Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

During the period around the election I was alarmed by the unveiled "slant" that many of the pieces seemed to take. Over time I've chalked that up to a few things; the effectiveness of the GOP noise machine, lazy/sloppy journalism, and the skill of the freepers at rating up sympathetic articles.

It would also seem that much of the reporting in general has been swayed by what it is perceived the public wants to see in the moment (which I was taught is "bass-ackwards," but what do I know...). In recent months, the widespread implosion of the right seems to have impacted coverage accordingly (even if not as widespread or thorough as warranted).

So it's with alarm that I came across four different AP articles frontpaged on Yahoo this week that brought me back to the dark days of a year ago.

The first two pieces appeared early in the week (I believe Monday and Tuesday) and were related to the Alito nomination. Considering the immediate concern over this nominee, I expected to see a lot of "pros-and-cons" type of pieces. Imagine my surprise to see the top headline state,Two GOP Senators: No Filibuster on Alito. The second story appeared the next day and was written along much the same line.

I was struck by the idea that the writer, Jesse Holland (more on him to follow), seemed to accept the premise that two potential defections from the "Gang of 14" meant that the Democrats had no recourse whatsoever.

But more notably, Holland goes on to dismiss Harriet Miers and offer an endorsement of Alito that the White House itself surely would have been proud to write. Ironically, Holland appears to go to great pains to not even mention the issues the Democrats may wish to face! Republicans are quoted defending Alito, while Dems were seemingly only good enough to comment that they would "wait and see" on the nominee.

It might be worth adding that I was unable to find this specific article in Yahoo's archives, and Google actually linked this headline to a later version of an Alito story. I had to go to Google's cache to find this. Hmmmm?

I'm not listing excerpts in the interest of time and space, but please look at the story. And today's homework assignment - do a Google or Yahoo search on Jesse Holland and see if you detect any patterns in the coverage of this "reporter."

Less egregious but not surprising was yesterday's Nedra Pickler piece, Bush Tries to Improve U.S. Image at Summit.

In the first graph she mentions, without elaboration, "the United States' troubled image in Latin America." She adds that Bush is not "directly" offering help, but "expressed his support" for Argentina. Buried in the fifth graph is the mention of protestors, and not until late in the article is there mention of any of the issues that need to be "smoothed over."

True to form, Pickler finishes by starting the final paragraph with the statement, "Bush highlighted his success..." Nothing that I could find in the piece gives any concrete method in which Bush will actually "improve (our) image."

Today's piece, titled Democrats Move to Exploit Iraq Missteps was my final straw. On re-read, this one may not have been as bad as I thought, but I still feel that the headline gives a "Democrats kick 'em when they're down" feeling instead of "Democrats demand accountability." My immediate reaction was that it was made to look like we were taking advantage of the war failing for political gain.

This story also does take some cheap shots by noting that the DNC sent out a fundraiser request on the day Reid called for closed session.

As I mentioned, this last piece isn't as slanted as the Holland pieces, but I think it's important to note that we need to remain as vigilant as ever in monitoring the media and calling them when the hacks attack, perhaps now more than ever.