Musings of the Great Eric

Peter Daou on the Huffinton Post has some good observations regarding the media’s reaction to Stephen Colbert the other night.

It appears Mash’s misgivings about press coverage are well-placed. The AP’s first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert’s performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny. Expect nothing less from the cowardly American media. The story could just as well have been Bush and Laura’s discomfort and the crowd’s semi-hostile reaction to Colbert’s razor-sharp barbs. In fact, I would guess that from the perspective of newsworthiness and public interest, Bush-the-playful-president is far less compelling than a comedy sketch gone awry, a pissed-off prez, and a shell-shocked audience.

This is the power of the media to choose the news, to decide when and how to shield Bush from negative publicity. Sins of omission can be just as bad as sins of commission. And speaking of a sycophantic media establishment bending over backwards to accommodate this White House and to regurgitate pro-GOP and anti-Dem spin, I urge readers to pick up a copy of Eric Boehlert’s new book, Lapdogs. It’s a powerful indictment of the media’s timidity during the Bush presidency. Boehlert rips away the facade of a “liberal media” and exposes the invertebrates masquerading as journalists who have allowed and enabled the Bush administration’s many transgressions to go unchecked, under-reported, or unquestioned.

The video was everywhere on the net yesterday (I posted a link to it here), people and bloggers by and large loved his performance (in fairness, the right wing blogs claimed he bombed). The reaction was near universal. Yet to read about it in the mainstream press, you’d never know that. It was eitherdescribed with far less praise or not mentioned at all - there are few times when the contrast between the professional and citizen journalism has been this great.

Even if you’re on the right, Colbert was the thing to talk about from that dinner. The fact that the mainstream press was so silent about it is almost disturbing - one has to wonder why they were so afraid to talk about it.

(For Colbert’s part, the performance really was top notch. The man has balls of steel to say those things in front of that audience and Bush himself. As I said originally: Just awesome.)

Technorati Tags: Stephen Colbert, White House Correspndant’s Dinner, Newsmedia