Oliver Willis: Being Wrong Is Not Enough: How The Media Protects Conservative Punditry » The Daily Banter
Oliver Willis:
The Daily Banter: Being Wrong Is Not Enough: How The Media Protects Conservative Punditry: The mainstream media is in the midst of yet another round of tut-tutting.… Nate Silver…. [T]he media gang has decided to attack him. It’s worth noting that Silver’s model doesn’t indicate that there’s no chance of Mitt Romney being elected, just... a lower probability than Obama. Also worth noting that none of these detractors made any noise when Silver forecast GOP gains in 2010....
Contrast this to Fox News pundit Dick Morris, who never gets anything right. Fox constantly pushes Morris – to the point where he offers tours of their studio to Republican donors – and rarely is it noted just how wrong Morris gets things…. Bill Kristol whose only real mea culpa for banging the war drums was a sheepish shrug on The Daily Show…. Stephen Hayes, who wrote an entire book about “The Connection” between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein that we all knew was b.s. at the time…. Is Hayes an outcast, a living joke? No, he’s Dick Cheney’s biographer and part of Fox News’ “All-Star” panel.
Conservative media does not subject its members to any sort of honesty tests... absolute nonsense is rewarded... stupidity is rewarded. The mainstream media, in response, is so afraid – so cowed – by the conservative press, that they never call out these bad actors….
A guy like Silver annoys this excrement-laden ecosystem…. The right doesn’t like it because it hurts their fact-free “Romney has momentum” narrative.... The mainstream media reacts badly to what upsets their right-wing abusers, and we get more crappy analysis and attacks masquerading as journalism.
