Where is the Outrage?

[SR540Beaver]

Oops! I left out the right's favorite, Ann Coulter. She is in a class of her own. Dean's antics can't hold a candle to her.

[Backpacker]

I think it should be obvious to most people who really follow politics that neither the Republicans or Democrats for the last decade, at least, have much to be proud of, both parties have their share of loons who love to mugg for the cameras and press rather than accomplishing what they were elected to do. The press are like vultures circling over the carcass of whatever politicians antics will make good programming or sell papers on any particular day. Blaming liberals or conservatives is counterproductive, holding our elected officials more accountable for their actions would be much more appropriate. As long as we keep sending these crazies back to Washington term after term we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[packsaddle]

Backpacker, They DO represent us after all, don't they!?

[OldGreyEagle]

SO, as long as one side does it, its ok for the other to do so. Each side has attack dogs and that the way the game is played is my take on the answers.

 

Then again, a people gets the government they deserve

[gavvin]

Backpacker: how how

 

There is not a whole lot of difference between the two major parties anymore. Both want more of your money for thier pet projects and both don't want you to be informed about what's going on. Just keep sending them back to Washington so that they can playing thier games.

 

As for major media..... It is true that most TV, movie, and newspapers are left leaning. Talk radio seems to be the one niche that liberals have a hard time with. I really have no problem with left or right leaning punditry, but I DO get upset when the so called News is spun in a particular direction consistantly. With the exception of Fox news, all other major news outlets seem to have a definite tilt to the left. Does Fox tilt to the right? Possibly. Maybe just being neutral LOOKS like the tilt to the right in comparison.

 

Back to the original question - Why no outrage? The Right never seems to get outraged over what others think of them. They tend to get outraged only over certain issues (which I will NOT go into here!). The Left it seems is always looking for something to be outraged about. It is a victim mentality and it is encouraged by leaders on the Left.

 

Before anyone gets upset and starts to flame me, let me say that I am neither Left nor Right and the above comments are from personal observation (they are truth for me). If they differe from your experiences, please feel free to share your insights.

[Scoutndad]

Can't be outraged when you look at the source (lacking credibility), regardless of party affiliation...

Certainly some great postings...anyone have info on current politicians who were Scouts?

[SR540Beaver]

OGE: SO, as long as one side does it, its ok for the other to do so. Each side has attack dogs and that the way the game is played is my take on the answers.

 

No, it isn't OK. But it is kind of hard to throw the blame on one side of the equation while the other side doesn't have clean hands either. Let's be fair and admit that both sides need to go sit with their nose in the corner. All of the right wing talkers like to bloviate about the bad mouthing that Bush gets by the left. They seem to conveniently forget that the right wing spent 8 years and tens of millions of dollars trying to unseat a President. Could any of us stand up to that kind of scrutiny? I couldn't. Dig that deep and that long and you'll likely find dirt on even the Pope. What, they didn't think there would be repurcussions when the pendulum swung their way? I'm not saying it is right, just expected in politics. No one should be surprised.

 

One other note. From my perspective, the great political divide that our nation is currently going thru coincides with the rise of conservative talk radio and 24 hours news channels. When you have 20 or so talkers ranting and raving 5 days a week for 3 hours a day each, the rhetoric is going to get picked up by the folks they are entertaining and get repeated. On a slow news day, the cable news channels have to fill air time, so they turn to political opinion shows. Before those two things happened, while still volatile, politics was at least somewhat more civil.

[SR540Beaver]

This story should scare anyone regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/13/AR2005061301520_pf.html

 

Who's a Journalist? It Depends.

 

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 14, 2005; C04

 

Ask members of the press whether Rush Limbaugh and Bob Woodward are journalists and the answers are somewhat predictable.

 

But the public has a different view. About the same percentage considers the radio talk show host and the author and Washington Post editor to be journalists, says a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center released yesterday.

 

The numbers: 27 percent say Limbaugh is a journalist, 55 percent say he's not and 18 percent don't know. Woodward may lag in the name-ID department: 30 percent say he's a journalist, 17 percent say he's not and 53 percent don't know. The survey of 1,500 adults was completed before the recent revelation of Deep Throat's identity.

 

A separate survey of 673 journalists produced very different results. For Woodward, 72 percent say he's "very close" to a journalist and 21 percent "somewhat close." For Limbaugh, 1 percent say he's "very close" to a journalist, 2 percent "somewhat close" and 82 percent "not close at all."

 

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the center's director, said the findings provide "disturbing evidence that the public defines the word very differently from the way that most journalists do, a conclusion buttressed by the fact that 40 percent said Bill O'Reilly . . . was a journalist and only 19 percent said that George Will, the columnist and commentator, was one."

 

Limbaugh said he was "not really surprised" by the survey. "I am America's anchorman, doing news play-by-play 15 hours a week for nearly 17 years now, and this is just more evidence that the old media's monopoly-like dominance is finished. I think the 'mainstream' media should heed Ms. Jamieson's warning and seriously examine how they appear to their readers and viewers."

 

Television stars tended to score the highest, suggesting that name recognition may be a factor in the results. Peter Jennings is deemed a journalist by 79 percent of the respondents, followed by Mike Wallace (64 percent), Katie Couric (48 percent), Brian Williams (42 percent), O'Reilly, Larry King (37 percent), Chris Matthews (33 percent), Woodward, Limbaugh and Will.

 

The Annenberg poll also found a split on the perceived goals of big media corporations. While 48 percent of the public said their first priority is to generate high profits for the owners, 46 percent said it is to deliver high-quality news coverage. Among journalists, only 12 percent said the top priority of corporate owners is to provide factual and timely coverage. Forty-nine percent say that the owners do try to provide quality coverage but that business realities sometimes prevent this from happening.

 

2005 The Washington Post Company

[Scoutndad]

I'm not sure that we could ever call politics civil in this country...never has been and never will be (can anyone say Burr v Hamilton)...but I agree with the observation that in our information age, it is hard pressed to "not know" about an event. Instant information results in immediate reaction...the longer it takes for information to reach the general populace, the less effective it becomes (WWII v Vietnam).

Media sources today are more interested in getting out the story instead of verifying the facts behind the story (can anyone say Newsweek)..and to answer OGE's original post...the outrage should be directed to the media since it is directly responsible for feeding the intellectual appetite of the world.

So forget Howard Dean for a moment and pony up possible presidential candidates...

[SemperParatus]

Michael Jackson

[Prairie_Scouter]

OGE,

 

Both parties are getting in the habit now of making outrageous statements, and I find it hard to get upset about any of it anymore because it's just entertainment; it's sole purpose is to get visibility. Both parties have their extreme elements, and I think that Dean's comment, if there's any validity to it all, was an assertion that the Republican party is being controlled by it's extreme right elements. I suppose there could be some truth to that; I don't know. I don't think he was trying to insult white christian males at all.

 

Dean's job is to gather funds for the Democratic Party. At this point, the party needs to energize its members and Dean is doing that. No one in the Democratic Party will care if he offends Republicans with his comments. It will strictly be a matter of overall public opinion. If the general public starts to be offended by his comments (and at this point I think the general public just sees it as entertainment), at that point the Dems will either rein him in or replace him.

 

 

[johndaigler]

OGE, don't forget, Dean ISN'T an elected part of our govt. He's just Grand Poobah of some club. He has no right to speak for the public - just the people who hired him.

 

Obama in '08! His campaign signs will all be PURPLE! IMHO, the vast majority of voters are way past tired of this blue vs. red stuff.

 

jd

[DugNevius]

Prairie pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one.

 

as for the media, objectivity has long ago been forgotten, afterall its hard to be objective when your income in large comes from big time corporations advertisments that support one side or the other. Compound this by the fact that the FCC has become a tool of the republican party and the current president, during his re-election campain was feeding news programs "news reports" that his party had scripted and filmed to promote the president and selling them as objective news.

 

As the great comic strip Non-sequitor once said, its not news its "info-tainment"

[Scoutndad]

I also agree with Prarie's assessment and Dug's statement on media objectivity...but then it got all "mussed" up with an abritrary statement about Republicans scripting and airing news reports (unbstantiated to a large degree unless you count the political ads - THEN you make a great point)...

If you were to agree with the idea that extreme statements are standard in order to get the attention of the people and media biasness is based on payroll...how can one conclude that one or the other party is extorting view points or scripting news reports WITHOUT expressing an example on how the other side is doing the same (Michael Moore's documentary), otherwise you perpetuate the stereotype that we are sub standard intellects that will only make a decision based on "scripted news reports" instead of the quality, conviction and character of the candidate (I could not type that without laughing) ....however I do like the PURPLE idea that JD had...could be interesting...but I was thinking more of a TEAL....

[DugNevius]

well there is a difference between a private film made for movie theaters and news programs airing segments on the "benifits of the new medicare law" as just another story when it was GOP that had paid people to pose as reporters praising it and the veiwers were unaware that they were watching paid advertising funded by taxpayer money. CBS and other channels began to pull it when it and several journalists went under federal investigation.