Media Matters: Putting the "partisan" in "bipartisanship"

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Media Matters: Putting the "partisan" in "bipartisanship"

by Jamison Foser


If there was any doubt that the news media have a badly skewed understanding of "bipartisanship" -- one in which no number of concessions from Democrats is enough and no number from Republicans is too little -- the reaction to Judd Gregg's decision to back out of becoming Barack Obama's commerce secretary should put the matter to rest.

Even before the Gregg announcement, the flaws in the media's fetishization of bipartisanship had been on display for weeks.

Most striking has been the bizarre notion that bipartisanship is an essential end in and of itself, rather than a means to an end. When the House of Representatives passed a stimulus bill two weeks ago, ABC's The Note led not with an analysis of the content of the legislation, but with President Obama's purported failure to win a single Republican vote. (Note that the failure of bipartisanship was not portrayed as a bipartisan failing; it was Obama's alone. But we'll get back to that shortly.)

That was typical of reporting in the days before the vote, which was at its most absurd when NBC's Chuck Todd asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs if Obama would veto a bill that lacked Republican support. In the midst of an economic crisis unlike any we've seen in decades, the news media think the most important thing is not that the government take strong, successful action to help the economy -- and the millions of Americans who are struggling -- recover. No, they think the most important thing is for Democrats and Republicans to play nicely together.

Which leads to the other problem that was evident during the stimulus coverage: Reporters always seem to think it is the Democrats' responsibility to reach out to the Republicans -- and that if Democrats reach across the aisle only to draw back a bloody stump where their hand used to be, it's their fault for not reaching further.

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http://mediamatters.org/items/200902130023?f=h_top