Script blindness, part 2

I part company with Bob Somerby on Gore's appeal as a return presidential candidate, but agree with him on the subject of the media savaging he endured in 2000 at the hands of the press. If the press is suffering from script blindness (and he lays out a compelling indictment of bad boy saint Keith Olbermann for playing along), then who's writing the script? Daily Howler:

But readers, where do your narratives come from? In these cases, Olbermann and Alter were channeling several passages from Politics Lost, Joe Klein’s definingly foolish new book. For the record, here’s Klein’s version of that global-warming riff. At this point, Klein is driving home his major theme–Al Gore was “slavishly devoted” to all his dumb-ass consultants...

...By the way: Did Gore “lose an election he should have won because he seemed stiff, phony?” Actually, Gore failed to reach the White House because the press corps called him a liar for two solid years. But so what? Standard Themes are still being recited as pundits tell their Standard Stories. But these themes all serve one key purpose–they stop us from considering the most striking conduct of Campaign 2000, the amazing performance of the mainstream press corps. They made a demon out of Gore; now, they make a saint of McCain. This is how our White House elections get decided–and we Dems have to learn to discuss this.

Precisely.

Eric Alterman lays out the case against the press, as detailed in Eric Boehlert's new book, Lapdogs.

Relatively early on in the August coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story, ABC's Nightline devoted an entire episode to the allegations and reported, "The Kerry campaign calls the charges wrong, offensive and politically motivated. And points to Naval records that seemingly contradict the charges." (Emphasis added.) Seemingly? A more accurate phrasing would have been that Navy records "completely" or "thoroughly" contradicted the Swifty. In late August, CNN's scrawl across the bottom of the screen read, "Several Vietnam veterans are backing Kerry's version of events." Again, a more factual phrasing would have been "Crewmembers have always backed Kerry's version of events." But that would have meant not only having to stand up a well-funded Republican campaign attack machine, but also casting doubt on television news' hottest political story of the summer.

When the discussion did occasionally turn to the facts behind the Swift Boat allegations, reporters and pundits seemed too spooked to address the obvious—that the charges made no sense and there was little credible evidence to support them.. Substituting as host of "Meet the Press," Andrea Mitchell on Aug. 15 pressed Boston Globe reporter Anne Kornblut about the facts surrounding Kerry's combat service: "Well, Anne, you've covered him for many years, John Kerry. What is the truth of his record?" Instead of mentioning some of the glaring inconsistencies in the Swifties' allegation, such as George Elliott and Adrian Lonsdale 's embarrassing flip-flops, Kornblut ducked the question, suggesting the truth was "subjective": "The truth of his record, the criticism that's coming from the Swift Boat ads, is that he betrayed his fellow veterans. Well, that's a subjective question, that he came back from the war and then protested it. So, I mean, that is truly something that's subjective." Ten days later Kornblut scored a sit-down interview with O'Neill. In her 1,200-word story she politely declined to press O'Neill about a single factual inconsistency surrounding the Swifties' allegations, thereby keeping her Globe readers in the dark about the Swift Boat farce. (It was not until Bush was safely re-elected that that Kornblut, appearing on MSNBC, conceded the Swift Boast ads were clearly inaccurate.)...

...If that doesn't represent a concerted effort by the press to look the other way, than what does?