Conspiracies R Us

Judging by some of the e-mail I'm getting, the first step in having a good discussion on media is making a convincing case that the issues here run deeper than newsroom polls that show most of us voted for President Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry or whatever.

People are just skeptical: They think the press is liberal and that the evidence is so simple that it just doesn't even bear discussing. The case for my perspective is trickier to make. Yes, I think it's obvious once you've read certain things and worked up close and personal in the system, but most people aren't going to read "Into the Buzzsaw" or "Republican Noise Machine," (but funny how they've all read "Bias" by Bernie Goldberg) and they don't have the first-hand experience of how operators work the system to their advantage.

From our perspective, all official information that comes out of the highest levels of the federal government is managed and processed and always has been. It's the way the game is played, and it's a high-stakes game.

But there's a difference between managing information on behalf of your client and treating communication as a weapon. The Old School manipulators did damage control; the New School wants to attack and stay on attack. The Old School viewed the press as a form of opposition that needed to be held at bay; the Neos view the press as the enemy, as traitors.

And until we can prove to people that we aren't, they're going to keep on winning.