| After last week's dismal convention coverage, as rabid media expectations of a showdown on the convention floor were left unfulfilled, Frank Rich isn't sure the downfall of today's media should be mourned. Journalists, Rich writes, have done an especially terrible job interpreting this election season: Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. [...] The latest good luck for the Democrats is that the McCain campaign was just as bamboozled as the press by the false Hillary narrative. [...] The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Given the press’s track record so far, there’s no reason to believe that the bogus scenarios will stop now.
In a world where journalists report about narrative spin without context, they no longer seem to be surprised when their predictions never come true, is it any wonder that Americans are tuning out the pundits and the tube commentators? Thank heavens for CSPAN. |
