Krugman takes the pass from Gore and carries it into the end-zone...

In Media Res This week Al Gore said the obvious. "The media is kind of weird these days on politics," he told The New York Observer, "and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party." The reaction from most journalists in the "liberal media" was embarrassed silence. I don't quite understand why, but there are some things that you're not supposed to say, precisely because they're so clearly true. The political agenda of Fox News, to take the most important example, is hardly obscure. Roger Ailes, the network's chairman, has been advising the Bush administration. Fox's Brit Hume even claimed credit for the midterm election. "It was because of our coverage that it happened," he told Don Imus. "People watch us and take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters." (This remark may have been tongue in cheek, but imagine the reaction if the Democrats had won and Dan Rather, even jokingly, had later claimed credit.) But my purpose in today's column is not to bash Fox. I want to address a broader question: Will the economic interests of the media undermine objective news coverage? ...

Krugman does a much better job with media criticism then Gore does. Where Gore focused primarily on personalities and institutions (Rush and FOX in this case), Krugman uses this criticism as a launching point for a much more important discussion: the failure of media de-regulation. The Democrats need to realize that they will never have any electoral success as long as the media is dominated by conservative owned corporations. These corporations are quite willing to flex their muscles to distort and smear Democratic positions. Unfortunately, so many of Democrats are also in the pocket of these same media organizations that few of them have the ability to openly criticize them without being destroyed. Gore has already been destroyed, yet he still has a national platform. Thus, he is in the best position to take on this problem head on. But he needs to get past the personal criticisms and move on, as Krugman has, to an examination of the deeper issues involved. Furthermore, he needs to make recommendations for how to change things. My recommendation: make a return of the Fairness Doctrine one of your top policy planks. If nothing else, forcing this issue into the public debate will require the mainstream media to defend itself openly against the kind of criticism that has, up until now, been primarly limited to the backrooms of the internet. This will be a war of epic proportions, so anyone who chooses to take it on must approach the battlefield with a large amount of ammunition. They will need reams of examples of conservative bias in the media as well as hundreds of pages of talking points designed to deal with the inevitible scoffing that will be received. Furthermore, who ever does this will need the intestinal fortitude of a giant because they WILL be excorciated in the worst possible terms. But it is only with a loud and long term call for change that anything useful will ever result from it. So none of this Daschle-like whining about right-wing attacks and then meek crawling back into a cave at the first sign of criticism for your criticism. Laugh it off and hit them back even harder. There are plenty of resources for this already on the internet: The Daily Howler, Media Whores Online (unfortunately on hiatus until 2003), and a new site just started called Take Back The Media. This could take years folks.