media

Keith Olbermann turned himself into a liberal journalist sometime in late-2004 after George Bush won re-election in a bitter fight for the White House (that being unless he undermined the system and cheated again). I was originally flattered by his style of journalism–which was frankly, leagues ahead of what anyone had seen on FOX News or CNN (then again, anything was better than the monotone approach of Paula Zahn and the hypocrisy, racism, sexism, and gullible approach of Bill O’Reilly)–but now I realize that Mr. Olbermann is misrepresenting the Democratic party, liberal base, and the liberal media.

He has turned what was a fact-check on the conservative media into an all-out firestorm against Mr. O’Reilly as both an individual and anchor. His refusal to end this obvious ratings-ploy that seems more like name-calling between two kindergarteners is tarnishing his reputation as a serious journalist. In the process, he is destroying his own network, MNSBC and its much more respectable parent, NBC News.

Also, his 10-minute “special comments” have transitioned from a smart, carefully-worded approach at exposing crooks and liars to an all-out attack that is baseless and undeserving. His recent special comment on Hillary Clinton’s RFK-assassination baffled me. I don’t agree with what Mrs. Clinton said, but it wasn’t newsworthy. His neverending rant didn’t focus on a particular issue, like how Katrina victims are still deprived of resources, or how the United States is going full speed ahead to the Olympics in Beijing despite China’s mistreatment of the people in Tibet and Darfur, but rather an unsignificant comment made by a candidate that was hardly worth discussing.

The liberal media’s reputation was spotless before Mr. Olbermann’s sudden transformation in late-2004. Much of it was known for quality reporting, researched content, and informative insight into the world of politics. These days, the liberal media is about attacking everyone who attacks them in sight, not coming up with solutions but rather assuming and coming to false conclusions, and not willing to compromise for the good of the people.

Isn’t that what we continue to accuse the conservative media of doing?

edit: I hope to make myself clear here. I am a DEMOCRAT. I stand for DEMOCRATS. BUT, I will speak out when one of our own misrepresents our base, our ideals, and our values. When it comes to the media, I stand for an UNBIASED media that is not opinionated on any subject. That way, we can all make our own VALID conclusions based on the FACTS.
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Shane runs the youth-based blog, The Young Democrat.

I'm guest blogging for The Nation for the next month. I'll be posting 3 - 4 posts per week, some of which will be cross-posted here.

My first piece went up today. It's a rebuttal to that Paul Maslin piece in Salon last week:

For as long as I've been involved in youth organizing (about five years now), our most difficult adversary has been the press. During the 2004 election, the media over-hyped the circus that was P. Diddy's "Vote or Die," while ignoring the real work on the ground done by groups with far less star power (and consequently a smaller draw for a rag looking to sell papers or pull in eyeballs). After the election, despite large gains made in youth turnout and participation, the media largely botched its analysis by falsely declared the youth vote – once again – little more than electoral vaporware.

It's been one of the great victories for the youth organizing community this cycle that the media narrative has finally – and surprisingly, accurately – turned in our favor. Which is why I was hugely disappointed this weekend to read a piece in Salon written by Democratic pollster and fellow Deaniac Paul Maslin that proclaimed the youth vote to be "not that big of a deal."

To be fair, Maslin gets it right when he says that youth turnout is about more than Obama. The increases we've seen are a long time in coming and are due to a confluence of factors including: the increased size and natural engagement of the Millennials generation, over four years of organizing work in the field and online to engage young voters on the part of progressive youth organizers, and a real devotion of time and campaign resources on the part of the Democratic Presidential candidates.

But Maslin gets it wrong when he tries to lay blame for Kerry's loss at the feet of young people. Voters under 30 not only increased their turnout in larger numbers than any other age demographic in 2004, they were also the only age demographic to vote for John Kerry over President Bush. Maslin's thinking is common among youth-vote critics who clutch to a nonsensical binary world-view that a friend of mine summed-up rather aptly: "Everyone expects young people to fail until they succeed, and then they didn't succeed enough."

Read the rest here.

Earlier today, the conservative Washington Times printed an op-ed by Suzanne Fields in which the author called young voters ignorant and don't understand policy or the great political debate of our time.

Kat Barr at Rock the Vote effectively demolishes the author's arguments in a response on the Rock the Vote blog:

But I'm very much going to take issue with the idea that young adults are too ignorant to grasp the big issues of the day. Given that today's 18-29 year olds are the most educated generation in American history, are reading the news at increasing levels, have access to the Internet and its vast resources in growing numbers, and are getting involved in issues and politics in ways we've not seen in decades - I'd say we're doing an OK job of being informed.

And speaking as the "young voter" (I'm 30) who wrote the post - I am well aware of the significance of the Knesset speech. I'm well aware that what happened at the Knesset was a remarkable departure from a 60-year-old standard originally agreed to by two venerable Americans, President Harry S. Truman and Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, to keep foreign policy criticisms between elected officials within our shores. As noted in a column in The Hill:

"It is a tradition for a sitting president not to confuse partisan politics with foreign policy. We can have intense debates within our borders, but we don’t carry them overseas. We especially do not air our partisanship in a politically charged atmosphere, such as the Israeli Knesset, where it may well inflame passions in the complex and dangerous environment of the Middle East. Yet that is exactly what President Bush did."

Speaking as one young(ish) voter, I can assure the columnist I get the importance of what happened last week. And I also get that foreign policy is complicated and that politics can be complicated. And I get that there are troubles in how our education system prepares us to understand these things.

Go read the whole thing.

Joe's got some smart things about the overall nomination process - specifically how the media misreports the horse race. Plus he uses a kick-ass Super Mario Brothers analogy to describe Obama vs. McCain and why the media coverage will continue to be wrong for the next 6 months.

I've got a few big posts in the hopper, but they probably won't start rolling out until later this afternoon or tomorrow. Today appears to be a slow news day (unless you are still interested in Rev. Wright or the latest obscenity McCain called his wife). Nevertheless, these are worth checking out:

• Rockt the Vote issues a new handbook for reaching young voters: Winning Young Voters. I'll have more about this later this weekend. - Rock the Vote
• Young--and in Charge: Under-30 Dems Set to Have Big Impact - Hispanic Business Wire
• Parsing the Generational Divide for Democrats - NPR
• Voting Rights Are Too Important to Leave to the States - New York Times
• Senate Passes Student Loans Bill - The Politico
• Is FaceBook the Hub of the Internet World? - DIY Marketing

• Pinch me because I think I'm dreaming, but "this year the youth vote will matter," declares the mainstream media. -Washington Post
• Road trip for Democracy. An oldy but goody organization from 2004 is gearing up to get to work in 2008. -Swing Semester

• Next Generation is Reshaping Politics Through Social Networks. An interview with Morley Winograd of Millennial Makeover. -San Jose Mercury News
• ABC News notes that the age gap between the candidates is made larger as education levels rise. -ABC News
• Young, left-leaning religious voters are making social justice issues a part of their faith and politics. -St. Louis Today
• The New York Times Editorial page has an idea for helping cash-strapped students: reign in the out-of-control price of books and the monopoly that sets the prices. - New York Times

While you are waiting for the PA results to come in, check out these stories around the internets:

• The DNC has an excellent primer on all things related to the Democratic Convention: Delegates, Super Delegates, and more.
• The New York Times notes that age is the biggest predictor of support (aside from race) in the Democratic primary, a trend I'm sure we'll see play out later tonight.
• MySpace has teamed up with NBC news to produce a snazzy new political section to their website: Decision '08. This is very similar to the partnership ABC forged with FaceBook. For MySpace's sake, I hope it's more effective. And if anyone is reading, or goodness sake, please stop the video from auto-playing. The last thing I want is Chris Matthews blaring at me whenever I hit your site.
• U.S. cell phone voters would like to be able to vote via text.
• Bush's approval ratings are the lowest of any President in the last 70 years. Maybe that's why he decided it was a good idea to appear on Deal or No Deal last night.
• The Nation has launched their annual student writing contest.
• CNN's League of First Time Voters, which you may be hearing about tonight, is catching flack from youth activists.
• Finally, students in Washington and Arizona are competing to see who can register more new voters on Facebook:

I just got around to watching a clip of Chris Matthews' Hardball from this weekend in which he, David Gregory, Howard Fineman, Katty Kay, and a second woman whose name I missed mangled the youth vote. It was painful to seen so many "serious" people (some of whom I do actually respect) make so many mistakes with little to no data to back up their claims. Crooks and Liars has the video here.

Notable mistakes/problems in the very few minutes I was able to watch online:

• They reporters conflate Gen X and the Millennial Generation, the two living generations with the least compatible political views, and then expect to divine some truth about the political habits of "young voters."
• David Gregory says that young voters are skeptical of institutions.
• Katty Kay claimed that McCain can win on a pro-war ticket if war is in the headlines.
• Howard Fineman, in a particularly vacuous comment with no supporting data whatsoever, claimed that McCain had "that twinkle in the eye - a combination of being unpolitical and having a kick-butt mentality on security that "will appeal to a lot of kids."

Really? This is what passes for serious political discourse about young people in the political process? A bunch of 40+ year olds repeating stereotypes from the 90s and making claims about Millennial attitudes almost totally unsupported by any data?

Let me first address the one piece of data upon which the segment was based, namely, an NBC/Wall St. Journal poll that showed Obama and McCain running virtually even among young voters. Not having seen the methodology or margin of error of the poll, I can't fully comment on its accuracy, but I will say this. The poll broke out "young voters" as 18 - 35 year olds. With an age-range that broad, this poll is nothing more than a shotgun blast from a hundred yards. It's scattershot and not going to tell you much of anything useful.

Some groups, like the Young Democrats and Young Republicans do in fact break out youth using that criteria, but far more people categorize the youth vote as 18 - 29. There are actually a few very good reasons for this, particularly in this year. Young people are not monolithic. Depending on where they are at in life, they tend to have very different concerns about what issues are important. A student in college is very different from someone out of college looking for a career. A 25 year old just starting a career is very different from a 32 year old with a mortgage a spouse and a baby. Lumping these groups together tends to make polling very generic and pretty meaningless if you are looking to say something substantive about a group of people. That's why it's very useful to break out even the typical 18 - 29 "youth" polling into more specific 18 - 24 and 25 - 29 categories. Remember when Hillary beat Obama among 25 - 29 year olds in New Hampshire? When you get down to that level of detail, you tend to find more useful information.

The second, and I think more important, reason the 18 - 35 cross tab is meaningless is that it mixes two generations with diametrically opposed political views: Gen X, who are 30 - 44, and Millennials, who occupy the 18 - 29 demographic. Generation X is the most conservative generation in the electorate with the most cynical views of politics and government institutions. Millennials, on the other hand, are the most progressive age cohort in the electorate and they hold a positive view of the role of government in our lives. Mixing these two very distinct generations arbitrarily flattens the canvass, creating a distorted picture of the "youth" vote that is meaningless to anyone under the age of 50.

A new poll put out yesterday by MTV and CBS News takes the care to break out the youth vote using the 18 - 29 age bracket, and what it reveals contradicts much of what was said by Chris Matthews' panel of experts.

The MTV poll reveals that both Senators Obama and Clinton would handily defeat McCain among young voters in the general election. Sen. Obama would do so by 13 ponts (52/39 Obama), and Sen. Clinton by 10 points (51/41 Clinton). These numbers hold up in almost all situations. The one area in which McCain is actually competitive among young people is among men when running against Senator Clinton:

Regarding Katty Kay's comment about McCain "winning on the war," I don't think young voters would agree. According to the polling, the economy is the greatest concern of young voters at the moment, far more than the war. This represents a shift in conern among young people from this time last year, and on the issue of the economy, young people think that McCain isn't paying enough attention and just doesn't care about them:

Much of this data is backed up by previously polling completed by Rock the Vote in February. Contrary to Howard Fineman's gut feeling, or the fact that, yes, some young people do in fact work for John McCain (they're called young Republicans), the Millennials as a generation will not take a shine to the twinkle in McCain's eye. Nor will a generation of multilateralists who oppose the Iraq war care much for McCain's "kick-butt" attitude.

This is a prime example as to why we need more young voices in the media. All do respect to Gregory, Fineman, Kay, and other long-serving journalists who have spent years covering the political scene, they are just not up to speed on what is happening with the youth vote. I can think of a dozen people under 35 who could stand toe to toe with Gregory or Fineman and who actually know their shit when it comes to the youth vote. Why aren't we seeing these faces on MSNBC, CNN or Fox News with any regularity?

Better PR and cable/network news booking is a huge hole in the youth movement. We have lots of talented folk among us who can read polls and know what is happening on the ground. It's time we got them on TV, which, despite growing use of the web, is still the #1 place where Americans, and young voters, get their political news.

I'm doing a couple of media events for the book later today.

At noon (Eastern) I'll be live blogging on Colorado Confidential in preparation for my tour events in Denver and Boulder next week.

At 4:30 this afternoon, I'll be on the Mike Signorile Show on Sirius Satellite Radio. Listen if you've got it.