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Self-Loathing? Former Newsweek Reporter Denounces 'Mainstream Media' on OWS

By Tim Graham | October 29, 2011 | 07:32

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One of the most popular articles on the liberal website Slate right now is by former Newsweek legal reporter Dahlia Lithwick, denouncing the "mainstream media" which fail to understand the Occupy Wall Street movement. The article is titled "Occupy the No-Spin Zone." Lithwick speaks as a participant, since "I spent time this weekend at Occupy Wall Street and my husband spent much of last week adding his voice to the protesters there." (Her husband, Aaron Fein, is a sculptor, so he has the free time.)

Dahlia's not just denouncing Fox News (all liberals do), but denouncing the mainstream media for not being leftist enough, for devoting "four mind-numbing years" to chronicling the Kardashians and taking the Palin family seriously:

This would require the belief that this guy is a more serious news subject. Anyway, she writes:

For the past several years, while the mainstream media was dutifully reporting on all things Kardashian or (more recently) a wholly manufactured debt-ceiling crisis, ordinary people were losing their health care, their homes, their jobs, and their savings. Those people have taken that narrative to Facebook and Twitter—just as citizens took to those alternative forms of media throughout the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring. And just to be clear: They aren’t holding up signs that say “I want Bill O’Reilly’s stuff.” They aren’t holding up signs that say “I am animated by toxic levels of envy and entitlement.” They are holding up signs that are perfectly and intrinsically clear: They want accountability for the banks that took their money, they want to end corporate control of government. They want their jobs back. They would like to feed their children. They want—wait, no, we want—to be heard by a media that has devoted four mind-numbing years to channeling and interpreting every word uttered by a member of the Palin family while ignoring the voices of everyone else.

And there’s this. The mainstream media thrives on simple solutions. It has no idea whatsoever of how to report on a story that isn’t about easy fixes so much as it is about anguished human frustration and fear. The media prides itself on its ability to tell you how to clear your clutter, regrout your shower, or purge your closet of anything that makes you look fat—in 24 minutes or less. It is bound to be flummoxed by a protest that offers up no happy endings. Luckily for us, #OWS doesn’t seem to care.

Fox News will never succeed in ridiculing her pals on the hard left decrying the evils of capitalism:

It must be painful for the pundits at Fox News. The more they demand that OWS explain itself in simple, Fox-like terms, the more cheerfully they are ignored by the occupiers around the country. As efforts to ridicule the protesters fail, attempts to repurpose the good old days of enemies lists falter; and efforts to demonize the occupiers backfire, polls continue to show that Americans support the protesters and share their goals. The rest of us quickly cottoned on to the fact that the only people who are scared of the “violent mobs” at Occupy Wall Street are the people being paid to call them violent mobs.

But Dahlia's clearly indicting the "corporate media" as a whole. Er, Dahlia, you work for The Washington Post Company. If they've died, aren't you out of a paycheck? Aren't you declaring your bosses are clueless dinosaurs? Or are they merely clueless corporate dinosaurs who aren't yet smart enough to realize they're really backing OWS sympathizers who are one of those rare people who truly understand the world?

Mark your calendars: The corporate media died when it announced it was too sophisticated to understand simple declarative sentences. While the mainstream media expresses puzzlement and fear at these incomprehensible “protesters” with their oddly well-worded “signs,” the rest of us see our own concerns reflected back at us and understand perfectly. Turning off mindless programming might be the best thing that ever happens to this polity. Hey, occupiers: You’re the new news. And even better, by refusing to explain yourselves, you’re actually changing what’s reported as news. Because it takes a tremendous mental effort to refuse to see that the rich are getting richer in America while the rest of us are struggling. Maybe the days of explaining the patently obvious to the transparently compromised are finally behind us.

By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance. The rest of America has little trouble understanding that these are ragtag, complicated, and leaderless times. This may not make for great television, but any movement that acknowledges that fact deserves enormous credit.

About the Author

Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Tim Graham on Twitter.
  • Wall Street protests
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Woulda gone viral on YouTube

Submitted by Tim Graham on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 8:20am.

"When I met [Justice Stephen] Breyer for the first time, we were both hopping up and down like 14-year-old girls, and he told me 'What you're doing is so important, to humanize this court,'" she recalls. "With all this talk of 'activist judges' and even judges being shot at for their rulings, it's important to remember they're just human beings."

http://www.readthehook.com/81880/hotseat-hello-dahlia-lithwick-relishes-...


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Remember

Submitted by desert3030 on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 9:19am.

The Demorats, Unions, Soros, Media Matters, and the rest of their followers are for "fair share", equal rights, and and injustice. This week they cheered their "victory" , a Sharia run Libya, and I may add patted thermselves on the back. Now after Eygpy, Libya, Syria, Iran, and how many more will they add to the "their" block?

Then they say I support Occupy. Here is what Occupy is worried about here in AZ, Hot Air has confirmed with the Arizona Department of Public Safety that fliers have been found at Occupy Phoenix instructing people on when to shoot police officers.

I wonder if Holder is providing the guns?

Thanks Mr. President for your support for both, or now will you side with wrong? Doubt it.

Desert3030
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The OWS commies are not happy with Fox News

Submitted by Dave. on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 9:27am.

I guess dirty, stinking commies do not like being exposed for being…well, dirty, stinking commies. 

A group of commie hackers has vowed to shut down the Fox News website on November 5th.

-Dave

Vote for the American in November

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What she is too stupid to understand is...

Submitted by zenman1661 on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 9:40am.

that by holding up a sign saying "I want Bill O"Reilly's stuff" they are exactly saying
I am animated by toxic levels of envy and entitlement. Because if they want stuff like he has they need to work as long and hard as he did, not just wave a sign around.

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But the TEA party? Well,

Submitted by sublight68 on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 9:55am.

But the TEA party? Well, they're obviously simple-minded, racist rednecks. No story there.

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How stupid does she think people are....?

Submitted by NeoKong on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 10:21am.

This is typical of your average leftie media type. They all think that we need them to explain the world to us. Apparently none of us can make an informed opinion of what is really going on at these OWS demonstrations unless our opinions are fed to us by the likes of her.
Don't believe your lying eyes because she will tell us what is really going on. If your are not seeing it her way then you are obviously wrong.

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How much the the things she

Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 10:58am.

How much the the things she bemoans did she actually report on? She followed the script her leftist controllers provided her, she is the blind useful idiot.

Non, je ne regrette rien. "You aren't angry because I might be a racist, you're angry because you know I'm right".
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The same dynamic is playing

Submitted by amyshulk on Sun, 10/30/2011 - 2:41am.

The same dynamic is playing out all over again, with a few differences.

The TP was dismissed, reviled, falsely accused, then written off as dead AFTER they flipped the House. Stay tuned.

The OWS was embraced right off, the msm took the time to try to find the *normal* ones that people could identify with, and the msm ignores that which it sought out in the TP.

BUT - the left stands up for it, after slamming the TP, while the right, after wondering what the heck was happening at town halls finally caught on and said - yeah, the TP has a point or two.

Otherwise, yeah, you are *totally* right that the msm wants only to reports on stuff they have a solution for.

The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan
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UltraLiberal News network - Faux News

Submitted by 4Deuce on Sun, 10/30/2011 - 6:26am.

If ABC, CBS, NBC,MSNBC and Current TV aren't left-leaning enough for Dahlia Lithwick and her leftist cheerleading husband, I suggest she show a little entrepraneurial spirit. Perhaps she could have Obama call Warren Buffet, as he did when he wanted Buffet to bail out Bank of of America not long ago, and Buffett can give Lithwick a no interest loan to set up a new news network of the kind she longs for.

I suggest a little truth in advertising though - Lithwick should call her new leftist network Faux News as is fitting for the type of journalism she is advocating

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