Their motivation.
David Frum, a former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who now edits FrumForum.com, said some conservatives argue that the ends justify the means in cases of faulty journalism.
“Many conservatives have worked themselves into such fear that Barack Obama is not only wasting our money but actually trying to overthrow the Constitution that those fears can justify almost anything,” he said in an interview on Friday.
Scurrilous stories meant to taint the Obama administration regularly take root online before gaining traction on television and radio. Mr. Breitbart calls this the “undermedia.”
“It’s my business model to craft strategies to make sure that the mainstream media is forced to reckon with stories that it would love to ignore because it doesn’t fit their narrative,” he said.
Get this? This isn't about the truth or reality. It's about "crafting strategies" to force the media to cover stories conservatives think should be covered. And so conservatives think, "how can we get the media to report that Obama is racist?", and they do whatever they think is necessary, even if it means heavily editing and taking material out of context in order to push such bullshit narratives into the traditional media.
Greg Sargent:
To make this point one more time, it's true that "both sides," to one degree or another, let their ideological and political preferences dictate some editorial decisions, such as what stories to pursue, how to approach them, who to interview, etc. But what's underappreciated is the degree to which the Breitbart-Fox axis goes far beyond this, openly employing techniques of political opposition researchers and operatives to drive the media narrative.
This simply has no equivalent on the left. The leading lefty media organizations have teams of reporters who -- even if they are to some degree ideologically motivated -- work to determine whether their material is accurate, fair, and generally based in reality before sharing it with readers and viewers. They just don't push info -- with no regard to whether it's true or not -- for the sole purpose of having maximum political impact. Period.
It really is a mystery why this point isn't made more often in other publications, such as in the pages of Sargent's employer, the Washington Post. We have, on the Right, a partisan political operation that has no boundaries, no limits, no scruples, no pretensions of ethics or allegiance to the truth. They will obfuscate, distort, and outright fictionalize in order to push their agenda.
Not only does it say a great deal about the morality of this so-called Godly movement. It's also a sorts of admission -- people who are secure in their facts don't need to craft an alternate reality in order to push their agenda.
p.s. this.
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