A few noteworthy exchanges from today’s Media Backtalk
chat between Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz and
readers:
“Washington, D.C.:
“Hello Howard,
“I know how you probably hate this topic, but with the success
of FoxNews as the #1 cable network, Rush as the #1 talk host, could
you possibly consider that they are #1 precisely because they are
conservative outlets for news/analysis and that Americans are
flocking to them because they’ve had enough of soft leftward bias
in the mainstream media? If you think they are just successful
creations for a conservative market and if you think the overall
media is mainstream how do you address the lack of a liberal cable
network or liberal talk radio hosts?
Thanks a lot. I think Media Notes is one of the freshest features
in the Post.”
“Howard Kurtz: Thanks. I don’t think there’s
any question that Rush and Fox have found an audience in part
because many conservatives feel alienated by the mainstream media.
I don’t think they appeal only to conservatives, but Limbaugh in
particular is constantly hammering the press for a left-leaning
bias. Hard-core liberals may not feel the need for a ‘separate’
network, and libs have failed to come up with compelling
personalities in talk radio who could build an audience even a
fraction of Limbaugh’s. Maybe Carville will carry the banner when
he starts (albeit it only part-time) at Crossfire.”
Pay attention to that notion of “hard-core liberals.” For one
thing, it’s relevant to the very next question that came up in
today’s chat:
“Kansas City, Mo.: Howie,
“Considering the flap over the Post having an ex-American
Spectator writer review ‘The Hunting of the President,’ how did the
Post repeat that by having another ex-American Spectator writer
review David Brock’s book. I read the limited explanation but there
was no mention of how Bawer was picked in the first place.
“Does this have something to do with the Post’s coverage? Last
year the Columbia Journalism Review’s asked ‘How do editors explain
to already distrustful readers why favorable reviews of The Hunting
of the President could be found only in papers not cited by the
authors in their “most damning indictment” of the press?’ Any
comments?”
“Howard Kurtz: I wrote critically of the
assigning of the first review to an ex-Spectator person. While Book
World’s offense is a little less egregious in this case — Bawer
left the Spectator before Brock got there and, more importantly,
didn’t reveal the connection to the editors — it was still a bad
move. They clearly need to press reviewers more aggressively about
whether they’ve got any ties to the author or the major
institutions described in the book being assigned. But there is no
Post agenda here; weeks before the review, I wrote a lengthy piece
on David Brock and his book that most people seem to regard as fair
(though some conservatives say I wasn’t hard enough on Brock).”
There’s a lot going on here, so let me sort it out. For
starters, even if “hard-core” liberals may not feel a need for a
separate network, as Kurtz remarked, a great many of them will be
happy to tell you that papers like the Washington Post and the New
York Times are too right-wing for their taste. The contretemps over
the Post’s
review of the Brock book is a case in point. The reviewer,
Bruce Bawer, who is openly gay, dismissed the book as nothing more
than posturing and humbug. Rather than address the points Bawer
raised, Brock’s defenders (and Brock himself, even though in his
famous opening he admits his book is “terrible”) immediately
cried foul and
charged that Bawer had concealed his one-time connection as
movie critic of The American Spectator — the same magazine he
roundly denounced after breaking with it and the right in 1990.
Bawer would have a conflict of interest only if he still defended
the magazine, which his review made clear is the last thing he
would be prepared to do.
In any case, so much for Brock’s gratitude to Bawer for his
pioneering work. Meanwhile, the Post, in Kurtz’s reply as in an
earlier
reply, paid lip service to the possibility of conflict, though
without doing anything to satisfy the Brock contingent. (There is a
wonderful obsessiveness in this “conflict” business: The New York
Times Book Review yesterday ran a fawningly pro-Clinton review
in which the reviewer, William Kennedy, a well-known novelist, is
first described as “one of 40 Irish-Americans who traveled to
Ireland with President Clinton in 1995.” If not for that trip,
evidently, Kennedy would today be working for Kenneth Starr.)
Brock and his fanatical defenders now complain that the right is
not reviewing his book. But why should it? What should one do after
being stabbed in the back? Turn around to get stabbed in the
stomach and chest?
The Bawer example offers ample reason to ignore Brock. In his
book Brock describes Bawer’s departure from the Spectator as a
specimen of the “magazine’s earlier history involving one gay
conservative writer.” He mentions asking me about Bawer and then
shrugging off my “awkward” response and probing no further. “I
wasn’t going to let possible prejudice against another writer, whom
I did not know, upset my world,” he confesses. That’s the extent of
what he has to say about Bawer in his book.
Yet in his
complaint to the Post, he outright lies (as he reportedly did
when asked about the review in an appearance on C-Span): “My book
also contains a passage that puts the credibility of Bawer’s
published account of his controversial departure from the magazine
in question.” No wonder he now finds Clinton appealing. He does no
such thing in his book, but apparently thinks that because he asked
a third party about Bawer that meant he was questioning his
credibility. This is someone who deserves critical engagement?
Any talk respectable liberal opinion would have sympathy for
Brock was put to rest in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review by
this passage in Frank Bruni’s review
regarding Brock’s purported “awakening at long last to the concept
of integrity”:
“A less charitable interpretation might be that Brock wanted a
new act, and found it in self-flagellation. For a photograph that
accompanied a 1997 article in Esquire in which he first began to
confess his right-wing sins, he let himself be tied to a tree and
surrounded by kindling, the pose of a heretic on the precipice of
immolation. He subsequently wrote yet another confessional for
Esquire. ‘Blinded by the Right’ is only his latest stab at a rather
theatrical brand of contrition.”
Written out of polite company, Brock is now stuck with a
collection of defenders who make themselves heard at a website
sweetly named Media
Whores Online — it’s the place to go to keep up with the
latest on Brock’s book, with links to most every review now out. In
best leftist fashion, this website keeps its identity obscure —
though one will be hard-pressed to find a more unadulterated
practitioner of the agit-prop style. Who is not with them and with
Brock or Clinton or Conason is against them and must be crushed —
or at least inundated with e-mails demanding a retraction, an
abject apology, and (in the case of the Washington Post Book
World), a new review and erasure of the offending original from its
archives.
Media Whores Online was first out of the gate denouncing Bawer’s
review — though it never did link to Bawer’s immediate reply posted on
Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews.org. By that point, it was attacking
Robert Ray for his final report and Susan Schmidt’s reporting on
Clinton.
By hard-core standards, the gigolos at Media Whores Online
display occasional wit, if unwittingly. Still on its main page is a
photograph of a bumper sticker displayed on a rear window. “I
Believe David Brock” it reads, just the sort of thing that could
make a jealous Anita Hill act a bit nutty.
