I must say that hearing the right complain about partisanship and bemoaning the fact that both groups seem to be shouting at each reminds me of one who "kills his parents and then pleads for mercy because they are now an orphan." Or perhaps a rephrasing, "killing one's parents and then complaining that one is an orphan".

Either way, it's the result of the last 20+ years of the conservatives setting the framework for the debate. That the liberals are starting to shout back should surprise no one.

I am not sure that the most recent debate regarding the "Soros is a loon" issue really supports your view (although I guess it all depends on how you take it).

It seems that there was a lot of posts and comments that seemed like people were getting exposed to alternative views and were just dismissing them with crude rhetoric rather than considering why people feel the way they do.

It certainly does not serve as a model for a less polarized body politic in my view.

“[P]arty attachment is more like attachment to a religious denomination or a social club. People have stereotypes in their heads about what Democrats are like and what Republicans are like, and they gravitate toward the party made up of people like themselves....”

Is it time for for me to do my less than apt imitation of Robert Ninero’s taxi driver and ask David Brooks?: Are you talking to me? Oh well, perhaps I’m just being paranoid. I am theological modernist who feels very uncomfortable with the conservative religious convictions of most GOP members. It has been many years since I attended a Republican get-together. Stereotypes concerning Democrats? My family's background is so Democrat that I was shocked when a grade school teacher hinted that she might be a Republican. I would have been less stunned if she had claimed to be a two bit hooker in the evenings. It was commonly assumed within my social milieu that the Republicans were for the rich and the Democrats were for the poor like us. If you were to look at my personal library numbering around five thousand volumes---you would remain uncertain about my political orientation. The same holds true for the publications delivered to my front door. Why am I so cognizant regarding the intellectual disintegration of someone like Paul Krugman? This is because I own at least three of his books and eagerly awaited his columns on Slate.com. Trust me, the dude is not the same man of just a few years ago. It is mildly interesting that “P.J. O'Rourke has grown tired of conservative talk radio.” I haven’t listened to more than an hour of such radio programming in my entire life.    

Rich:

I think internet dialogue is going to tend to improve political discussion, if only because of the magic of the link. Even the sites I visit that I think you would find the most difficult to take (lucianne, rantburg) link you to articles and points of view that you would never find otherwise, and which frequently propound quite different views than the view of the host. (For example, I can find the Texas GOP platform off of your blog.)

This sort of thing does not happen on the Crossfires and Rush Limbaugh Shows of the world, where all you hear is the ranting of the host, and an occasional word from some victim -- er-- guest, attempting to work a word or two of their worldview in between host fulminations.

In blog-world, you can always indulge your curiosity and follow the link, and maybe learn something. In Rush and O'Reilly land,due to the nature of their media,this is impossible to do.

Appalled Moderate: Two words: "confirmation bias". Rather than herald a golden age of rhetoric and reason, I tend to think blogs herald the golden age of propaganda. The link is a useful thing, but the tendency of humans is to amplify what they already agree with and heavily discount and discard what they don't. All the links do - just my humble opinion - is feed the confirmation bias.

As Rich pointed out in a comment above, the whole "Soros is a loon" comments showed this in spades. As I said there, the whole thing reminded me of the old Onion point/counterpoint between the anti-war liberal and the pro-war conservative:

anti-war: {long, well thought out reasoning why we shouldn't rush into war}

pro-war: {you're wrong}

anti-war: {well thought out, detailed response}

pro-war: {you're just wrong}

anti-war: {frustrated, detailed, well researched response}

pro-war: {you've been proven wrong, why do you continue}

The level of debate has been lowered somewhere around the level of the Marianas trench and shows no signs of being raised. We live in an age where outing a CIA undercover operative working on WMD proliferation can be outed during a time of war and we have one side telling us it's no big deal. We have the executive branch telling us that they can discard laws at will and can sanction torture.

Everyone on one side of the isle seems to simply yawn, then chastises the other side for over reacting and then proceeds to complain about the level of debate.

Surreal.

The issue of bias really depends upon where you look.

Far-left leaning liberals hold the vast majority of positions in mass media, academia, and entertainment.

The opposite holds true for business and the military.

If you are a TV reporter, a school teacher, or a movie start, the odds are that you are going to be surrounded by liberal Democrats. If you are a CEO/CFO/COO/CIO/CTO or a Brigadier General, odds are that you are going to be surrounded by conservative Republicans.

Blogs change the structure of the American political debate because they take power out of the hands of one of the strongest bastions of liberal thought, the mass media.

The many-to-many communication model of the blog is a direct threat to the few-to-many communication model of mass media.

This would have zero political effect -- if the mass media were balanced in the first place. If the mass media were balanced, both sides would lose (and win) equally.

Instead, this technological and cultural shift is affecting the liberal Democrats in a significantly negative manner.

Hal:

I do not deny your point, particularly since I have been reading the same comments threads you have been. I'm not sure I agree the pro-war arguments are as lousy as your inclined to make them, but that's a discussion for a different thread...

But the question is -- will internet political discourse make things better or worse? Not, has political discourse gotten pretty awful? It's pretty clear the state of discourse is absolutely miserable. But the blame for that does not belong to the internet -- it belongs to the yelping, hollaring talk/cable shows and the politicians (mostly GOP, I admit ruefully) that pander to them. Those shows, by their nature, state one point of view, and give very little access to other points of view. (Sure, Rush will run a clip of Tom Daschle, but mostly to condemn him.) You think the masses clustering to the internet have confirmation bias -- think of those folks who willingly label themselves dittoheads and give Rush that 3 hrs he demands.

The internet reflects the current political landscape -- no doubt. And I doubt that there will be some blog nivannah that will heal our system. But I think the tendency of the net is positive on discussion, not negative.

(After all, we disagree, and we're having a civil discussion about it. Can you think of any other media where that would happen?)

Will Spencer: Far-left leaning liberals hold the vast majority of positions in mass media, academia, and entertainment.

The opposite holds true for business and the military.

You forgot to mention that media and entertainment are part of business.

Apart from that, your first sentence is simply wrong as stated. The only argument that can be made is that more journalists identify themselves as liberals than as conservatives. But even more identify themselves as moderates.

To say that "far-left leaning liberals hold the vast majority of positions in mass media" is almost as silly as saying that "by far the vast majority of the tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum".

Of course, nobody would say something as wrong and absurd as the latter, right? Nobody, that is, except George W. Bush.

Will: in the most recent study of journalists, 57% of surveyed journalists chose center, 30% left and 9% right. So it would seem that most journalists are surrounded by centrists, not liberals.

Really, you're going off of horribly outdated studies.

Appalled Moderate: perhaps you're right. The comments section is certainly a breath of fresh air, and the fact that we're having this discussion on the blog of a real center-right (is that the right classification for Drezner?) luminary does kind of bring home this point.

The Onion reference is parody, and so not accurately reflecting of reality, but sometimes that's what it feels like.

I do like the written record of blogging and comments. It makes it easier to start adding context back to the discussion.

So, yea, I'll grudgingly admit that blogging may change the political debate from the sorry state it's in now. Anything that is two-way rather than just a one way broadcast shows a lot promise. And it is rather nice to see the raw views of those out there that aren't processed by the corporate goals of pleasing advertisers. Seeing them think on their feet, so to speak.

But I tend to have a gloomy outlook - just my own personal confirmation bias :)

Appalled Moderate: I think you are quite right to point out that the online form of discussion facilitates the gathering of interesting information that we might otherwise never have found.

But Rich and Hal are just as right to point out that many people don't use it to benefit from a variety of information, but to spread propaganda or conspiracy theories or to simply confirm their own bias.

A related trend that I find worrisome is how people use the Internet to gather health-related (mis-)information. I've heard from several people how they discovered the "truth" about vaccinations on the Internet, and now don't want to get their children vaccinated anymore. Of course, what they discovered was anti-vaccination propaganda consisting mostly of bad statistics, highly dubious claims and flat-out lies.

And that's worrisome because it's not just their own children's health, but also the health of the children (unvaccinated babies and vaccinated children with a compromised immune system or in whom the vaccination simply didn't work) that their unvaccinated children will infect. Which they, paradoxically, just use as further evidence to their thesis that vaccinations don't work - confirmation bias at work again.

Can anything be done about it? Probably not much, except that reasonable people should make sure that the lunatics aren't the only ones whose voices are being heard online.

The question that begs to be asked here is (drumroll please) has anyone here changed their mind about ANYTHING based on what they have read via a blog OR following a debate on a blog comment board?

I have.

Believe it or not, given my rather strong comments on this very blog a few months back, I have changed my position on gay marriage. Over time, I came to acknowledge the logic of arguments made by people whose opinions I respect on other issues--Sullivan, Drezner, many of my fellow commenters here.

Here's the thing about serious political discourse in today's America. It is almost impossible to carry on a civil disagreement about important matters with people you know well (friends, family members, neighbors, workmates), perhaps because people take all disagreements personally. I am a pretty detached intellectual sort who thrives (big surprise) on high-level argument. When I walk into a debate I leave my thin skin at the door, and though I try not to pummel my opponents, and try never to take personally their jibes at me, things often go awry. Someone, usually my touchy-feely sister-in-law, ends up leaving the room in tears. Ooops.

Blogs are fun because you can engage in the sort of spirited discussion you used to have, long ago, in your college dorm at 3 am. If it gets ugly, you leave the room or shut down the computer. But at least here, in Drezner's talkroom, it doesn't usually descend to that level. That is a valuable thing, and for me at least blogs accomplished something that close friends (some gay, some not) and my own husband had despaired of ever doing--changing my mind about gay marriage.

Anyone else out there had a "Damascus moment" courtesy of the blogosphere? Just curious.

David Brooks is right that political opinions are taking on the characteristics of religious belief, but I don't think this has much to do with "partisanship" in the traditional (party affiliation) sense. Rather, it is that people feel they need to display certain opinions as a badge of belonging to be welcome in their professional or social circles. This is most noticeable in academia, but is not limited to it.

Thus, blogs do offer the opportunity to improve discourse, because people are interacting with others who are not part of their normal sphere.

"Anyone else out there had a "Damascus moment" courtesy of the blogosphere? Just curious."

I would now vote yes on cell stem research. This still makes me feel a bit uneasy, but I’ve long been a logically inconsistent, if not even hypocritical, pro-lifer. There are holes in my anti-abortion reasoning which one could drive a large truck through.

On the subject of the increasing polarization or vehemence of political rhetoric these days, on the one hand I think that it pales to a degree in comparison with past epochs (you don't often see major figures today who write their political opponents into various levels of Hell, for example). On the other hand, it does seem as though people tend to be a little more direct and forceful in putting forward their views now than, say, 20 years ago.

As I wrote elsewhere on the web though, I think this perceived shift to some extent may be the result of changes in social standards as some rhetoric becomes more acceptable to utter in open discourse now than it once was. Perhaps a culture that embraces the art of Eminem ought not be so surprised that people on opposite sides of the spectrum are in general being less civil with each other. Also, perhaps people tend to be more direct and more likely to bash each other over the head with their points now because they in general lack the ability their predecessors had with indirect discourse. I seem to remember a distinguished professor at Mr. Drezner's university making a number of these points in the late 1980s.

On the subject of blogging as potential remedy for this problem, that also has two sides to it: on the one hand you have John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory: a normal person with anonymity and an audience can easily turn into a jackass. There's plenty of evidence for that across the blogosphere. On the other hand, there's also just enough intelligent and reasonable debate to be found out there, combined with the accountability that goes along with having one's writings out in public, to raise the level of discourse at least a small amount. As for actually changing people's minds on the web, well it can happen if people are receptive to change. But that holds true with any discussion, regardless of the medium in which it takes place.

At any rate, for what it's worth I enjoy what I've seen so far at your site, Professor Drezner, having arrived here from GlennReynolds.com.

Hal/GW:

I am aware that the far-left liberals who dominate the mass media believe themselves to be moderates.

Of course they believe themselves to be moderates -- they are surrounded by people who believe just as they do!

I am sure that most members of the Nazi Party felt themselves to be "moderates" also, because they believed the same things that everyone else in their surroundings believed.

Even with the numbers you quote from that horribly flawed and useless study, lefties outnumber righties more than 3 to 1. That proves my point more than it challenges it.

“Of course they believe themselves to be moderates -- they are surrounded by people who believe just as they do!”

A major media moderate is someone willing to be polite towards conservatives. Their views are still left of center of mainstream America. What is a liberal? This is a Paul Krugman clone. He is similar to Captain Ahab fighting Moby Dick. The dude can longer think rationally or control his out of control rage. Indeed, the media elite inhabit an echo chamber. This is one of the central reasons why they fail to grasp the importance of invading Iraq. The views of Bernard Lewis are utterly alien to them. The standard meme is that of the late Edward Said. Changing the culture of the Middle East? This is perceived as a bizarre notion. The late President Reagan had to deal with these jokers during our conflict with the Soviet Union. President Bush must do likewise regarding our fight to the death against Islamic nihilism and secular Baathism.

"Of course they believe themselves to be moderates -- they are surrounded by people who believe just as they do!"

Agreed. They're really conservatives pretending to be moderate. Liberal media ? My donkey.

This is a very good question that Daniel Drezner poses.

I was thinking of this earlier, in the aftermath of posting on the Stoller/Drezner dustup (not bringing it up here, promise!).

Looking at the varous comments posted under that topic, the various "points" of people, simply tended to go past each other, as well as indulging in many logical fallacies in the arguments:

Here's a fun thing. Look at the following link:

http://home.mcn.net/~montanabw/fallacies.html

This can be printed out, and should help our collective posting (hopefully. of course, now people can just shout at each other, "Straw Man reasoning! Straw Man Reasoning!! Nyah nyah nyah!".)

My own position falls in the fact that "blogging" per se, without comments, is definitely propoganda, but usually a very informed propoganda - as all archived conversations are accessible. I think this is true for Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan, or Daniel Drezner. And I read all three, really, because I learn stuff, and they have great "blog voices", for lack of a better word.

Blogging with comments, such as this one - lends again to keeping oneself very well informed, and CAN lead to changing opinions, in those open to hearing the "facts" about the situation. But this is a rare occurence. In the better cases, it turns into a good-natured - and fixed - argument - in the bad cases, turns into NOT so good-natured. But I would think that this is still propaganda but again MUCH BETTER INFORMED propaganda.

The other thing that can be done, is to do what Daily Kos does, and create a community of like-minded individuals for specifc purposes - to refine their own propaganda, and to form relationships that affect the NON-virtual world.

Best,

JC

Will, the repetitions of the liberal media myth are really getting old and tiresome.

It's pure propaganda, and the smart ones among the conservatives know that very well. As William Kristol said:

I admit it: The liberal media were never that powerful and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.

I note you didn't address the inconvenience of the fact that while business tends to be conservative (as you said yourself), the media is part of - and owned by! - business.

Anybody who is seriously interested in the "liberal media" topic (as opposed just interested in spreading ill-informed propaganda) must read Eric Alterman's book What Liberal Media?.

JC: The other thing that can be done, is to do what Daily Kos does, and create a community of like-minded individuals for specifc purposes - to refine their own propaganda, and to form relationships that affect the NON-virtual world.

Ah, interesting. I've actually been wondering what the point of Daily Kos and, say, Democratic Underground is. Especially the latter is so "like-minded" that it's kind of boring. And they even specifically say that anybody who wants Bush to be re-elected shouldn't bother posting there. I find that rather unfortunate since I enjoy debate more than just hearing my own opinion confirmed. At the very least they could open one discussion forum for controversial debate. (Since I don't agree with many of the DU posters, I could actually start a debate there, too, but given their warnings I wonder if I'd quickly be disqualified as a potential Republican intruder!)

Having said that, I haven't really been reading blogs long enough to have had a good chance of a change-of-opinion experience, although my change away from supporting the war in Iraq to opposing it was partly based on an analysis of my own pro-war arguments and reactions to them. But it was even more the events in Iraq and especially the Abu Ghraib torture revelations. At that point it seemed to me that we had lost the last remaining possibile justification for the war (the humanitarian one, which I had personally always considered the only good one), and that was it for me.

It depends on what mindset you bring to the given blog. If you're there to tear down an opposing ideology, chances are you won't be willing to listen to a different point of view. If you're there to learn and refine your own beliefs, it's almost guaranteed that you will get a lot out of the blogosphere, and so will your peers.

Unfortunately, most people who flock to the internet tend to be extreme activists, so the former are more likely to be the bloggers. Still, the internet has changed the media landscape dramatically. Before, you had -

1) Elite media: The Big Broadcasting Trio, The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The LA Times, and so on. Usually, most of the journalists working at these institutions are, at the very least, socially liberal. They may not necessarily all be pro-Kerry or pro-Clinton, but reporters in the elite media are almost always pro-life, secular, and pro-gay marriage. GW claimed that this is balanced out by business, which tends to be conservative. True, but business executives rarely intervene in the newsroom. As long as the money flows into the coffers, they give the journalists a free hand. Another problem is that the New York Times is the central command for the elite media, since it sets the agenda for almost every outlet.

2) Right-wing alternative media: Drudge Report, Talk Radio, Newsmax, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News Channel, etc,. These outlets are Bush supporters to the death, coverage is slanted to the right. Liberal voices are allowed, but rarely and usually drowned out with one or two loud conservatives. Though most of these organizations claim to be objective, they blur the lines between opinion and hard news. However, even though the right-wing media is generally more biased than the elite media, the latter is far more powerful and influential, reaching tens of millions of people, while conservatives only have a fraction of the national audience.

With the blogs, almost anyone with a brain, two hands, and a computer can express his or her opinions to the world, and debate with other people. With the above categories, there are institutional biases against differing viewpoints; with blogs, there is no insitution.

It's incredible that "I am not a slanted liberal" press enablers can recreate their argument of denial right above the post Same Network, Different Worlds. And Isidore is the exception. The mainsteam media wing of organized labor is subtly using classic organizing techniques in this election process, making unsubstantiated claims and distorting or ignoring facts. When confronted with a challenge, first deny it, then accuse the other party of doing it and call foul that the accuser has the audacity to make the challenge. Classic!

“But it was even more the events in Iraq and especially the Abu Ghraib torture revelations.”

Your attitude borders on the immature. If we were to be overly concerned about aberrational abuses---we would never enter into a war. Such outrages inevitably occur. The only thing which can be done is to rectify these situations as quickly as possible. Abu Ghraib was a gross exception, not the general rule. What about the enormous saving of life that has occurred in Iraq? Saddam Hussein has been removed from power. That is the most important thing. What possible “events” could diminish this incredibly great accomplishment.

Have I had a blogging "Damascus moment?" Many, but more often on smaller issues I was less familiar with going in. My more dramatic conversions from leftward to rightward positions occurred long before Al Gore decided that "passing enabling legislation" was a major part of inventing the internet.

I have read Alterman and find his logic poor and even his good points ultimately unpersuasive. The premise that media outlets are corporate therefore procapitalist therefore conservative has more emotive than factual force. "Business" taken as a whole is not especially conservative in its politics -- certainly not on social issues. It likes the free market for obvious reasons. That is all.

Persons denying the leftward bias of the traditional media would probably be more persuasive to me if they did not offhandedly use inflammatory and condescending language -- "rant," for example -- while posing as objective arbiters. The emotional leakage of your language tells me more strongly than you would wish that you are not able to evaluate objectively.

If talk radio has some immunity from disagreement, how much more do print journalists and political cartoonists?

The pattern on this thread is developing that those leaning left (even if they can only bear to think of themselves as moderates) think that blogging and the internet is lowering the tone of the debate and spreading misinformation. Those leaning rightward tend to be more optimistic that the give-and-take will ultimately produce more good than ill. I would thus ask: do you prefer the days when people got their news from 3 networks, two major news magazines, and 6 major newspapers, all of which had a mid-left slant? Wonder why? Welcome to the world of argument -- some of it skilled, some of it silly.

David Thomson: If we were to be overly concerned about aberrational abuses---we would never enter into a war.

Maybe we wouldn't - and shouldn't - enter into a "war of choice" anymore. And maybe that would be good. Because, as you point out, war is horrific and should be avoided, if possible. There are, of course, unavoidable wars, but Iraq was not one of them.

Such outrages inevitably occur.

That's an interesting statement. Would you have made it at the beginning of the war?

In any case, the issue is not that something happened, but how it was dealt with - how attempts were made to cover it up, and how more incidents of torture occurred during the months (!) of the cover-up attempts. How there was no clear sense of who was in charge at the prison - Rumsfeld couldn't even answer simple questions about that. Seymour Hersh uncovered a secret Pentagon program that is at least indirectly responsible for what happened. And now we have the "torture memos".

Even Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) spoke about "system failure". This isn't about a handful of people and isolated incidents. This also isn't about our soldiers being generally of bad character, no, certainly not. This is about a government that has deliberately let go of the moral high ground - only internally, of course.

What about the enormous saving of life that has occurred in Iraq?

I think the jury is still out on that. If Iraq plunges into chaos and civil war after we leave, the loss of life may yet be staggering and surpass anything that happened under Saddam. And we killed quite a few innocent Iraqis, too.

Saddam Hussein has been removed from power. That is the most important thing.

Why? Because you simply declare it to be "the most important thing"?

What possible “events” could diminish this incredibly great accomplishment.

Gee, what an innocent sounding question!

I bet some people asked that same innocent question after beating Germany into submission - at the end of the First World War...

You guys really don't get it, do you? It's NEVER about winning the war, it's ALWAYS about winning the peace!

Historically, America has a pretty good record of winning wars, but a pretty bad record of winning the peace afterwards. Even the peace after WWII was only won at the cost of losing Eastern Europe to tyranny for 45 years and of starting the Cold War.

The first Iraq war was won swiftly, but the peace (if there even was any peace) was a disaster.

When will people learn from these past mistakes? Ever?

Assistant Village Idiot: ... Al Gore decided that "passing enabling legislation" was a major part of inventing the internet.

I have read Alterman and find his logic poor and even his good points ultimately unpersuasive.

Those two sentences don't go together well. Did you not read as far as chapter 10?

There Alterman shows at great length how the "liberal media" essentially sabotaged Gore's campaign by publishing several false stories about him - that he claimed that he had invented the Internet, that the characters of "Love Story" had been based on his wife and him, that he had discovered the toxic waste site "Love Canal".

In all these cases Gore had either been grossly misquoted (sometimes to the point of deliberate falsification), or, in the case of "Love Story", his assertion was basically correct and yet was presented in the liberal media as a blatant lie. So blatant that George Stephanopoulos went on ABC to state "Gore, again, revealed his Pinocchio problem" (after the "Love Canal" story broke).

No, the so-called liberal media revealed its incompetence (which, when directed against Republicans is quickly and summarily denounced as "bias"). Fact-checking - what's that?

Corrections were eventually published, but somehow they didn't quite make the front page. As a result it appears that until today a majority of Americans may still believe that Al Gore falsely claimed that he invented the Internet and that he lied about other things, too. (What he did say about the Internet was that during his time in Congress he had taken "the initiative in creating the Internet". Creating, not inventing! The Arpanet had been "invented", but without politicians like Gore it might have remained a relatively small non-commercial network for scientists and computer geeks.)

Whereas the real liar was the other candidate, and he was getting away with his lies. Or how many Americans know that Bush lied about taking credit for signing a law in Texas that he actually vetoed (and never signed at all)? How many Americans know that his statement "the vast majority of my tax cuts goes to the bottom end of the spectrum" was a blatant lie?

How is any of this possible when a "liberal" media is running the show, a media that surely would like to expose the lies of a lying right-winger? How is it possible that instead truthful statements of the Democratic candidate are distorted and presented as lies?

Can someone please explain?

Persons denying the leftward bias of the traditional media would probably be more persuasive to me if they did not offhandedly use inflammatory and condescending language -- "rant," for example -- while posing as objective arbiters.

Just for fun, let's search for the word "rant" (or "rants") on Google News. Hm, let's see...

"Gore's recent rant about Bush" (New York Post, which also informs us "it is now clear that Al Gore is insane")
"Al Gore's nonstop rant against President Bush" (New York Post again)
"Al Gore's rant" (Boulder Daily Camera, CO)
"Al Gore, whose recent hate-filled rant" (Union Leader, NH)
"another Al Gore rant" (Opinion Editorials, VA)
"Yet Gore can rant" (Frontpagemag.com)
"Howard Stern's anti-Bush rants" (Newark Star Ledger, NJ)
[Michael Moore's] "anti-war rant" (Boston Herald, MA)
"The biggest Democratic rant" (American Daily, OH; Opinion Editorials, VA)
"Whether it’s an Al Gore growling rant against the president or a Howard Dean scream" (Washington Dispatch)
"She then went on a strange rant saying that we're crazy if we plan on voting for Bush" (WorldNetDaily, Town Hall and others)
"Carroll's speech was yet another liberal rant" (Yahoo News, WorldNetDaily and others)

And to top it all off:
"Russert's rant was ridiculous" (Washington Post!)

There is actually quite an amazing story behind the "Russert rant". This refers to the interview with Powell that was prematurely cut off by a Powell staffer. Russert did not edit out the interruption because he thought it was outrageous that someone would try to cut him off just as was about to ask another pretty important question.

Yet in the "liberal media" this has been portrayed as Russert having too big an ego. Ignored completely is the fact that indeed Powell was about to make the most explosive comment of the whole interview after the attempted interruption - he said about the WMD evidence before the war "it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading."

And yet the liberal media incompetents, especially the ones at the Washington Post, focused entirely on "Russert's rant", even saying that he was about to ask his last question anyway. Never mind that this last question led to a pretty amazing revelation and that Powell himself actually demanded to be put back on the air (and later apologized to Russert for the interruption).

gw, you take a great deal of time to miss the point. My Al Gore comment was made precisely with the misquote and misunderstanding in mind. I did not ignore the real quote, I started from that point. I find it even more damning that Gore does not believe something exists (Love Canal, the internet) until the government gets involved.

My objection to the use of the word "rant" was directed at writers on the thread. Your googling provides irrelevant information. However, putting that information with the Al Gore criticism in the papers allows me to make an important point. The claim of bias does not mean I am claiming that no liberal is ever criticized and all conservatives are always criticized. A referee can favor the home team but still call some fouls against them.

The traditional media is not far-left, approving of an idea on the extreme over one nearer the center. It is mid-left. But it is consistently left, and that is the problem. The alternative media may indeed be offsetting the bias somewhat, and it may be hoped that the more objective sources will prevail.

Interesting that people here seem to assume that the level of political discourse was ever very high. I doubt that is true. Democracies are not debating societies and politics, I believe, is really more of an emotional than an intellectual exercise. You will generally get much better discourse talking about purely intellectual matters (science, history) or about things that people know about (their jobs, families, etc.) than politics. Clearly, people who blog and who comment on blogs are much more well-informed and interested in politics than the average person. Therefore, their comments are certainly more articulate. But I think the best dialoge really comes between people that have significant levels of agreement. If you, for example, took Noam Chomsky and William Buckley, I doubt the level of discourse would be too great because they would be talking past each other. The same is true on blogs. The closer you get to the ends of the spectrum, the less civil and more polemical the comments get, meaning that neither side will concede that the other has a point. In a lot of cases, it is simply impossible to evaluate the strength of a particular argument because the argument is based on data that are either not immediately available or subject to differing interpretations. That's the case here with the discussion of whether there is liberal bias in the media. If you believe there is, you're not likely to be persuaded otherwise and, of course, vice versa. The gap is simply too large to be bridged.

I guess my basic conclusion is that blogs have little effect on the quality of political discourse but they increase the amount of such discourse by bringing people with like interests together. That's a positive.

This is a MUCH BETTER Blog than Bopnews. Pretty soon, Mr. Newberry will have either banned or run off most of the people who post there. He is particularly fond of banning people for "Lying" which he defines in his own words as "misrepresentation." Well, I think he simply defines anyone's comments he disagrees with as "lies" then proceeds to vilify the poster.

Many thanks to the person who moderates this Blog for letting us have our say!

GW, speaking of "spreading ill-informed propaganda," did you notice that Alterman's quote of Kristol doesn't say at all what Alterman claims it says?

Nowhere does Kristol say that the media isn't disproportionately liberal and isn't biased in its reporting.

To take "The liberal media isn't the cause of our problems" and turn that into "The media isn't liberal" is rather disingenuous, don't you think?

Well, no, as someone once said. To the extent we're talking about the people who work in the literal presence of the aisle -- elected legislators -- blogging has no impact on political discourse. This is because hardly any legislators read blogs.

Some of them don't read anything. Some of them, following a famous example, read only the objective reports prepared for them by their own staff. But most of them are just 10 years or so behind the Internet revolution, treating e-mail as a useful means of staying in touch with their offices (all federal legislators have more than one) but not going into what any blogger says unless it is quoted in The Washington Post.

And of course very few legislators write either. This is probably a mercy for the most part, but I cannot help but think that someone like Sen. Moynihan or Rep. Barber Conable, who wrote all their own newsletters to constituents, might have had substantially higher public profiles if they had been able to blog. And this might have been a good thing.

Now I take it Dan's point was directed mostly at the small universe of bloggers and those who read them. To that extent his optimism may be justified. However in any forum from Congress down to the local PTA the quality and civility of discussion often depends on the moderator. The blogosphere as a whole doesn't have one. I don't know that this is always a bad thing, but we've all seen exchanges between bloggers or discussion threads here that go off on tangents or degenerate into flame wars or repeat the same points over and over. That isn't a complaint, just a recognition of the reasons that the blogosphere's capacity to improve the "quality of political argumentation" is at most a capacity to improve it slowly.

Assistant Village Idiot: My Al Gore comment was made precisely with the misquote and misunderstanding in mind. I did not ignore the real quote, I started from that point.

No, you didn't. You repeated the misquote. And you evidently still misunderstand what really happened. I guess it's hopeless - you have made up your mind about Gore, and that's it. Whether the incorrect quotes in the press played a role in forming a wrong opinion or whether they were just used to confirm a pre-formed ideological point of view is impossible to tell in retrospect.

My objection to the use of the word "rant" was directed at writers on the thread.

Prior to your objection to it, the word "rant" was used by exactly one writer on this thread, and he was referring to Rush Limbaugh.

I have provided you with many examples in return showing that right-wing commentators in the press routinely use the word "rant" to attack democratic politicians like Al Gore. You seem to be unfazed by this or rather you just didn't want to hear about it. You are shocked by one commentator here expressing an opinion by calling Rush Limbaugh a ranter, but not by numerous conservative "news" outlets calling Al Gore the same?

A referee can favor the home team but still call some fouls against them.

This remark is quite interesting in the face of then-Republican party chairman Rich Bond declaring in 1992:

"There is some strategy to it [bashing the ‘liberal’ media]. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."

Which is exactly what's been happening - the "liberal" media are so scared of seeming liberal that they tend to make calls that favor (or at least excuse) conservatives, if there is any doubt at all.

David Nieporent: To take "The liberal media isn't the cause of our problems" and turn that into "The media isn't liberal" is rather disingenuous, don't you think?

Well, I think it's disingenuous to claim that Alterman did this. Interestingly, you completely misquote Kristol. Gee, we wouldn't want to repeat his quote too often, would we?

"I admit it: The liberal media were never that powerful and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures."

What exactly could he have been referring to when he said "the whole thing"? The whole bashing of the media as liberal? The whole claim that the media exert a liberal influence?

(Actually, that is a good question, since I have been unable to locate a longer quote with more context. The quote is from The New Yorker, May 22, 1995. If anybody has access to that issue, please fill us in...)

Sigh. So "passing enabling legislation" is the same thing as taking the initiative in creating the internet?

Please, I use "rant" as but an example. My point is that ungracious comments abound, and I do not find this to be offsetting fouls. I do not see that it has been answered.

Nonetheless, despite your frustration, I thank you for your answer.