Chris Lehmann at The Baffler writes—For Chyron Out Loud:
Even amid the fast-multiplying agora of digital platforms, tweets, and instagrams that make up our new millennial mediaverse, one almost-touching platitude continues to transfix the sober lords of the establishment press: the impartial, stern-yet-blasé myth of purely noncommittal, “objective” reporting. While the primly opinionless chronicler of current events is, like Lewis Carroll’s wild snark, something only beheld fleetingly in the wild, the managers of our leading news brands will recur to it reflexively in telling moments of crisis.
This reaction overtook the management of CNN today, as controversy threatened over a tweet authored by the network’s global affairs correspondent Elise Labott about yesterday’s shameful, demagogic vote by the House of Representatives to tighten re
strictions on the inflow of Syrian refugees into the United States, on the grounds that many of them are non-Christian, other-than-white, and therefore almost certainly cunning terrorists in the making. Labott’s sin against the cult of cable-news impartiality was to append one short comment as she directed her followers to CNN’s news of the House vote: “Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish.” (My own less decorous tweeted response to the House vote, for the record: “Deport the House of Representatives.”)
The Washington Post’s ever-vigilant media critic Erik Wemple blew the whistle on this deviation from CNN’s official posture of serene above-the-fray omniscience, contacted the network brass for comment, and the predictable managerial outcome ensued: Labott was forced to retract her offending comment, and was given a two-week suspension. CNN thereby gravely dramatized its commitment to opinion-free reportage, and all was right with the media world.
Except, that is, if you were to pay any attention to CNN’s actual news product, or compare it to the way that an other-than-corporate independent press should function in a democracy. From the network’s disaster-porn impresario Anderson Cooper to the bottom-feeding concern troll Don Lemon, callow attitudinizing is the CNN business model—together, of course, with generous helpings of raw mayhem footage. As The Baffler’s own Alex Pareene noted in his masterful dissection of the network’s blood-soaked coverage of the civil unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson “Sending superstar anchors to the scene of a currently raging riot is not, by any definition, ‘reporting.’ It’s just pure exploitation of suffering for ratings. . . . The product is not a story, but a spectacle.”
Viewed against this backdrop, Labott’s one-line lament on Twitter doesn’t look objectionable at all. [...]
Tweet of the Day
Blast from the Past
At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Super Congress failed because of Republican allegiance to Grover Norquist:
The stupid is on full display today as the punditry bemoans the death of the Super Congress, mournfully declaring that it was just that both sides were so entrenched in protecting entitlements versus tax increases. So let's just try to inject a little reality into this. First, the always helpful deficit parfait chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
That black line at the very bottom, the one that stays pretty damned stable, includes the contribution of things like Medicaid and Medicare entitlements. Not Social Security mind you, because Social Security still doesn't contribute to the deficit. That's a conveniently forgotten fact by everyone who insisted on plopping it down on the negotiating table, Democrat and Republican alike. So yes, the big drivers of the deficit continue to be the Bush tax cuts, the wars and the ongoing economic downturn. But mostly, it's those tax cuts.
Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio."