The MSM Determined to Win (Part IV)

No institution is monolithic, and that includes the media. But American democracy is polarized into two roughly equal camps, now battling for power every day. That polarization pulls the components of each camp more closely together.

The Democrats are the beneficiaries of the government Roosevelt built to fix and control capitalism. The camp includes bureaucrats plus institutions that need government’s help to further their agenda—entertainment and the arts, academe, the Third Sector, and the media. The media joined the Democratic camp by the 1960s, as working reporters who want government to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” took over the media’s top jobs.

The media’s power over the Democrats stems from its success in bringing down Johnson and Nixon, and in ending the Vietnam War. These successes shape the MSM today. The MSM has two related goals: 1) get the U.S. out of Iraq, and 2) end Republican government.

Iraq, to the MSM, is a Vietnam-sized mistake. We didn’t belong in Vietnam, and we don’t belong in Iraq. We don’t need the combat deaths (instant combat footage, smiling pictures of now-dead Americans, weekly body counts). We don’t need the American-inflicted horror (pictures of Abu Ghraib/My Lai). We don’t need to be where people are fighting among themselves instead of the enemy. The media ended one war; the MSM is determined to end another.

And the MSM objects to Republican rule. The media once indiscriminately worked over presidents on both sides (“you spin, we expose”); they were too political, too deceptive, too secretive, too incompetent, too corrupt. After taking down Johnson and Nixon, media helped assure Ford couldn’t get elected and that Carter and Bush 41 would fail after one term. Only “Teflon President” Reagan survived their treatment.

The MSM even gave Clinton a rough time, and low poll numbers, until Republicans took over Congress and tried to shut down the government in 1995. That crisis thrust the MSM into the unfamiliar role of defending a president, which it did for the balance of Clinton’s presidency. Clinton’s second term Gallup Poll approval rating never went below 54%.

Confronted by Bush 43, a non-“Teflon President” who stole one election, smeared a war hero to take a second, elected and retained a Republican congress, and threw the country into an unnecessary war, the MSM is super-determined to cripple his effectiveness and end Republican control ASAP. Of course, Bush’s disinterest in the MSM’s agenda makes it all worse. Bush challenges the MSM like no president before, and the MSM aches to win.