The Marginal Media

If the credibility of the marginal media wasn’t in enough trouble
already, they really wore down some of their re-treaded tires recently
in Chicago. In an interview at WLS Chicago’s Big 9, a completely
surprised Charlie Gibson said that he was not even aware of the ACORN
story. This off the cuff, honest remark by ABC’s news anchor simply
summed up the state of today’s marginal media. He didn’t have a clue.

No matter that the story contained everything needed for a fascinating
inside look at the awful, flagrant corruption inside a large government
sponsored organization; no matter that taxpayers were being scammed; no
matter the business of underage children being sold into sex slavery was
being bandied around in discussions as though popcorn was being priced.
In one brief remark he summed up the state of the fringe media today.
They just don’t have a clue.

On Monday’s Morning Meeting, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan and his journalist
guests expressed frustration that the ACORN scandal hasn’t gone away.
Politico correspondent Mike Allen lobbied, “...It's time to move on."
After playing a clip of President Obama weakly claiming ACORN isn’t the
“biggest issue facing the country,” Ratigan cooed, “Hallelujah, Mr.
President. Thank you.” That’s how they see it.

The big marginal newspapers and the fringe TV networks are collapsing
under the weight of their lack of news knowledge and insight. The fringe
TV picks up its news from the marginal newspaper news and they
spoon-feed on each other handing out news pabulum that fits the social
activist views of their management and staff. They are drowning in their
own political correctness

Worse than that, the old media is totally frustrated that they can no
longer steer and control the national conversation. Instead of spending
time trying to accurately present facts, they concern themselves with
attacking other news messengers in an attempt to spin and degrade the
news as it really is. They simply become angrier. MSNBC anchor David
Schuster stated on his 4 p.m. hour of live coverage on September 10,
"Look at the image of the Republican Party, all white males with short
haircuts. They look sort of angry. No women, no minorities, and it looks
like they've sort of become unhinged." They don’t have a clue.

The dearth of knowledgeable discussion of the 9/12 event in Washington
DC simply pointed out how inward looking this marginal media is. There
was little if any newspaper coverage of what took place. Network TV was
stuck someplace in a parallel universe and had no idea how to deal with
what was happening. As a result they simply ignored one of the single
largest most powerful expressions of citizen sentiment to occur in this
nation since Woodstock. The people get it. The marginal media doesn’t.

Washington Post writer Sally Quinn spoke in
her jovial, mellifluous voice on Bill O’Reilly’s FOX News TV show a few
days ago when she declared that the event was probably newsworthy except
for some of the “crazies with those awful signs.” To begin with, 99.9
percent of those people were not ‘crazies’ and less than .1 percent of
any signs were ‘awful.’ It was her perception of the entire event that
was awful. What was happening was all out of her grasp. She didn’t have
much of a clue.

The marginal news enjoys blaming their failures on the fact that people
don’t read newspapers anymore, that people are simply going to the
Internet, and that advertisers are deserting them. They never consider
the fact that maybe – just maybe- people are not reading them because
they are not providing people with real news. Yet the people are hungry
for real news. There is no other reason for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck,
Fox News, Bill O’Reilly and others who stick their neck out to be so
successful if this hunger did not exist. The fringe network TV news
shows are dying because they get their ‘news’ from the marginal
newspapers, and neither one has a clue.

If people were able to learn only from the fringe media, there would be
no ancient history for the future to enjoy. History is just being erased
or simply not covered. Just as in Orwell’s classic 1984, the marginal
media is trying to re-write history when necessary or to pretend events
never happened simply to protect their elitist views from scrutiny and
to protect their governmental favorites.

CNN anchor Don Lemon, during the 7 p.m. hour of Newsroom on Sept 12, got
excited watching Bill Maher on Real Time, Real Talk. Maher stated, “A
Member of Congress calling the President a liar, town hallers yelling at
lawmakers, carrying guns to rallies, refusing to let kids hear the
Commander-in-Chief. And on and on and on. What's behind it? Is it
racial? ‘Yeah, I said it. And we're going to talk about it.’” Lemon then
exclaimed to his audience, “Finally, someone's talking about this.
Finally, someone is talking about this.'" Another clueless anchor at work.

It is the regular people who are saving our history and more. Make no
mistake about it. They are not clueless.