The Old Media Game

Thomas Lifson has a good column on the media:

It seemed so long ago that the old media and their liberal cohorts were able to mount successful campaigns manipulating the public into support for dubious propositions: Bill Clinton’s veto of a GOP budget as a “Republican shutdown” of the government; the public “demanding” Campaign Finance Reform, or Linda Tripp as demon.

The formula was simple: provide a carefully selected mix of data, hammer away on themes making the conservatives look mean, extreme, stupid, corrupt or narrow-minded; take polls with questions designed to elicit majorities favoring the liberal solution, and then wield the polls as irrefutable evidence of the need to let the people have their way. Intimidate wobbly conservative office-holders. Snatch victory and pound-home the manufactured memes of conservative depravity with casual press references well into the future.

The rise of the alternative media was supposed to change all that. see the example of the Swift Vets. Except that in the Schiavo case, the old media game seems to have worked again.

Most Americans do not realize that MRI and PET scans have not been used to determine the actual state of Terri’s brain, and that there is significant medical disagreement about the degree of her brain damage and mental and sensory impairment. Most Americans do not know about the affidavit from a nurse indicating Michael Schiavo seems to have wanted his wife dead. Most assume that Terri is brain dead. Many assume she is being “kept alive” by heroic medical intervention. Few realize Michael Schiavo started another family with a “common law” wife and children, making his guardianship of Terri morally suspect.

He does a good job explaining why this case is different and all are good points. I, however, want to raise a different one -- the MSM is far more powerful when it is not election season.