{"id":2334,"date":"2008-12-15T16:34:38","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T16:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2008-12-15T16:34:38","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T16:34:38","slug":"growing-significance-uk-media-covering-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/12\/growing-significance-uk-media-covering-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The growing significance of the UK media in covering US politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter frame\" title=\"The Times (of London)\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmauk.co.uk\/nma\/uploads\/2239\/The-Times-Logo-2007.jpg\" alt=\"The Times\" width=\"457\" height=\"53\" \/><\/a><span class=\"drop_cap\">I<\/span>f you wanted a sign of the growing importance of the UK news media in reporting US politics (a phenomenon supported by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/1580164\/Matt-Drudge-world%27s-most-powerful-journalist.html\">Matt Drudge<\/a>, the now global online market in English language news, and the largely apolitical US press), <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/countyfair\/200812150001\">here it is<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Media Matters<\/strong>, a Democratic-leaning MSM rebuttal service, turns its powerful <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fisking\">fisking<\/a> attention to this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/us_and_americas\/article5337807.ece\"><strong><em>Times<\/em><\/strong><\/a> report.<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em><strong>Times<\/strong><\/em> of London headline: <strong><em>&#8220;Senate scandal snares Obama&#8217;s chief aide.&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The aide in question is <strong>Rahm Emanuel<\/strong> and as we pointed out last week Emanuel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD951E3KG2\"><strong>is not the target<\/strong><\/a> of any Blago-related investigation because he did nothing wrong. But the fact that Emanuel was referenced on the Blago wiretaps <em>doing nothing wrong<\/em> means to the <strong><em>Times<\/em><\/strong> that he&#8217;s been &#8220;ensnared.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It gets worse. Here&#8217;s the lead as written by <strong>Sarah Baxter<\/strong> [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The bullish, foul-mouthed but effective Chicago arm-twister Rahm Emanuel <strong>has come under pressure to resign<\/strong> as Barack Obama&#8217;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&#8217;s Senate seat.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a new claim and the newspaper makes it in the article&#8217;s very first sentence: Emanuel is under pressure to resign?! By whom, is the obvious question. Behold the <strong><em>Times&#8217;<\/em><\/strong> answer: &#8220;Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist.&#8221; We kid you not. A professional GOP partisan throws out a pointless silly claim that Emanuel should be fired and Murdoch&#8217;s newspaper treats it as breaking news.<\/p>\n<p>Amazingly, the article gets even worse as Baxter, in a supposed news article, just becomes unhinged with the rhetoric in terms of Blago&#8217;s impact on the president-elect:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">-&#8220;the <strong>spiralling controversy<\/strong> has been an alarming distraction&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">-&#8220;the scandal is <strong>lapping at Obama\u2019s own ankles<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">-&#8220;Obama is himself <strong>embroiled<\/strong> in a sub-plot of the scandal with <strong>uncomfortable<\/strong> connections to Blagojevich&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Baxter also fantasizes in print about what <em>might<\/em> have occurred:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">-&#8220;[Emanuel] may have been fully aware of what Blagojevich was attempting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And about what <em>might<\/em> happen in the future:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">-&#8220;If he <strong>were to throw him out of the inner circle<\/strong> 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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And it gets even worse when Baxter claimed matter-of-factly that &#8220;[Emanuel] is being investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald.&#8221; Of course, Fitzgerald&#8217;s team has made it perfectly clear Emanuel <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD951E3KG2\">is <em>not<\/em> being investigated<\/a><\/strong>. But for Murdoch&#8217;s <strong><em>Times<\/em><\/strong>, it makes for a better read if Emanuel is under the prosecutor&#8217;s gun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1897,1932,2086,2087,1502,1503,2083,2084,2082,2088,2089,1417,2085,1433,1475],"class_list":["post-2334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-chicago","tag-greater-london","tag-illinois","tag-london","tag-news-media","tag-online-market","tag-patrick-fitzgerald","tag-republican-party","tag-sarah-baxter","tag-senate","tag-the-times","tag-the-times-global-broadcasting-co-ltd","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2336,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions\/2336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}