Category: Media Beat column

The first quarter of 2005 brought significant media dividends for the Bush-Cheney limited liability corporation. Stakeholders received windfalls as mainstream news outlets deferred to consolidation of power from the November election. A rollout of new “democracy” branding — kicked off by the State of the Union product relaunch — yielded at least temporary gains in…

Journalists often refer to the Bush administration’s foreign policy as “unilateral” and “preemptive.” Liberal pundits like to complain that a “go-it-alone” approach has isolated the United States from former allies. But the standard American media lexicon has steered clear of a word that would be an apt description of the Bush world view. Paranoid. Early…

President Bush just told reporters that he has no intention of setting any timetable for withdrawal. “Our troops will come home when Iraq is capable of defending herself,” he said. Powerful pundits keep telling us that a swift pullout of U.S. troops would be irresponsible. And plenty of people have bought into that idea —…

Sadly, it has come to this. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the online powerhouse MoveOn.org — which built most of its member base with a strong antiwar message — is not pushing for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. With a network of more than 3 million "online activists," the MoveOn leadership has…

Once in a while, mass media outlets give a fair hearing to radical ideas that make sense. But those ideas have little chance to take hold — mainly because followup is scant. Instead of bouncing around the national media echo chamber, the offending concept falls like a tossed rock. That’s what happened a few weeks…