This Week In Media Failures

Me, about a week ago:

It is much more sexy and interesting and flashy to cover the BIG POLITICAL STORY of the latest from Sarah Palin's Facebook or Twittertwat account, midwest/northeast snow storms, and falling over themselves to book Republicans on Sunday news shows, because never in our lives has hearing weekly from theloser of a presidential election been so important or popular.

Today:

The Wisconsin standoff is the most important domestic political story in the country right now, and as many commentators at those same networks have pointed out, both sides view this battle as ground zero in a national war that may determine the fate of organized labor in America.

But labor officials are beginning to fear that none of them will be invited on this weekend to give voice to the labor point of view. This, even as tough-talking anti-union governor Chris Christie is set to do a major appearance on CBS on Sunday.

One AFL-CIO official tells me that reps for the AFL-CIO and other unions reached out to all the big three network shows -- ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, and CBS' Face the Nation -- to ask if they would invite on any labor officials. Thus far the answer has been cool to indifferent, the official says.

No labor officials have yet been booked to appear. Carin Pratt, the executive producer of CBS's Face the Nation -- which is hosing Christie -- seemed to suggest as much in an email. "We are doing Gov. Christie for part of the show, with probably a segment on Libya," she said. "We're not only talking about labor."

[...]

Not only is he appearing on Face the Nation, but a huge, 6600-word profile of Christie is set to appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine describing him as a "Republican superstar." 

Weird. The very future of organized labor is being waged in a high-profile battle in Wisconsin, with solidarity rallies planned nationwide, and the big line-up on the major media shows this Sunday are...anti-union Republican governors. And even the liberal New York Times is lining up to fellate him in their Sunday pages too. It sure is good we have such a hardcore, objective, watchdog press.

And next up, the Affordable Care Act:

Ezra Klein explains why this is significant (other than the obvious):

I'm sympathetic to the argument that pro-ACA rulings simply ratify the status quo and are thus not newsworthy. But we also have to be mindful of the fact that most Americans don't follow this stuff closely, and if all they see are news stories about the minority of judges who have ruled against the individual mandate, they're quite likely to think that the mandate has actually been ruled unconstitutional. I think that's part of why we're seeing polls showing 22 percent of Americans think the ACA has already been repealed.

And there is your media that is so damned liberal that we need to have a specialty right-wing batshit channel free of socialist conspiracy theories and coverage that is vastly unfair to the right.