issue at hand.

CNN's Howard Kurtz, on Sunday morning's Reliable Sources, raised the accuracy of the story with Linda Douglass who covered Capitol Hill for ABC News until the end of 2005. Image Credit: NewsBusters

This example excerpted and edited from the Washington Post -

As Obama Aide, Reporter Dons Flack Jacket
By Howard Kurtz - Washington Post Staff Writer - Monday, June 16, 2008; Page C01

ST. LOUIS -- As Barack Obama started fielding questions at a hospital here last week, Linda Douglass stood off to the left, scribbling in a reporter's notebook, as she has in every presidential campaign since 1980.

It wasn't until 20 minutes later, when she shouted, "Last question!" that her former colleagues were reminded of her new role as a traveling spokeswoman who will be the public face -- a female face in this post-Hillary period -- of the campaign.

After three decades as a television correspondent, Douglass is now on the inside -- but still not getting all the answers. She recalls Obama telling her that he would not talk to her, let alone the outside world, about the vice-presidential selection process, saying: "We're locking it down, we're buttoning it up."

Which is fine with Douglass: "That was so the people who are trying to claw me every day won't get anything. I expect to be kept in the dark."
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Given her background, is Douglass, who covered John McCain's 2000 campaign, prepared to slam the presumed Republican nominee?

"I do like McCain and the people around him, and I consider him still to be a friend," she says. "But I have fundamental differences with John McCain on the issues and always have. I don't have any problem criticizing John McCain."

Describing her disagreements with the Arizona senator -- on the Iraq war, health care and the Bush tax cuts -- Douglass says: "It was no secret to the reporters around me that I have Democratic-leaning views. But they said I was always fair."
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It wasn't until a 45-minute job interview with Obama last month that she decided to leave journalism for good.
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At first, "I was afraid I'd slip into on-one-hand/on-the-other-hand mode. I think reporters are constantly struggling with themselves to suppress their own opinions." Because she believes in Obama's message, Douglass says, "for me this is really liberating."
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McCurry likens the switch to a film critic who is handed a camera and told to make a movie. "She wants to do it in a different way from the spinners of the past," he says. "She wants to get away from the rat-a-tat-tat back-and-forth and keep focused on what journalists need to get the job done."

GOP strategist Dan Schnur, a spokesman for McCain's 2000 campaign, says that Douglass was known for being fair but that the transition may be difficult. "The more us communication types are trained in spin, the more different we become from the reporters who are covering our candidates," he says.
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The Illinois senator may have unrealistic expectations about news management. In telling reporters on his plane that he would no longer discuss his search for a running mate, he said that if they heard "secondhand accounts, rumors, gossip about this election process, you can take it from me that it is wrong." Of course, details usually leak out, and they are sometimes accurate.
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Douglass's first television appearance as a newly minted flack took place on her old network, ABC, the morning after Obama clinched the nomination.
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After saying, "All right, Linda, the niceties are over," anchor Chris Cuomo asked whether Obama might pick Clinton or another woman as his running mate. Douglass deflected the question -- "There is no short list, there is no long list" -- and pivoted to her talking points, ticking off "the very sharp contrasts" with McCain in "health care and whether the tax cuts go to the rich, as John McCain wants, or to the middle class, as Barack Obama wants, and getting out of Iraq."
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Behind the scenes, Douglass tries to dig out answers to reporters' questions. "I bug everyone all day.
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But there are limits to Douglass's clout, as she learned when she twice tried to end the news conference and Obama didn't stop taking questions.

"If he wants to keep talking, he'll keep talking," she says.

A Clintonite's Choice

Fox News's newest contributor, to be announced today, may surprise the liberal crowd: former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis.

"Fox has always treated me with respect and given me a chance to express my point of view," Davis says of the network that the Democratic candidates refused to grant a debate out of concern that it favors Republicans. He will be a frequent guest, along with such Fox stalwarts as Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich.

A relentless surrogate for Hillary Clinton, Davis says, he felt "ganged up on" during appearances on the other cable channels. He says that Clinton was "demonized" by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, and that CNN's primary-night panels were tilted toward the Obama side.

"Does Fox have a conservative slant on some of their programs? Yes," Davis says. "They're giving me a chance to provide a counterpoint, and that's all I can ask."
Reference Here>>

As a citizen out here in the cable bill paying, and program viewing public, isn’t having viewpoints being given a chance to be expressed clearly all we can ask?

Given Lanny Davis’s view of most of the media landscape … the answer is sadly, NO.

The only communicative structure we are all aching for is an attempt at balance in the communication of viewpoints.

The Howard Kurtz piece on Linda Douglass (and Lanny Davis) puts a spotlight the on the reason why the media landscape will not change for the better anytime soon - Democrats can not see the forest for the trees.

Fairness Doctrine vs Citizen Journalism

Recognizing the threat of China's growing online community, Chinese President Hu Jintao called in January for the Internet to be "purified", and the government has since launched a number of online crackdowns. Image Credit: AFP

Fairness Doctrine vs Citizen Journalism

Here in the good ol’ USA, we have members of our congress walking the halls complaining about the success of “Talk Radio” and how it needs to be regulated. A recent account observed that senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Hillary Clinton (D-CA) were conversing about how the “Fairness Doctrine” needs to re-implemented in order to curb the free market influences that rule the popularity of this broadcast and communications medium.

This doctrine grew out of concern back in 1949 because of the large number of applications for radio station being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available. Broadcasters had to make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. Rather, they had to allow all points of view. That requirement was to be enforced by FCC mandate. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.

It is funny how our currently elected leadership waxes philosophical regarding the limitation of free speech in the face of the communications landscape that exists today. The focus on the success of Talk Radio and the Fairness Doctrine leaves behind the rest of the singularly liberal forces that exist with mainstream broadcast television, newspaper print media, and the educator class that run our universities.

Oh!, And let us not forget the freedom of speech and communication that has become the “Wild West” landscape of the internet. How will our elected leaders like Boxer and Clinton address the internet in light of this concept of the “Fairness Doctrine”? … Maybe they can draw on the experience the political leaders in China.

Excerpts from Agence France-Presse via Breitbart -

'Citizen journalism' battles the Chinese censors
AFP - Jun 24 11:44 PM US/Eastern

In the strictly controlled media world of communist China, "citizen journalism" is beating a way through censorship, breaking taboos and offering a pressure valve for social tensions.

In one striking example this month, the Internet was largely responsible for breaking open a slave scandal in two Chinese provinces that some local authorities had been complicit in.

A letter posted on the Internet by 400 parents of children working as slaves in brickyards was the trigger for the national press to finally report on the scandal that some rights groups say had been going on for years.

The parents' Internet posting was part of a growing phenomenon for marginalised people in China who can not otherwise have their complaints addressed by the traditional, government-controlled press.

"The phenomenon of 'citizen journalism' suddenly arrived several years ago," said Beijing-based dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.

"Since the appearance of blogs in particular, every blog is a new platform for the spread of information."

He cited the example of a couple in the southwestern city of Chongqing who became known as the "Stubborn Nails" in April because they refused to leave their home until they received adequate compensation from the property developer who wanted them out.
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"That case was first revealed through blogs," Liu said.

Also in Chongqing, parts of the city were this month set on fire following the beating of flower sellers by the "chengguan", city police charged with "cleaning up" the city's roads.

Witnesses to the beatings had appealed to local television journalists, but nothing was broadcast.

The incident only became known outside the city thanks to photos and stories published on the Internet, sparking anger among China's netizens.

"It's fascism," said one, while another mocked: "The inhabitants of Chongqing are truly naive, the Chinese media is all controlled by the Communist Party, they decide what people know."
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Recognising the threat of China's growing online community, Chinese President Hu Jintao called in January for the Internet to be "purified", and the government has since launched a number of online crackdowns.

"The department of propaganda has sent out regulations to try and control the opinions being spread on the Internet, but every citizen has the right to criticise or to take part in public affairs on the Internet," said Zhu Dake, a professor at Shanghai Tongji University.

"The government has to accept the criticisms of the people, it can no longer react crudely like in the past."

Julien Pain, who monitors Internet freedom issues for Reporters Without Borders, is less optimistic.

"One cannot truly say that the Internet in China is becoming more and more free, because at the same time as the development of citizen journalists, the government finds ways of blocking or censoring content," Pain said.

Reporters Without Borders, which labels the Chinese government an "enemy of the Internet," says about 50 cyber dissidents are currently behind bars in China.
Reference Here>>

At least here in America, we have the First Amendment in our Constitution.

Even Senators John Kerry, Dick Durbin, and Diane Feinstein and their wishes to stop the "hyperbole" coming from a free and open media with a fairness doctrine ... will not be able to "purify" the American communications landscape.
(ht: The Museum of Broadcast Communications and Fox News)