To Blog Or Not To Blog

"How will the poor Fox 'News' Bush dead-enders cover for their man now that their own poll is out showing Bush at all-time lows with just a 33% approval rating. That number includes a full 20% drop in Republican support from one year ago!

"Just over a month ago, when CBS released their poll pegging Bush Approval at 34% the Fox Wingnuts bent over backwards to dismiss the poll as untrustworthy: 'This is not representative of the -- of the population of the country in any way, shape, manner, or form. Nor is the fact that Bush has 34 percent . . . You just know that's not possible. It simply isn't possible,' Rush Limbaugh said on February 28th, when the poll was released.

"Brit Hume on Special Report said, '[T]here's good reason to be skeptical of this CBS poll. It's wildly oversampled Democrats.' Sean Hannity spun with, 'The first thing we find out that nearly two to one they polled Democrats.' And John Gibson joined the dead-enders-in-denial with, 'Of course, it's weighted with more Democrats, so you've got to take that into account.' "

Could liberals have infiltrated the Fox polling operation?

Should the post-McClellan White House continue briefings at all? New York Times reporter David Sanger says maybe not:

"After nearly seven years of covering the White House, stretched over two administrations, four press secretaries, endless hours tinkering with the fractured hinge supporting the New York Times seat in the second row and hundreds of questions that have resulted in artful and artless evasive answers, I have come to a few conclusions.

"One is that the press secretary is not likely to return as a major force on the White House stage anytime soon. The second is that the daily briefings now have less to do with covering the White House than ever, and their value is diminishing every year. At some point between Monica and the missing W.M.D., the sparring came to obscure the imparting of information about how and why decisions were made . . .

"But the reality is that the briefings have strikingly little to do with how correspondents cover the White House. In a place this buttoned up, reporting happens from the outside in. The first glimmerings of what is happening come from those whose message the White House cannot control easily: members of Congress who have come in for arm-twisting, former White House staff members and advisers, and diplomats, foreign ministers and world leaders who leave the place confused or angry (see: China). The briefing is useful chiefly for contrasting what a reporter is hearing with the official version of events, or probing for brittleness or circular logic in the answers."

The WSJ's Dan Henninger is appalled by the blogosphere's tone:

"On the Huffington Post, there were more than 600 'comments' on Karl Rove and the White House staff shake-up. 'Demoted my --- the snake is still in the grass.' 'He should be demoted to Leavenworth.' 'Rove is Bush's Brain, and without him, our Decider-in-Chief wouldn't know how to wipe his own ----.'

"From a primary post on the same subject on the Daily Kos, widely regarded as one of the most influential blogging sites in Democratic politics now: 'I don't give a ----. Karl Rove belongs in shackles.' 'A group of village whores have taken a day off to do laundry.'

"Intense language like this used to be confined to construction sites and corner bars. Now it is normal discourse on Web sites, the most popular forums for political discussion."

Gee, I wonder why Henninger cited only liberal blogs. You know how long it would take me to find similar language on right-wing blogs? About as long as it takes to click on Google.

Is the New York Times being kicked around . . . too much? Public Eye's Brian Montopoli makes the case:

"There's no doubt that the Times remains an enormously important newspaper, in spite of the criticisms and crises it has had to weather in recent years. It helps set the agenda for newspapers around the country, radio and cable talking heads, and television news outlets both local and national, and it has a reach far beyond its subscribers. But one has to wonder if the scrutiny paid to the Times outweighs its influence. There's only so much scrutiny to go around, after all. And even if you think the Times deserves the close inspection it receives -- you might recall that the New Republic just gave us a 4,000 word cover on the 'Thursday Styles' section -- it's not like this Times obsessing takes place in a vacuum.

"While media critics pore over the paper of record, vast swathes of the media universe go virtually ignored. Consider local television news, that repository of 'Your Carpet Will Kill You' stories, inaccurate reporting, and if-it-bleeds-it-leadsism . . . Sometimes, a media critic will turn out a nice critique of television news, but such efforts are few and far between. One might point out that local news is, well, local -- it doesn't have the reach of the Times, and thus isn't going to get much attention. But many of the problems with local news are national in scope, and certainly worthy of attention, particularly in light of the fact that far more Americans get their news from their local newscasts than they do from the Times or its almost-as-obsessed-over sister, The Washington Post."