Kurtz: DSM and Durbin "mirror Images"

I rarely Splutter, much less in outrage; but in His Wapo Column Yesterday Howie Kurtz wrote a Sentence that left me spluttering with outrage:

The Durbin controversy has been fueled by a chorus of outrage from conservative columnists, bloggers and radio hosts, turning widely overlooked remarks into a full-scale furor for a lawmaker who initially refused to apologize. In that sense, it is the mirror image of the Downing Street memo, ..which drew even less media attention until liberal advocacy groups and bloggers spent six weeks berating journalists for burying the story.

WHAT? How do those get mentioned int he same breath? Is it possible to equate one of the most important pieces of paper in recent history with an artificial controversy whipped up by distorting the extremely valid words of a man of conscience?

Still, despite his hopelessly flawed premise, the column does provide a fascinating analysis of how the Wingnut Attack Machine gets a story in the MSM and by contrast, what it takes for the Forces of truth and justice to do the same :

Let's take a gander shall we?


Start with Howie's thesis statement again:

The Durbin controversy has been fueled by a chorus of outrage from conservative columnists, bloggers and radio hosts, turning widely overlooked remarks into a full-scale furor for a lawmaker who initially refused to apologize.

And Now his Supporting Evidence:

Durbin made his remarks on the evening of June 14 to a virtually empty Senate chamber...

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham { Not a blogger; She is a broadcast media personality owned by giant corporation Westwood One} denounced Durbin after her producer Lee Habeeb saw the remarks on C-SPAN....

Rush Limbaugh { Also NOT a Blogger, do not be fooled. His markings indicate he is in fact a nationally syndicated broadcaster, he is also a bloviating anal cyst with an Oxy habit, but I digress }: accused the media of circling the wagons around Durbin because "they share his contempt for George W. Bush."

The next day, June 16, the Washington Times {also NOT A BLOG, it is in fact a clever life-like imitation of a Newspaper, Owned by Radical Right-Wing Wierdo, the Rev Sun Yung Moon}:splashed the story on its front page

McClellan ripped Durbin at the White House. Sean Hannity said on his Fox News program that the senator's remarks were "insidious" and "repugnant." MSNBC's new conservative host, Tucker Carlson, called the comments "outrageous" and "factually wrong." On CNN, National Review's Kate O'Beirne accused Durbin of "a stunning premeditated slander of American troops."

{ again I understand this can be confusing, but none of the above are in fact Bloggers. The are, in Order, the Press Secretary to the President of the United States, A village idiot and Television personality in the employ of Fox News, The Recently rehired television commentator properly called a Dick by John Stewart, and a print reporter for a famous conservative magazine, owned, until recently by William F. Buckley.}

In other words EVERY person involved in the Creation, Dissemination and Hyping of this story is the very DEFINITION of the Main Stream Media, Represented are all 3 of the world's Largest Media companies, (ViaCom, TimeWarner, and NewsCorp).

If that ain't the mainstream than I simply don't know what is....

Which, of course, makes it EXACTLY LIKE the treatment of the media gave the DSM:

The conservative media machine largely ignored the {Downing Street Memo}, sparking anger among left-wing bloggers, activists and some Democrats.

Georgia Logothetis, 22, a Chicago law student... { note carefully, NOT a Celebrity broadcast media Commentator who works for a multi-million dollar conglomerate, no this is an impoverished law Student with access to a computer, YES! we have our first Blogger, sighting! }, helped start the Web site DowningStreetMemo.com...

so exposed by a fearless blogger, THEN, THEN media feeding frenzy began....right? Frenzy? anyone, frenzy? no?

The network evening newscasts ignored the memo until June 7{ Ignored not hyped, featuring no endless discussion by partisan shills, in fact no coverage whatsoever}

.

But, in their defense, the seasoned journalists of the broadcast media were quick to display the sage news judgment that has made them our trusted information gatekeepers all these years

"While I found it interesting at the time," Schieffer says, "I didn't find it all that new. A lot of people had been making that charge."{ and a lot of people were being ignored for lack of evidence, which this clearly appeared to be, from an unimpeachable source no less}

ABC's Banner says his network has been "pilloried" for its skeptical reporting on the march to war "and I don't know that we felt, quite honestly, that this added a tremendous amount."

{Translation: "we were tired of being beaten up by Wingnuts every time we told the truth, so we've decided in the interests of 3rd quarter corporate profits to pretend the world is the way they want it to be"}

NBC's Capus says the memo "didn't seem like it was much different from a lot of the reporting we had done. I can't tell you how many stories we did questioning the prewar planning." { No I suspect you really can't}

Well to be fair the Durbin non-story got very little coverage on the broadcast networks until he apologized either, but the dynamic 24 hour saturation, news-starved cable outlets were all OVER the memo weren't they?

Unlike the Durbin flap, the memo got little traction on cable. { Oh.}

According to a database search, CNN first mentioned it May 12 in an "Inside Politics" segment on how bloggers were buzzing about the issue. { Note they were reporting on the reporting on the memo, NOT the memo itself}

"It certainly did spark my interest," says CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. "Were we slow in getting off from the start? I suspect we probably were." { Crack Detective that Boy, about as Sharp as the corners of a round table

Actor { note NOT reporter, or highly paid Political commentator, or news anchor} Tim Robbins brought up the memo May 25 on MSNBC's "Hardball,"

while liberal Fox host Alan Colmes raised it on May 11. { he must have been sick that day}

Fox's Moody says .. that "for our audience, the amount of attention and timing of our stories has been about right." { Defined as : "hordes of Sheep-like conservatives we're trying desperately to keep brainwashed"}

Lets Review:

1. A Senator's heartfelt and impassioned speeech about real abuses being carried out by our government: Hyped by a large well oiled broadcast and cable attack machine, not for its content but for its word choices, eventually dominates both boradcast and cable media outlets until the Senator is forced to apologize.

2. A Memo from an unimpeachable source, clearly confirms that the War we are currently fighting which has cost 1700 lives and 50,000 war-related injuries, was utterly unnecessary and that our president knowingly mislead us into the War.: This is met with defeaning silence by the media until enough private citizens, using their own tiny media pipelines, make enough noise about the story that they are forced to cover it, though not without first alibing their previous failure, and trying to downplay its significance. Currently being denied by those it names and not being followed up on by any major news outlet.

So there you Have it: Two Stories, one from the left, and one from the right, handled exactly the same, by the mainstream press. Except, not at all in any way shape or form. Maybe Howie was Right. They ARE mirror images, but only if you remember Mirror images are exact opposites of each other.