Ain’t No Turning Back ‘Cause I’m Walking A Line
My favorite thing is to connect press with politics and how they conspire to keep us barefoot, pregnant and stupid.
So I was pleased to see this blog post from Peoria blogger, Bill Dennis about how a Peoria local media entity had decided to run for office in the 18th Congressional District.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Baker, Zinga? Where is the line?
The truth is there ain’t one.
Our local press is in bed with the local politicians. Haven’t you ever wondered why
Phil Hare and Lane Evans got a pass for 24+ years? Why only Mike Boland gets negative stuff reported about him?
The line separating press from politics is very narrow—we need to be sure the press isn’t in bed with the politicians.
Or rather, we need to acknowledge and accept the fact that the press and politicians are forever intertwined.
UPDATE 01/28/08: Ed Felker is mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it any more! After months of abuse, Felker took umbrage at my characterization of him as “a former Democrat operative” and emailed me to set the record straight. According to Ed, he has never worked for a candidate or political party and won’t even vote in primaries.
So I guess my theory as to why local reporting on the 17th CD is so poor has just been shot to hell.
My apologies to Ed Felker and the offending, incorrect paragraph has been deleted.
What a joke – to think that the press is unbiased! To think that reasonably intelligent people have no opinions, no party preference, are you kidding me?
All one has to do is read Bernie Goldberg’s, ‘Bias’ to get a real look into this follishness.
Comment by Josh Curren | January 27, 2008
I had been thinking about posting about the media hypocrisy but just have not been in the mood. I was reading a survey done awhile back and it shows that the public does not really trust any of the media outlets much. And rightly so. The most humorous party was that the outlet that gets hammered for being the most bias, Fox, is trusted more than any other. Its closest rival was CNN which received less than half the trust rating. But if you look at the numbers none did very well. Here is a link to a story talking about the survey, I think the survey shows people have a good understanding of News Services. They have all went to magazine format like Fox, which is more opinion than news, which makes for higher ratings but the news always comes with a personal slant to it. That is neither good or bad just more entertaining. The movie “Network” was so prophetic!
link
Comment by thescoundrel | January 28, 2008
I went OT on this post. I didn’t intend to make it another rant about press bias, but instead wanted to expand on Dennis’ point about media types crossing over and becoming politicians.
Why I found his post appealing is that he mentioned Zinga and Baker and I got to thinking about who the GOP would slate to run against Hare after the primary.
My fervent hope would be that it’s not another &~#*!@^ news person!
But hey, Terry Swails and Jim Albrecht are available now, so who knows?
I didn’t mean this post to be another rant about press perfidy, but sometimes when I get started writing, I end up going in a direction I hadn’t planned.
Comment by qcexaminer | January 28, 2008
The Republicans certainly have got to field a candidate against Hare, don’t they? Is there any insight as to what might be going on here –
Zinga, she seems to love the limelight.
Gilligan certainly would love to be the man.
Mowen moved out of state.
Other?
Comment by Josh Curren | January 28, 2008
Josh, I emailed the chair of the RICO GOP several weeks ago trying to squeeze some information out of her concerning who they would be running against Hare.
She said she could not say anything at that time, but would after the primary when the GOP would “slate” candidates.
Sorry, that’s the best I could do!
Comment by qcexaminer | January 28, 2008
Thanks, it will be interesting to see who they decide to run. Not that it will matter much – any electorate dumb enough to keep Evans in office is apparently dumb enough to keep Hare in office.
Comment by Josh Curren | January 28, 2008
Ya have to wonder how Philly is gonna spin this news to keep it from tarnishing his record. He is the one running on how he is going to clean up vet hospitals and making sure he is on the vet oversight committees to be the watchdog. Evidently Durbin is aware of the problem. But I suppose Hare will pass the blame to Bush while this fiasco was taking place right at Hares backdoor in our own state of Illinois.
http://tinyurl.com/2n29w7
Comment by thescoundrel | January 29, 2008