After the caterwauling that occurred concerning “media trying to influence elections” that echoed around the aborted decision of the owner of a group of television stations that are major network affiliates to air a John Kerry “documentary” (haven’t seen it, but I’m guessing that it approached Michael Moore in terms of having a “point of view”), I wonder why the former caterwaulers are now silent concerning the plan of the NYT and CBS to air this hit piece, ostensibly news but obviously not well researched, as a “blowback” piece 36 hours before the start of the election?
I’m troubled by the timing aspect, because the normal cure for bad speech, which is good speech, would not have had the chance to operate in such a short time frame. The only reason the NYT went ahead and aired the story was that it was starrting to come out on the internet – otherwise, the plan was for both to release the story this coming Sunday.
Generally, I think this sort of thing is regrettable, but must be allowed under Free Speech and Freedom of the Press under the 1st Amendment. However, the impulse behind that blight on the 1st Amendment, Campaign Finance Reform, and the various muzzlings of speech that occur around elections, suggest that some people think otherwise.
Where is the indignation from all of you who could not believe a media outlet would attempt to “affect an election”?
BTW, on a related note, here’s the abstract to an interesting new study purporting to show bias at the NYT over the years:
Riccardo Puglisi of the London School of Ecnomics analyzing New York Times issue coverage from 1946-1994.
"I analyze a dataset of news from the New York Times, from 1946 to 1994. Controlling for the incumbent President's activity across issues, I find that during the presidential campaign the New York Times gives more emphasis to topics that are owned by the Democratic party (civil rights, health care, labour and social welfare), when the incumbent president is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog aspects, in that it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. Moreover, out of the presidential campaign, there are more stories about Democratic topics when the incumbent president is a Democrat."
I haven’t seen the whole thing, but it sure looks interesting…