Salon - "Bogus 'he said-she said' reporting led to the shutdown " - Great Story

[TomCADem]

WaPo's false equivalence editorial that blame the shutdown on both Democrats, as well as Republicans, for refusing to compromise is indicative of the failure of the media to inform the public of the extreme and dangerous efforts by Republicans to risk destabilizing our country in an effort to ram their agenda down the throat of the rest of the public. However, Republicans could not do it alone. The media gives them cover and a free pass by repeatedly insisting that both parties are responsible for a shutdown arising from Republicans' refusal to fund the government at funding levels that they themselves just approved a few months ago.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/bogus_he_said_she_said_reporting_led_to_the_shutdown/singleton/

Beltway reporters who see their professed neutrality as a higher ground bear an enormous amount of responsibility for encouraging this perversion of democratic governance. With a few notable exceptions, the media have framed what Jonathan Chait called “a kind of quasi-impeachment” in typical he said-she said fashion, obscuring the fact that the basic norms that govern Congress have been thrown out the window by a small cabal of tea party-endorsed legislators from overwhelmingly Republican districts. The media treat unprecedented legislative extortion as typical partisan negotiations, and in doing so they normalize it.

But it’s not normal. Republicans are demanding that Democrats unwind their signature achievement – a piece of legislation that took 18 months to pass, survived a Supreme Court challenge and a presidential election – in exchange for a stopgap budget resolution. On Saturday, they tacked on a provision that would limit access to contraceptives.

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Yet you wouldn’t fully appreciate the audacity of this tactic by reading standard Beltway coverage. As Brian Beutler notes in Salon, Time Magazine reporter Zeke Miller calls this “negotiating technique… is by no means novel. Hostage taking — by promising harm if you do not get your way — has long been a standard way of doing business in Washington.” James Fallows, decrying what he calls a “failure of journalism,” flagged the headline, “Parties Digging in Their Heels as Hourglass Empties.” (The Courier-Post, a Gannett paper, similarly went with, “Lawmakers dig in their heels; government shutdown nearer.”) And Politico’s Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan described the ransom note as simply a set of “demands for reform.” All of this coverage reeks of false equivalency, implying yet again that “both sides do it.”
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The reason all of this is important is simple: A faction within one of our parties has rejected the basic structure of our democratic system – the separation of powers. The only thing that will break the fever that grips them – the only thing that can break the fever – is intense public backlash, and not just from Democratic partisans, but also from the majority of Republicans who don’t identify with the tea party movement and oppose these antics. By muddying the waters of what’s really going on here with their perpetual false equivalence, the Beltway media is making that reckoning unlikely to occur.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

1. KICKED, RECOMMENDED and BOOKMARKED!!!

[TomCADem]

2. Bob Woodard Is Out Saying President Is Failing To Lead...

...because he is not meeting Republicans half way by negotiating over laws that have been passed and spending levels that they themselves approved earlier this year.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

3. ACA represents compromise. At least 60% of this law reflects Republican/conservative ideas.

Woodward needs to shut the fuck up for once.