"Howard Kurtz's Fear of Facts" - Greenwald (false equivalency between GOP/Dem mudslinging)

[greeneyedboy]

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/10/howard-kurtzs-fear-of-facts.html
Howard Kurtz's Fear of Facts

. . . .The column is about mud-slinging in order to win political campaigns (the headline is "Down in the Mud"), and Kurtz's first four examples, appropriately enough, are ones in which partisan political figures spew repugnant personal insults against their political opponents in order to win elections -- which is the topic of Kurtz's column. But then he tacks on an example at the end in which some spokesman for John Kerry, who isn't on any ballot, calls an anonymous blogger whose identity nobody knows a "coward" for insisting that Kerry donate more of his horded cash to Democratic candidates. That has nothing to do with Kurtz's topic, nor does it have anything to do with the lowly state of political campaigns or dirty ads. That incident might be an interesting example to illustrate the tensions between establishment politicians and bloggers, or to examine the competing views of Internet anonymity. But the Kerry-blogger exchange has nothing to do with the slimy, insult-driven state of political ads or the midterm campaigns, nor does it even arguably compete in the slime department with the other examples he provides.

The reason Kurtz added that incident is painfully and depressingly obvious -- it's because he had no examples of Democratic campaigns doing anything remotely equal to the acts of Rush Limbaugh, Barbara Cubin and Hillary Clinton's opponent, but he was afraid to point out that fact. So, instead, he cowardly strove to contrive the appearance of superficial "balance" and decorative nonpartisan objectivity, even at the expense of actual objectivity and factual reporting. Under the rules of the type of vapid and corrupt "journalism" which Kurtz practices, the overriding mandate is to criticize both sides equally and blindly even if only one side is guilty of the crime in question.

And therein lies the gravest illness of modern journalism -- the refusal on the part of people like Kurtz to report on matters honestly and factually. When reporters have as their central mandate that they must criticize each side equally -- even if doing so causes them to report on matters dishonestly -- it encourages one side to sink as low as possible, to be as deceitful, corrupt and dishonorable as possible, because the media will never report that fact and will never identify the guilty side as doing anything different than the other side. In the world of Howie Kurtz, both sides are always equal and identical and the same, even when they aren't.

It is just objectively true -- verifiably, demonstrably true -- that Republicans are running far more personal and scurrilous attack ads than Democrats are in this election cycle. Michelle Malkin went on John Gibson's Fox show yesterday -- let's repeat that: Michelle Malkin, John Gibson, Fox -- to discuss the repugnant state of political ads and they discussed only Republican examples, because those are the most glaring and abundant, by far. That Michelle Malkin and John Gibson can honestly confront an anti-Republican fact that Howard Kurtz is afraid to acknowledge and thus actively conceals speaks volumes about our national media. . . .

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/10/howard-kurtzs-fear-of-facts.html

[greeneyedboy]

1. you know it's bad when even Michelle Malkin on Fox slams GOP mudslinging.