The question I've been asked most often here during the years I've covered Bachmann: how could she get elected to Congress? How nutty can Minnesotans be, that they would tolerate a nut, liar and bigot in Congress for even a day.
There's more than one reason why Bachmann got elected. One of the main reasons was the horrific quality of the straight news reporting on Bachmann in the professional Minnesota press. From the very beginnings of Bachmann's political career and throughout her rise to national prominence, the state's paid political journalists seemed to be deliberately excluding any sourced facts indicating that she was a political extremist and an habitual liar.
And that's one reason why she was able to rise so quickly, and one reason why the career of this particular right wing kook had such a telling effect on national (tea party) politics and state (Minnesota) elections. The local professional reporters here in Minnesota (practically all of them, very few exceptions) simply kept "the story of Michele Bachmann's right wing lies and lunacy" out of their reporting.
Almost from the outset, Dem and liberal and progressives have made this charge against the professional reporters and editors in Minnesota: that they were under-reporting it, that they deliberately keeping the facts about Bachmann's extremist political roots and statements away from their audiences, that they were suppressing the ugly side of the single most important political career in the state. If you were a person who wanted to know the truth about Michele Bachmann's politics and agenda, they argued, you were better off reading the bloggers. You were far better off reading the news sources outside the state of Minnesota--reading the Minnesota reporters charged with reporting on Bachmann would give you a distorted picture of her career.
Ajust the other day, for the first time ever...one of Minnesota's most respected professional political reporters broke ranks with his peers and confirmed the charge. Reporter Brian Lambert of the MinnPost tells us--yes, it's basically true; the coverage by Minnesota political journalists, of Minnesota's most important political career, for the past seven years or so is basically worthless. If you wanted to know what Bachmann was about, you would have been better off reading out-of-state press and some unfunded local bloggers. The professional coverage by news professionals, according to Lambert, was a "fail."
There has been a mountain of news coverage about Michele Bachmann in the professional Minnesota press since 2004. If Lambert is right, almost all that coverage by the corporate and professional press was worse than useless--it was deceptive. This kind of cowardly "fail" by pathetic little careerists in the traditional media--is a chief reason that haters and nuts and liars and bigots get in to office around the country.
Here are some excerpts from Lambert's explanation of the Minnesota press' "Bachmann fail":
(CONTINUED)
there's been a leak from inside the Minnesota professional press itself. The three leading state news sources in the state are the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Minnesota Public Radio.
Local Journalism’s Bachmann Failure
Posted on February 10, 2012 by Brian Lambert
...a pet/obsessive fascination of mine (is) the clear editorial choice made by standard-bearers of journalistic truth-telling and context-providing in this major media market. To be more specific: The very curious way the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, the (St. Paul) Pioneer Press and (Minnesota Public Radio) have restrained their coverage of Bachmann, in particular, and the volatile, potent and routinely factually inaccurate movement inspired by her kind.
Those are three biggest "news icons" in the state of Minnesota: the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and MPR. Lambert took a look and compared
their coverage of Bachmann to the out-of-state news media's. Here's his finding:
The striking thing to me...was how little of Bachmann’s manifest recklessness with the truth made its way in to the print (or on-air) version of any of our three primary serious news entities. To its (modest) credit the Strib did run more of Bachmann’s absurdities in its “Hot Dish Politics” blog than the other two did anywhere. But, if I had to apply a percentage, our three local journalism mainstays reported no more than 30%-40% of what Bachmann — a presidential candidate and easily the highest profile politician in the state — was saying in a given news cycle.
And here's the theory as to why the Minnesota press was so cowardly on the Bachmann story--year after year after year...
My suspicion/accusation has long been that the local news media have each separately made an economic calculation that regular and full reporting Bachmann’s misrepresentations, activities, alliances and influences becomes counter-productive after the point of perfunctory diligence. Translation: To have aggressively covered her — did I mention, a presidential candidate and the state politician with the highest profile on the national stage? — would be to risk blowback from her intensely contentious supporters, open themselves to invigorated charges of “liberal bias” and possibly/likely suffer advertising/underwriting blowback.
Read the whole thing. The impetus for Lambert's criticism was the fact that a major piece about the rate of teen gay suicides in Bachmann's district appeared--not in a Minnesota paper or broadcast, but in Rolling Stone. (Which leads Minnesota reporter to ask each other: "Why the fuck is the local media not reporting that story--first? Are we stupid? Lazy? Cowards? All three?")
If you are watching the effect that the tea party and the religious right are having on the Republican politics of this generation...if you are wondering how you can lose seats in government to right wing kooks running under the Republican brand... then read this article to learn not only how but why your local press might want to fail the voters on reporting the truth.
...and why they would be willing to continue to fail...year, after year, after year....
LINK:
http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordpress.com/...