Liberal Talk Radio

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote:

Anyway, the point is that the media follows the most dramatic storyline. As the FAIR quotes prove, the media was MORE THAN HAPPY to run with the “Bush Triumphs Over Critics” storyline back in April of 03, because that was the most dramatic story at the time.

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The media doesn’t care if Bush fails or not. They just want a compelling story.

Today, Mark Schmitt says it much better. The bias, he argues, is not just about the compelling storyline (as I suggested), but rather a “straight-line projection.” That is, things will continue to go the way they have been going indefinitely. This is more or less the same thing. “Bush triumphant” was the apparent situation in late April of ‘03, and therefore it would continue to be the situation indefinitely. He concludes:

The press isn’t biased toward the right or the left (generally speaking, with some exceptions), but it is biased toward inertia. That’s a factor that’s worked hugely to the advantage of Bush and the right, and now it will kill them.

That might be overly optimistic, but you get the gist. It makes perfect sense, if you think about it: every newspaper headline is written like an epic pronouncement, imbued with a self-imposed sense of eternal righteousness. This only makes sense if you want to believe that the headline is going to be true forever. Start hedging on the future and suddenly it gets a lot harder to write something catchy and memorable.