finn wrote
Quote:If you are judging this shift by when liberal commentators on FOX returned to form, it was well before the last little while.
You may well have a much better perspective on Fox. I have really watched it very little. Lately, I've been studying it more (along with townhall, newsmax, etc) out of curiosity on these media phenomena.
Quote:Frankly, I don't really see that much of a change in the Media coverage of Bush & Co. What has changed, in the last little while, is the increased number and compressed frequency of stories which can be said to put the Administration on the defensive: Hurricane Katrina, Scooter Libby, Harriet Miers. All of these stories developed on the backdrop of the overwhelmingly negative coverage of the Iraq war.
I'm not sure there is really a blood in the water effect at play. I do think that reporters and commentators cannot help but frame each new, albeit minor, story within the context of Bush's aggregate of problems. To some extent I think this fuels the general sense and reality of an Administration on the skids.
Yes. Surely, in part, what is going on here is the "lame duck" problem. The formidable 'on message' and loyalty to the guy up top (and his policies) discipline would naturally be expected to suffer as 2006 and 2008 near.
The war is clearly the underlying drag on the administration's popularity. But of course, this administration and no one else has to stand responsible for how incompetently it has been managed. Likewise the other problems Bush et al face now...Plame/Libby, secret torture prisons, revelations of deceits re runup to war, DeLay/Abramoff corruption, crony appointments, the arrogance withholding so much operational information from the people who put the government there, etc...each of these represent violations of fundamental social agreements held broadly in American society regarding how government ought to behave. The surprise is how long it has taken for the majority of citizens to conclude that this administration is not trustworthy. Katrina was bad luck, but bad luck that pointed to something else as well (besides the crony thing), to the persistent reality of race and poverty problems AND with that, to a particularly bankrupt consequence of the conservative program...a lack of compassion. Miers was an internal fight among conservative groups with different goals/ideologies and its only real significance was that it highlighted the decline in message unity and it embarrassed Bush personally through working against the PR campaign to always portray him as the strong leader who everyone deferred to.
So, there's a snowball effect in play as you suggest. As to my blood-in-water or media-moves-as-pack thesis, keep watch over the next while and see if the notion is helpful. Better yet, pick up Didion's book Political Fictions. It's quite extraordinary. And she studies Dems as acutely as Republicans.
