NY Times exposes Hollywood liberal conspiracy! In which Jim Rutenberg transcribes some right-wing media "critique," calls it reporting, and it lands on A1.

Rutenberg, in case you missed it, is the hack who gave big play to the "story" that Karl Rove had a plan for taking down John Kerry during the Times' week-long Bush Stragedy Stravaganza of last month. So maybe it's no surprise that there's a definite tilt on display in today's performance ("TV Shows Take On Bush, and Pull Few Punches"). Rutenberg's piece is clearly occasioned by some bullshit analysis peddled from the Media Research Center, "a conservative group that monitors the media for signs of liberal bias," as Rutenberg says. (What Rutenberg doesn't say is that the MRC declares that its mission is "to not only prove—through sound scientific research—that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene," and that the group was founded and is headed by well-known winger nutball L. Brent Bozell. The Bozell-affiliated TimesWatch site, otherwise mostly devoted to ferreting out instances of Times "labeling bias," the hideous practice of writers calling conservatives "conservative" while failing to call Ted Kennedy and his ilk "screaming pinko baby-killers," praises Rutenberg here for "balanced" coverage during the flap over the aborted CBS Reagan miniseries—and you know what "balanced" means to these guys.) But Rutenberg won't lead his article honestly, i.e. telling you that it wasn't developed through independent reporting, because how would that play on A1? Here's the nut, buried in the middle of the piece, with helpful quotes from MRC "analyst" Tim Graham:

Republicans, conservatives and campaign aides to the president said they expected money to flow from Hollywood, a place they consider a bastion of liberalism, to the Democrats. But they said they were surprised by how much partisan sentiment seemed to be seeping onto television.

Mr. Graham said the anti-Bush sentiment coming across in prime time was more troublesome than usual because it was woven into scripts across so many of the major networks, and not restricted to sketch comedy.

"It's different when you're really involved in `NYPD Blue' or `Law & Order,' and to you it's, `That's my man Sipowicz and he doesn't like Bush,' " Mr. Graham said. "This can be seen, and certainly is seen, by conservatives as Hollywood's in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign."

Graham, by the way, is the only media-analyst type that Rutenberg calls on; the only non-Hollywood voices in the article belong to him, to the "Republicans, conservatives and campaign aides" collectively paraphrased above, and to Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist, who's quoted forebearingly saying that he's "not planning any move to combat such scripted critiques" as Graham alleges are now flooding the airwaves. Seems that Jim doesn't want any non-Party elements mucking up his nice clean exposition.

And the facts? Rutenberg manages to cite all of three recent instances of some kind of anti-Bush message being offered on series TV; apparently that's all the proof he needs that there's a liberal seepage "across so many of the major networks." But facts don't really enter into it. Rutenberg is following the MRC's script, whose chief rhetorical ploy is in that "in-kind contribution" statement. The aim is to smear the legitimate political activism of Hollywood liberals as somehow conspiratorial: they're making money contributions, what other kinds of nefarious "contributions" are they making? Rutenberg consistently, tendentiously elides the difference between the "sentiments" that might get into TV scripts and those of the Hollywood community at large. He does it in his lead ("Galvanized politically in ways they have not been since the early 1990's, Hollywood's more liberal producers and writers are increasingly expressing their displeasure with President Bush with not only their wallets, but also their scripts"), he does it again when he segues from Whoopi Goldberg saying she'd be "pleased if her show could contribute to the defeat of Mr. Bush" to Laurie David, a liberal Hollywood activist and Larry David's wife and not a TV producer, saying that she's "never, ever seen this community more united than now." To Rutenberg, Ms. David's fundraising has the smell of conspiracy, even though it's completely overt and completely unconnected with the supposed spate of TV shows surreptitiously injecting Bush-hatred into the unsuspected mass mind:

"Not a day goes by when I'm not getting a dozen calls from people saying to me, `What can I do?' And it's all with one goal: to change the course of what's going on in this country and get rid of this administration."

Ms. David and her like-minded peers are putting a lot of money behind the push. She, for one, has given $100,000 to the Media Fund and America Coming Together, Democratic groups using unlimited donations to run television commercials and to motivate voters against the president. Marcy Carsey, whose production house Carsey-Werner-Mandabach produces "Whoopi," has given $500,000 to the Media Fund, federal election records show. Ms. Carsey declined to be interviewed for this article.

[Remember the plaintive tone of that "unlimited donations to ... motivate voters against the president" next time Rutenberg writes about MoveOn and the 527 issue.] Ms. Carsey got it right not talking to Rutenberg, though they way he drops it in it's as if she'd just decided to plead the fifth in front of the HUAC.

Fortunately, there's at least one thing to grin about in the piece.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many in Hollywood seemed to get behind the president to see how they could help bolster the image of the United States abroad. Some executives later produced programming like "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," a Showtime movie about Mr. Bush's handling of the attacks that liberal critics said unduly lionized him.

Does Rutenberg actually read while he's typing? Liberal bias gets the full-on conspiracy treatment: but right-wing producers who suck up to Dubya aren't partisans, they're just pitching in and lending a patriotic hand to burnish our national image.

So, congratulations to Jim Rutenberg! It's early yet, Jim, but you've already made a strong case for yourself as A1 sleazebag of the month.

posted by michael  7:48:52 PM  
tell me about it []