The changes in US Media from a FOX nexs dominated republican noise machine and a traditional Media terrorised into moving to the right after being accused of being Shock Horror LIBERAL, have been noticed overseas.
The Finnacial Times and just done a piece see below the fold about how it is just a natural reaction to market conditions the country is trending to the left, so the media moves left to get market share and money.
Maddow gets praised
Maddow has also recently had glowing tribute in the British Observer
and British On line Mag First Post
More Below the fold
First the FT article describing the fall of the House of Drudge and slamming Mc'Sames campaign as Chotic and unpleasant!
The decline of Drudge is part of a broader shift in the US media, both old and new, towards the Democratic party. Unlike in the last two elections, when Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s strategist, expertly exploited the media’s short attention span and love of sensation, the Republican candidate has lost their affection and respect.
Mr McCain bears a lot of the blame for that, since he has run a chaotic and unpleasant campaign, insinuating that Mr Obama is not to be trusted because of his vague link to Bill Ayres, suggesting that he is less of a patriot than Mr McCain himself; and generally losing his temper.
Shock Horror, Drudge loses control of US Media
Then on to praising Daily KOS and Huffington, BTW where is KOS on daily page views? A talk of Cable shows and FOx is the past and MSNBC the future. You gotta love the description of Rachel!
Mr Drudge’s dominance has been undermined by competition. His sensibility infuriated so many people that left-leaning sites such as the Daily Kos sprung up to challenge him. Lately, his thunder has been stolen by the Huffington Post, an unlikely blend of leftwing blogging, reporting and aggregation founded by Arianna Huffington, the media gadfly. The Huffington Post has leapt past the Drudge Report in traffic, attracting 4.5m unique users in September, compared with 2.1m for Drudge and 2.4m for Politico, a political news site.
This shift leftwards online has been matched on cable television, where
Fox News, the rightwing news channel, has increasingly faced its mirror image at MSNBC. The latter’s leftish talk-show hosts, Keith Olbermann and now Rachel Maddow, a chirpy gay liberal, dish out scorn about Republicans in opposition to Bill O’Reilly and others at Fox.
Then to having a dig at the US Trad media, the neutral gatekeepers with no view whatsoever have never been recognisable to British print Journalism thye have always been powerful partisan advocates.
The criticism of some of the US Trad Media of the terrible partisanship of both MSNBC and Fox appalling!
Well, maybe, but it looks familiar enough to a British journalist: this is Fleet Street. It is what happens when you get intense competition among different media outlets, all seeking to play on (and pander to) the audience’s sympathies and biases.
The centre is no longer holding. "Having many voices is the natural state of the media. There was just a three-decade long exception in the US when city papers and networks dominated," says Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and lecturer in journalism at City University of New York.
Just as Fleet Street swings left and right politically, depending on where it sees its commercial advantage, the US media have shifted left for a time, to mimic what they judge to be the country’s mood. When that mood swings back, so will the media.
In principle, the Republicans should appreciate this, for it is a triumph of the market over monopoly control. Or, as the Drudge Report might put it: "MEDIA ATTACK THEMSELVES! ... DEVELOPING."
The other links are the First Post praise of Maddow;
Americans Maddow about the Girl
Rachel Maddow is almost becoming as much the face of change in America as Barack Obama himself. Just as a new generation of Americans sees Obama and thinks 'So what if he is black?', it watches Maddow's TV news show and thinks 'So what if she is liberal and lesbian?'
Is how it starts and goes on to praise from there..
and then the Observer article from a couple of weeks ago, (this is our equivalent of NYT or WaPo)
Gay TV Host is Queen of US TV
America's liberals are pinching themselves in delight and disbelief at the surprising emergence of a self-proclaimed 'butch dyke' as a star of America's cable television news.
Rachel Maddow, whose publicity material describes her as 'the first openly gay Rhodes scholar', was only given her own show on the MSNBC cable network on 8 September, but she has already doubled the ratings. Last week she even beat CNN's veteran Larry King.
Liberals are thrilled because America's cable TV news has long been the preserve of angry right-wing white male presenters, such as Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
Again just a taster but praise throughout.
Now 3 articles in the British press in a matter of a few weeks praising a host which none of us can see unless we log on to the web is pretty impressive.
The Daily Show is broadcast over here the next night and although some of it is less understood by a British public the rest of the world is so immersed in US culture that most of it is understandable and just damm funny.
MSNBC should be talking about getting themselves on the cable selections over here, or sharing some air time with their partners on CNBC which already broadcast.