A few weeks ago, the StarTribune ran a Commentary on blogging. (
http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5300378.html) In it, the commentator mentioned the DailyKos and Eschaton blogs as good examples of good blogs, and cited an American Prospect article on how while lefty blogs want to fix the mainstream media, GOP bloggers want to take it over and crush all dissent:
As Garance Franke-Ruta noted in a recent American Prospect, "The targets of the liberal blogosphere are conservative activists; the target of the conservative blogosphere is the free and independent press itself, just as it has been for conservative activists since the '60s."
David Brock, a former conservative activist who now runs a media-watchdog group called Media Matters for America, agrees with Franke-Ruta that Republicans' ultimate aim is the destruction of all objective reporting, so that they can say whatever they want, true or not, and get away with it: "Their explicit goal is to get us to the point where there are blue [state] facts and red [state] facts."
In other words, Republicans for decades have wanted to control the press much as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler did, by attacking and attempting to discredit independent journalism, and for them blogs are just the latest tool in their war. That's definitely newsworthy, but outside of the blogosphere, few publications will dare state this.
As expected, the right-wingers nationwide are been frothing with rage over this. They have bombarded the StarTribune with e-mails, and cowed them into letting a local conservative blogger respond to the commentary piece (http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5313553.html) by a) attacking the author as naughty because she dared compare the right-wing's press-handling tactics to those of Stalin and Hitler (see, Republicans believe that they are the only ones allowed in any way to compare their enemies to dictators), and b) saying falsely that the Kos-led effort to punish the Sinclair TV network for running a slander-filled and discredited "documentary" attacking John Kerry was somehow "censorship".
Ask the StarTribune this:
1) If, as the conservative blogger Johnson argues, a person's comparing political foes to Nazis is naughty even if accurate (the original Commentary writer didn't say the GOPers were setting up ovens, she just compared their anti-free-press attitudes to totalitarian dictators), then a whole bunch of Republicans out there are evil beyond belief.
As the National Democratic Jewish Council notes (http://njdc.org/emet/detail.php?id=434) Republicans have been comparing Democrats to Nazis for years -- and not a single fellow Republican has condemned them for doing so.
2) Since when is fighting slander and lies "censorship"? Sinclair's ownership, despite the pleas from its employees and others, persisted in showing a thoroughly discredited anti-Kerry piece, wrongly presented as an unbiased "documentary", that was filled with lies and slanders (http://mediamatters.org/items/search/200410110006). Kos and others fought to prevent this from happening.
Write the Strib at opinion@startribune.com and tell them not to cave to conservatives, because no matter how loudly they shout, their shouting doesn't make them right.
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