WP and Kurtz on the DSM

Some more recent coverage of the DSM in the Washington Post - from Terry M. Neal ("Democrats Looking for a Road Map to Downing Street"); Jefferson Morley ("World Opinion Roundup: Britain's Deep Throat", a weekly discussion); and, from today Howard Kurtz ("News Media Give Overlooked Memo on Iraq Second Glance"). Of even more interest, also from Kurtz, is a piece from yesterday's paper: "Backlash on the left", which kicks off: "It's official: The Democrats are fed up with the press."

The two Kurtz articles in particular are interesting. Today's piece gives another useful timeine and overview of the US MSM's stilted coverage of the issue. Both suggest, significantly, that the "left" in this country are now as "fed up" and disillusioned with the mainstream news media as the right. But I have to comment on something Kurtz says in his "News Media Give Overlooked Memo on Iraq Second Glance" from today. Focusing on the efforts by "liberal" groups such as FAIR and Moveon.org to push the memo onto the MSM agenda, he states:

For the past 15 years, conservatives have used their outlets -- in talk radio, right-leaning news operations, editorial pages and, more recently, blogs -- to pressure mainstream journalists into covering stories that might otherwise be ignored. And they have had striking success, from allegations about President Bill Clinton's personal life to CBS's questionable documents on President Bush's National Guard service to the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in last year's presidential campaign. Now the left can claim a similar success.

Kurtz might be suggesting that the left-wing pressure groups have "come of age" and are now ready to challenge the right's highly-organized media "echo chamber." But he neglects to mention a crucial difference, one that suggests that the "left" is far from ready. The right-wing examples he suggests all concern domestic issues, created out of whole cloth, or researched independently by bloggers, and pushed domestically onto the MSM agenda by the partisan domestic right-wing media echo chamber. But the DSM story did not originate domestically with the left-wing in this country. It came out of a foreign story - broken, in fact, by a right-wing (Murdoch-owned) British newspaper, and was propelled into the UK and international MSM spotlight by all UK media, left and right. Without that crucial foreign-based newsgathering and reporting - as well as seemingly rock-solid documentary evidence - the story could never have gotten even the minimal traction it is now receiving. If Kurtz is suggesting that some sort of left-right "level playing field" has been acheived, he's wrong!

So at this point, I would suggest four things:

• 1.) Like Howard Kurtz, I agree that liberals are now just as fed up with the MSM as conservatives, and rightly so;
  
• 2.) The circumstances around the US coverage of the DSM show again just how far right the country's MSM have moved - even in comparison with the UK.
  
• 3.) Unlike Kurtz, I think that the left are still far, far away from being able to match the right in independently pushing a domestic story onto the MSM agenda; the scales are still tipped decidely in favor of the right; and
  
• 4.) for the time being, the only way the "left" will be able to successfully leverage anything onto the MSM agenda will be through strong backing by extensive foreign-based (probably UK) newsgathering and reporting, plus rock-solid documentary evidence.