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Home Front: Culture Wars

Newsweek's Thomas Reaffirms Media "Absolutely" Want Kerry to Win

2004-10-20

Newsweek's Evan Thomas, who in July acknowledged that the media "want Kerry to win" and "that's going to be worth maybe 15 points" for the Kerry-Edwards ticket, on Sunday reaffirmed his belief that most reporters "absolutely" want Kerry to win, but on CNN's Reliable Sources he argued that his 15 point estimation was a "stupid thing to say." When host Howard Kurtz wondered if it is worth five points, Thomas acceded, "maybe."

The July 12 CyberAlert reported: Recognition of the obvious. The media "wants Kerry to win" and so "they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic" and "there's going to be this glow about" them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend. He should know. His magazine this week sports a smiling Kerry and Edwards on its cover with the yearning headline, "The Sunshine Boys?" Inside, an article carrying Thomas' byline contrasted how "Dick Cheney projects the bleakness of a Wyoming winter, while John Edwards always appears to be strolling in the Carolina sunshine." The cover story touted how Kerry and Edwards "became a buddy-buddy act, hugging and whispering like Starsky and Hutch after consuming the evidence."

The full Thomas quote on the July 10 Inside Washington, a weekend discussion show taped at and run by the Gannett-owned CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, WUSA-TV, and carried by many PBS stations across the country:

"There's one other base here: the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards -- I'm talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but -- they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points."

For a RealPlayer video clip of Thomas making his comment: www.mediaresearch.org

Fast forward to the October 17 Reliable Sources on CNN where Thomas appeared, in the program produced live at 11:30am EDT Sunday from CNN's top floor set with the Capitol dome in background, with Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank and conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham.

Host Howard Kurtz asked Thomas: "Well, it is a tight race. But do you believe that most reporters want John Kerry to win?"
Evan Thomas: "Yeah. Absolutely."
Kurtz: "Do you think they're deliberately tilting their coverage to help John Kerry and John Edwards?"
Thomas: "Not really."
Kurtz: "Subconsciously tilting their coverage?"
Thomas: "Maybe."
Kurtz: "Maybe?"
Thomas: "Maybe."
Kurtz: "Including in Newsweek?"
Thomas, nodding: "Yeah."
Kurtz reminded him: "You've said on the program Inside Washington that because of the portrayal of Kerry and Edwards as 'young and dynamic and optimistic,' that that's worth maybe 15 points. So that would suggest-"
Thomas: "Stupid thing to say. It was completely wrong. But I do think that, I do think that the mainstream press, I'm not talking about the blogs and Rush and all that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don't think it's worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say."
Kurtz: "Is it worth 5 points?"
Thomas: "Maybe, maybe."

Milbank insisted that reporters like him would prefer a Kerry presidency only because they favor spending time in Nantucket over Crawford.

Another bias flashback: More evidence of journalistic support for Kerry over Bush. From the August 2 CyberAlert:

By a one-party state-like overwhelming margin, political reporters who are covering the presidential campaign think John Kerry would make the better President, New York Times reporter John Tierney discovered in overseeing an informal survey of 153 journalists at a press party during the Democratic convention last week in Boston. "When asked who would be a better President," Tierney relayed in his Sunday news section "Political Points" column of tidbits from the campaign trail, "the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1." For details: www.mrc.org

For a look at how Tierney, appearing on FNC's O'Reilly Factor, maintained that "most reporters are driven not by ideology," see the August 4 CyberAlert which features a picture of Tierney: www.mrc.org

Posted by:trailing wife

#9 Lex, the New York Times is the newspaper of record that overlooked the Holocaust story. They've been biased for a loooong time. The prestige comes from the big words they use, and the number of subordinate clauses in their sentences.

Posted by: trailing wife 2004-10-20 4:38:28 PM

#8 Well, as the election nears the MSM is pulling out all the stops in its pro-Kerry push. Yahoo's news site is leading with "US Warplanes kill family of six in Fallujah" (by Yasser Faisal) with the requisite picture of a blanket-wrapped bundle identified as a child being pulled from tne rubble. Right under that photo is another, from AP, of a son sobbing into a US flag over the death of his father, an Army staff sgt.

I wonder just how far they will go? We have a couple more weeks to find out, I guess.

Posted by: docob 2004-10-20 3:51:22 PM

#7 Maher's a clown. The next phase in the blogosphere's continuing assault on the crumbling MSM stronghold is for bloggers to webcast their own streaming video and audio productions.

Screw these jokers on the networks and cable. I want to hear Steyn, and Lileks, and Iraqis, and military experts like Ralph Peters, and genuinely wise and insightful people like Tom Wretchard.

Smas the MSM. Let a thousand blogs contend.

Posted by: lex 2004-10-20 3:38:09 PM

#6 What AC said. It used to be that a NY Times reporter was a major cultural figure with a prestigious and influential position in society. In fact, most of Pinch's reporters are just people who write stuff. They do not write better than many bloggers-- in fact, that write worse than a Lileks, a Steyn or a Wretchard-- and certainly have less insight and worse judgment than the best bloggers. The only thing that distinguishes them is the thoroughness of their reporting and the quality of their sources. But even that's not clear anymore.

The NYT used to be the paper of record. Now it's just a lifestyle guide for a certain bicoastal and college town demographic.

Posted by: lex 2004-10-20 3:34:04 PM

#5 AC - And he's among the "deepest" of the celeb "thinkers", heh.

Posted by: .com 2004-10-20 3:33:09 PM

#4 This election is entirely about the institutional media trying to hang on to their fading authority and power.
Their reign of terror began with the 1960 election, when the visual power of television superceded all rational considerations and put Hollywood's choice, JFK, in the White House.
This process has gone on for decades, until many millions apparently accept media pronouncements at face value. Last night, I briefly watched the deranged liar Bill Maher pontificating about "what thinking people believe" and "how thinking people" see things. The only support for this was Maher's word alone, his authority as a celebrity.
It was almost comical that these mindless pronouncements were being made in the name of "thinking people" as though anyone with an ounce of reasoning power would accept a media personality's word for anything.

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-10-20 3:26:56 PM

#3 Naw, we need some /seething/! Personally I feel like the MSM are a bunch of traitors that need to be prime examples of how being a traitor earns you death. We need a law that if a reporter is found to have lied or 'mis-stated' the truth, they spend 5 years as Leroy's cellmate in a Federal prison and if do so about a federal election, then it should be considered an act of treason and they get executed. Yes...I hate reporters.

Posted by: Silentbrick 2004-10-20 2:39:24 PM

#2 Don't hold back, Bill - tell us what you really think. :-D

Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-10-20 1:25:54 PM

#1 Well may I comment that I think you guys in the MSM are doing a shit job of reporting the news and frankly I don't beleive anything you tell me. You a bunch of reakin Morons who would do better in a petting zoo with the chimpanzees mimcking someone. What a pathetic bunch a ass wiping, syncophatic, unconstructive, defeatist punk mother fuckers you all are.

Posted by: Bill Nelson 2004-10-20 10:02:15 AM

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