In Deregulation: New Media 1, Old Media 0

Just some brief thoughts on the election, which I was up watching until 2:30 a.m., and a roundup of some observations made by others of the news media's in-kind contributions to the Kerry campaign.

Alan Keyes wins the "spirit award" for sticking with his campaign to the bitter end. My advice to the GOP: don't draft him again, unless it's to run against Teresa Heinz Kerry. Or maybe not. I'm not sure Keyes would win that one, but would you really want that loon speaking for your party as an office holder?

On a more serious note, I heard talk on Fox News this morning -- from someone I believe to be a Bush campaign official -- about a Republican mandate, given GOP gains in Congress. The only mandate is to fight the war. I would advise my readers to agitate loudly against implementing any more items from the far right social agenda and against further fiscal irresponsibility. I would remind the GOP that pretending to have a wider mandate than continued prosecution of the war will almost certainly result in a backlash 2 years from now and beyond. Bush ran on the war and won on the war. Christian turnout was no doubt provoked by issues like gay marriage, but that was not the focus of the convention or even of most Republican voters.

On the media bias front. Rush Limbaugh has stated repeatedly on his radio program that this election would illustrate the rising power of the "New Media" (i.e., talk radio, the blogosphere, cable news, etc.). He was correct. And I think "Old Media" reacted like any complacent championship athlete whose time is running out. "I don't have to worry about some rookie," Old Media seemed to be saying in the last weeks of the campaign. Like an aging pitcher, Old Media smirked and lobbed a telegraphed pitch directly into the center of the strike zone. Dan Rather is caught building a story on false documents and others defend him. The "missing explosives" story brought out as an "October surprise" backfired to a degree, but I still saw it being discussed as important news all the way to the end. Both stories were ripped to shreds on the internet. ABC waited forever to report on the bin Laden tape. It was almost as if Old Media were taunting Limbaugh et al. with the sheer audacity of what they were getting away with. The aging pitcher still hasn't looked up to see the arc of the home run, but the audience can see it.

Two sources nicely sum up the media bias of the waning days of the Presidential campaign. Stung by falsely calling Florida for Gore in 2000 (and probably costing Bush conservative panhandle votes), the Old Media decided not to call states so recklessly this time around. How would they distort the outcome this time? I figured, correctly, that they'd use fraudulent exit polls and I was right. Dick Morris sums this up quite well. What I didn't think of until last night was that they could just not call states for Bush! Logic Times summarizes this quite well. Case in point: as of Wednesday morning, Pennsylvania had been called for Kerry by everyone, though the margin of victory was smaller than that held by Bush in Ohio, which only Fox News and one other major television network had called!

The Old Media threw everything but the kitchen sink at Bush. It helped that Kerry was such a poor candidate, but everything counted in this election, especially the New Media: without the New Media Kerry would never have been unmasked so completely. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth especially were able to get their voices heard thanks to the marvel that is the internet. The Old Media, eager to publicize any and every anti-Bush book that came out this summer, gave only passing, dismissive notice to the Swifties.

Ronald Reagan, by getting rid of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" liberated the radio airwaves. By deregulating the telecommunications industry (i.e., by breaking up the government-created telephone monopoly), he paved the way for the Internet. These actions may yet prove to be his greatest legacies. Welcome to the free market of ideas, Dan Rather.

We won one more, thanks to the Gipper!

-- CAV

P.S. As I edit, the news breaks on the Drudge Report that Kerry plans to concede to Bush.