The Spin We're In

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog (who's been kind enough to link us here, appreciate that), finds Politico is blaming the birther stupidity on the messengers pointing it out.

... when it comes to keeping the "birther" questions front and center, [CNN's Lou] Dobbs can't hold a candle to his mocking competitors at MSNBC.

On the same day that Dobbs was shushing Crowley, MSNBC was covering the "birther" issue on "Hardball," "Countdown," "The Ed Show" and "The Rachel Maddow Show." All four shows had touched on the issue the day before, too, along with dayside hosts David Shuster and Tamron Hall, who devoted about six minutes -- an eternity in TV news -- to an interview with birther movement leader Dr. Orly Taitz, beamed in by satellite from Tel Aviv.

... by giving the birthers such a platform -- even to knock them off of it -- is MSNBC giving them more legitimacy than they deserve?

... Fox News has given relatively little attention to the birthers....

Hmmm ... giving heavy coverage to fringe figures whose theories make your ideological opponents look bad.

Gosh, Fox News would never do that, would it?

In which case, Steve goes on to document FOX doing just that time and time again.

To its credit, Politico notes that Fox News has been guilty of the same journalistic sin on occasion, specifically citing the Ward Churchill story.

... Oh, no, wait, it doesn't. There's nothing whatsoever in the Politico story about Ward Churchill, or any other historical footnote who's been a target of Fox saturation coverage simply because he can be used to try to make liberalism look bad.

Nor is there any mention of the fact that Fox's Fox Nation Web site gave the birther story front-page status on multiple occasions...

Which of course is the issue. As I said Wednesday, attacking the messenger is the only course of action they have. Blaming the birthers on the people who report their idiocy is a little like blaming the victims for the crime.

But then again, they do that too. Of course Politico is going to play Spin the Blame on the Liberals. They've done it plenty of times in the past.