The Political Chase

Stephanopoulos lame response

I want to do one update before calling it quits for the night.

George Stephanopoulos gave Greg Sargent several lame excuses for his pathetic performance in the Democratic debate last night, however, I want to focus on one for now.

When I asked him whether asking about Obama’s derelict approach to his flag lapel pin risked making it look like right-wing frames were dictating the line of questioning, Stephanopoulos said:

"Sure, there’s a risk." But he added: "If you look at the fall campaign, there are some clear signals from Senator Obama’s opponents that all of these issues are going to be put together in a general argument. They all go back to that same theme."

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Stephanopoulos admitted, in essence, there was no journalistic integrity associated with the questions asked. Instead, it was talking points developed by Hillary and wingnuts like Sean Hannity.

That’s a problem, but it’s just part of a much larger problem — the media. I’ve spent several hours digging into the media machine — trying to better understand what is behind events like last night and more importantly, what promotes the endless news cycles filled with trash like Bittergate and the Wright controversy.

I need to pull a few things together before I can actually post what I have found at this point. Therefore, I’ll be posting more on the bigger picture tomorrow.