I continue to believe, basically, that movement conservatives want the media to be more conservative while movement progressives want the media to be more accurate. Progressive media critics (which range from bloggers to institutions to individual TV viewers) want the media to get it right, be fair, and use facts to point out lies; conservatives want to be martyrs and won't be satisfied until Glen Beck and Brit Hume are considered moderates on the teevee. So there are different types of media criticism on either side of the partisan aisle.
Which is why I have no problem highlighting an example of media idiocy against a Republican. This ridiculous article asks whether Fred Thompson's brief television role as a white supremacist 19 years ago will affect his presidential run. What?!? The story is breathlessly written, and sets up one side of the argument as if the other side is coming . . . but it never does:
His colleagues say that he was just an actor putting everything he had into playing the role of a charismatic racistThat makes it sound like somebody else (i.e., someone not "his colleagues") will have a different view, but nobody ever does! The reporter apparently couldn't even find "an anonymous Democratic operative" stupid enough to claim that a two-decade-old fictional role would (let alone should) affect Thompson's candidacy.
The reporter does dredge up a USC professor to claim that, "Now actors who have political aspirations will have to go through every single line of every part they played to make sure there's nothing they need to explain or apologize for." Except, there's no proof that's actually true. What kind of serious observer would propose such a thing? Will there eventually be YouTube clips using this? Sure, probably. Will it matter in the slightest? Almost certainly not.
And what, according to the reporter, compounds the problem of this role? "Thompson is too good an actor and looks too convincing in the part." Fred Thompson: Too good an actor! You cannot make this stuff up.
I clearly have no problem with the media criticizing Republicans, or any powerful person who does or says something stupid. But this kind of thing degrades the media generally and brings down everyone's faith in reportage. There are plenty of things legitimately wrong with Republicans -- for goodness sake, Romney recently declared war on a massively popular political party that has renounced violence due to his apparently limitless stupidity about Islam and the Middle East -- and I'd love to hear about those instead of seeing silly, irrelevant hit jobs that only become fodder for the mistaken idea that the media tilts left.
