Yes, please do include me in the “Amen corner” on First Read’s comments how partisans blame the media when they have a rough patch:
*** Blame the media! After Romney’s rough day yesterday, we’ve seen conservative voices blame the media. John Podhoretz, in the New York Post, says “it is the view of much of the mainstream media and foreign-policy establishment that discussing these horrific events in the course of the presidential campaign is monstrous.” And in an editorial entitled “Romney Offends the Pundits,” the Wall Street Journal writes that Romney’s “political faux pax was to offend a pundit class that wants to cede the foreign policy debate to Mr. Obama without thinking seriously about the trouble for America that is building in the world.” But here’s what we don’t understand from both conservatives and liberals who blame the media in instances like this: They say on the one hand that the media doesn’t matter, and then on the other hand say it’s the media’s fault when something goes wrong. They can’t have it both ways. And here’s a final thing to remember: It is always losing campaigns – Democratic or Republican – that end up blaming the media. Also, there’s a crying-wolf aspect to media bias charges that critics ought to think about. We know, there’s a professional class that make their living searching for bias. But just because you think you see it, it doesn’t mean it’s there. Sometimes a bad day is a bad day.
I use this word sparingly:
Ditto.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.