If you wanted a sign of the growing importance of the UK news media in reporting US politics (a phenomenon supported by Matt Drudge, the now global online market in English language news, and the largely apolitical US press), here it is.
Media Matters, a Democratic-leaning MSM rebuttal service, turns its powerful fisking attention to this Times report.
Times of London headline: “Senate scandal snares Obama’s chief aide.”
The aide in question is Rahm Emanuel and as we pointed out last week Emanuel is not the target of any Blago-related investigation because he did nothing wrong. But the fact that Emanuel was referenced on the Blago wiretaps doing nothing wrong means to the Times that he’s been “ensnared.”
It gets worse. Here’s the lead as written by Sarah Baxter [emphasis added]:
The bullish, foul-mouthed but effective Chicago arm-twister Rahm Emanuel has come under pressure to resign as Barack Obama’s chief of staff after it was revealed that he had been captured on court-approved wire-taps discussing the names of candidates for Obama’s Senate seat.
That’s a new claim and the newspaper makes it in the article’s very first sentence: Emanuel is under pressure to resign?! By whom, is the obvious question. Behold the Times’ answer: “Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist.” We kid you not. A professional GOP partisan throws out a pointless silly claim that Emanuel should be fired and Murdoch’s newspaper treats it as breaking news.
Amazingly, the article gets even worse as Baxter, in a supposed news article, just becomes unhinged with the rhetoric in terms of Blago’s impact on the president-elect:
-“the spiralling controversy has been an alarming distraction”
-“the scandal is lapping at Obama’s own ankles.”
-“Obama is himself embroiled in a sub-plot of the scandal with uncomfortable connections to Blagojevich”
Baxter also fantasizes in print about what might have occurred:
-“[Emanuel] may have been fully aware of what Blagojevich was attempting.”
And about what might happen in the future:
-“If he were to throw him out of the inner circle now with his reputation under siege, it would be a singular act of disloyalty before the transition team has even had a chance to take office.”
And it gets even worse when Baxter claimed matter-of-factly that “[Emanuel] is being investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald.” Of course, Fitzgerald’s team has made it perfectly clear Emanuel is not being investigated. But for Murdoch’s Times, it makes for a better read if Emanuel is under the prosecutor’s gun.
Importance? In what respect?
Does it sway the minds of the US electorate? Almost certainly not. Does it influence the reporting of broadcast media in the US? Not really. Does it represent an ‘impartial outside’ view? No. I’m not really sure what your criteria for the “importance” of British media is here.
All I think this shows is that Murdoch’s reach is far and wide — and deep. His editorial positions come through in every single one of his publications, regardless of international boundaries.
Perhaps I should have said — “a sign that awareness of British reporting of US politics amongst media watchers is growing”…
Ha! :)
Fair enough, your way was more pithy.
As an American living in the UK for the last four years, I think the reason that the UK press is becoming influential in US politics is that the US press seems so inadequate for the job. American journalists have ceased to press as they did in my youth. Brit journalists have not. They simply will not accept a prevarication. They’ll go out of their way to point out a politician’s avoidance of their questions. We arrived shortly before the last major election. The difference in the way Brit journaism handled it was amazing. In six weeks, taking up a new issue each day and examining it in depth, they managed to provide Brits with a much higher level of truly informative coverage than American journalists manage in the two years or more of an American campaign. They are becoming important in US politics because they do the job right.