In the next month or so, I’m going to be attempting to back up a bit in my thinking, to take in the big picture of the issues I’m invested in examining in my scholarship. I’m calling it the Big Think 08. We’ll see if the practical realities of life allow it. But, as I go, I’d like to throw to the blog moments and aspects, in an attempt to partially develop this snapshot.

One issue that has always troubled me is the persistent myth of the liberal media. Many have attempted to address this, so its not exactly a new area of study. But its persistence in the face of this examination is quite amazing, and speaks of something else entirely, the way the press gets played within the contemporary U.S. political context. Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a sharp critique of it today, spurred by a comment made by Scott McLellan, former White House Press Secretary for Bush, in his new autobiography:

“the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.”


Greenwald follows this with a litany of evidence of this deference, from the failings of the New York Times in allowing Judy miller’s reporting to stand, or the press adoration of McCain, or their use of military analysts in their Iraq war coverage that were made available by the DoD. He finishes with:

Press secretaries of all types instinctively view the media as adversaries and typically feel besieged by what they perceive to be the media’s unfair hostility. So if even Scott McClellan recognizes the mythical nature of the “liberal media” cliche and sees political journalists as meek little handmaidens for government propaganda, how much longer can this myth be maintained?