Via Ross, I see that lefty bloggers are masticating on the idea that McCain is a media darling of the political press because he’s helped big corporations consolidate their power and profits. Yglesias writes:
Basically, McCain getting good coverage from the corporate media is in part something just along the lines of James Inhof being well-liked by the energy industry. If Exxon-Mobile owned a television network, he’d be a superstar.
Ross is way too kind when he says this is merely implausible. It is beyond stupid. Have these people met political reporters? Do they have the slightest clue how campaigns are covered? How is this quid pro quo supposed to work? In 2000, did Howard Kurtz, David Brooks, Howard Fineman, Tim Russert, Jonathan Alter, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Don Imus, Rick Berke, and countless others get a memo from their respective corporate paymasters saying “give McCain good coverage”? Are all these people so easily bossed around? I’ve heard these sorts of explanations forever. Has a single one of these memos ever surfaced or are the CEOs savvy enough to conceal a paper trail? You’d think given how the media works and the psychologies of journalists that at some point, somewhere, someone would blow the whistle on how the fat cats dictate coverage to their media puppets. Personally, I’d like to see the memo that prompted the New Republic to tout McCain as the best choice for Democratic nominee in 2004 (sarcasm aside, fawning coverage from liberal magazines like TNR and, if memory serves, The American Prospect has a lot more influence over whether a politician becomes a media darling than the machinations of the Commerce Committee).
It’s tempting to call this Marxist twaddle, but it gives it too much credit. It’s sophomoric nonsense.