Charles Gibson; Sarah Palin; editing; MSNBC anchors; status of "new media" revolution

It is now no secret that ABC heavily edited the Gibson-Palin interview to distort her answers and leave out key information. Mark Levin posts the transcript with the edited portions. See also LGF.

This episode and other recent election related news occurring on or near the fourth anniversary of Rathergate forces me to ask what effect Rathergate has really had on the MSM/DNC.

Consider the following. In the past few weeks, we have seen a merciless MSM/DNC attack on Sarah Palin that was best summarized by Mark Steyn last week:

a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort

Consider also that MSNBC was recently forced to remove two of its anchors from election coverage because the coverage was too blatant even for NBC's taste.

The MSM/DNC appears more partisan and hostile than ever.

Do these recent MSM/DNC activities indicate that the new media revolution is a failure? Was Rathergate in vain?

In July 2005 (in the midst of the Guantanamo nonissue), I predicted that the MSM/DNC would grow even more hostile and bitter as it struggled to forestall the revolution:

But in the meantime, the MSM/DNC has become and will become more vicious and partisan than ever. . . . From now on, we can expect that in the aftermath of every new scandal, the MSM/DNC will spare no effort to justify whatever blunder some MSM/DNC outlet has made. If the Washington Post says that the sky is purple and the blogosphere takes a different view, every Democratic politician will hire skywriters to spread purple smoke throughout the atmosphere. The consequences to the MSM/DNC of doing any less will be another huge loss like Rathergate. We should be prepared for Guantanamo type battles every time we point out another MSM/DNC blunder or lie.

July 3, 2005

Recent events have been predictable. It was predictable that the MSM/DNC would not easily allow a popular conservative uprising to prevent the Messiah from becoming President. It was predictable that MSM/DNC would use every available tactic to achieve its ends.

But this time, not only do we have the tools to fight back and expose the truth, our base (and others) know where to go to find the truth. When we see a clumsily edited interview on television that just does not seem right, we know that we have many options for discovering what really happened.

And it is working. The MSM/DNC is much more widely recognized as biased. Palin's popularity continues to grow despite these efforts. Even UPI is predicting a possible backlash.

NBC's removal of Matthews and Olbermann resulted from pressure from Republican delegates at the RNC convention. Chants of "NBC!" "NBC!" during Palin's speech allegedly unnerved NBC officials to the point of taking action. (They can withstand cries of general media bias, but they do not like to be singled out during a highly viewed nationwide address.) Much as it did in 2004, direct action by the conservative base forced out well known MSM/DNC anchors. The MSNBC affair, much more directly than the Palin, coverage points out that new media and conservatives have the power to fight back.

We should not be disheartened simply because the old media has not reformed itself four years after Rathergate. We knew it would remain our enemy. We were not trying to reform the MSM/DNC. Instead, we have been educating the general public and providing alternatives. To that extent, the revolution has worked. While our enemy grows more desparate and vicious, we grow stronger. Keep exposing the lies and we may not have to care how biased the MSM/DNC is for very long.