Michele Bachmann: Brian Lambert's criticism of Minnesota coverage, again

by: Bill Prendergast

Fri Feb 17, 2012 at 14:00:00 PM CST

Lambert concluded that the leading news icons of the state (the Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune, and Minnesota Public Radio) represents a "fail" by these leading media. (The link is below.)

We start with the premise that the career of Michele Bachmann is the most important Minnesota political career in the first decade of the twentieth century. Bachmann is the only Minnesota politician who exercised national influence in that decade and beyond. She helped to lead and rally the tea party movement; she was recognized as a leader by national media conservatives and the national religious right. After entering Congress she became a fixture on national cable news, appearing to deliver her right-wing message to millions during conservative and straight news broadcasts.

Here in Minnesota, Bachmann galvanized the state's conservative evangelical voters--and the state's nascent tea party, and conservative Republicans in general. Governor Tim Pawlenty and other GOP legislators delivered flowery public tributes to her. Her electoral and media success inspired the Republican party to move ever further to the right.

The base that Bachmann activated here (with help from her powerful mentors outside Minnesota) made the Republican Party and the state legislature "more right wing" than it was. The GOP began to deliver candidates that would go into elections with "Bachmann/tea party"-like rhetoric. And too many of these--won. (More evidence of Bachmann's impact on the state's GOP: Rick Santorum's easy victory over Mitt Romney in the Minnesota GOP's presidential primary; the nature of the proposals coming out of Minnesota's Republican legislature.)

So that's why her career was so important. And that's why it was a "very bad thing" for the leading news professionals in the state to "fail" (year, after year, after year) to cover the most newsworthy and controversial aspects of her career, political roots, and ideology.  

But if these "news giants" failed to cover it adequately, as Lambert points out--who did provide the best news reporting on Bachmann? According to Lambert:

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker wrote the definitive Bachmann profile, Karl Bremer at "Ripple in Stillwater", Bill Prendergast and the rest at The Minnesota Progressive Project delivered the best day-to-day coverage and Rolling Stone laid out the most complete portrait of the pernicious effects of her rhetoric and influence.

Who else was "doing journalism" on Bachmann, when the big corporate and public media wouldn't?
(CONTINUED)  

The St. Cloud Times used to do a pretty good job on Bachmann's wing-nut excesses. They even had the courage to identify her to the public as "an extremist." Yes, they had the courage to do that, early on---at a time when the bigger and more important news outlets in the state were avoiding daily coverage of her crackpottery.

Anyway, let's look at this list of people who did do quality coverage of Bachmann during all the years that the PiPress, Strib, and MPR were "failing" the public on the story.

Maybe we will see why they "succeeded" where the state's vast and well-funded professional media "failed."

The City Pages--well, that's a real live newspaper, it's their job to do "regular quality coverage." (It's actually the job of all the state's news media to deliver regular quality coverage, but the City Pages is the only one of them that did anything like that on the Bachmann story.) They could do that, they have "a hip, urban readership," they have a budget, and salaries, and pro journalists hanging around the office just dying to turn in investigative pieces.

The other people on Lambert's list are kind of suprising, though. How about Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Independent? He was one of the best. Yes, the Minnesota Independent was a "newspaper," too--but it was an itty-bitty one, operating on grants with a tiny little staff.

Still: they did original reporting as well as "news roundup" on Bachmann. Eric Ostermeier of the Humphrey Institute even wrote them up for doing so much Bachmann coverage! Yes, he did!

Just a year before Bachmann launched her presidential bid and whomped former governor Tim Pawlenty, Ostermeier of the Humphrey Institue was criticizing MNdy for devoting an "inordinate" amount of space to the most important politician in the state of Minnesota. Hmmm! (You can enjoy Ostermeier's ex-poh-zay of the "inordinate" news coverage at the link below.) But now veteran journalist Brian Lambert of the MinnPost says that MNdy was one of the best sources of coverage of Bachmann in the state. Hmm! Who do you think was right? What do you think of the fancy-schmancy Humphrey Institute and its judgment on this continuing news story, now?

And--according to accepted standards for journalism--it's weird that MNdy was so good at gathering the facts of the Bachmann story. Because MNdy had a "bias" (Ostermeier of the Humphrey Institute described it as a left-leaning publication.)

Strange, that paper with an acknowledged political position and no big staff of celebrity journalists--
--could do a better job providing factual, relevant coverage of the state's most notorious demagogue
--than bigger news media who claimed to be "objective" and "professional" and "experienced" and "responsible." (They didn't regularly cover the nut, liar, bigot stuff that came out of Bachmann at regular intervals. MNdy did.) Hmmm... how did that happen?

The other names on the list of "best day to day coverage" are the names of bloggers. Bloggers are wretched creatures who don't make any real money writing up, circulating, and publishing the legitimate news that legitimate papers simply refuse to print.

Wretched b*****ds, that's what we are. No money to speak of in return for our services, no budget to investigate deeply. We rarely get any respect from legit newspapers and media. Of course, a lot of bloggers don't respect the newspapers and media very much, either. (If we did think the newspapers and media were doing a good job, then we wouldn't do news blogs, now would we?)

It's also true that a lot of political bloggers probably aren't worth reading. You know--here at MPP, we try to restrict ourselves to the facts. For example, when Two Putt Tommy writes about sleaze in the GOP, he puts in his sources of information.

Too many political bloggers don't do that. There are too many bloggers (of the right, the left, and the center) who are willing to make wild-ass accusations of wrong-doing without any hard evidence at all. That's not coverage, that's just smears, and smears don't impress liberals and progressives...

We don't do that here. The guys and gals I write with here: look stuff up, rely on reliable information for their pieces. That's why I like writing here, all these years...

Back to the people who did the best Bachmann coverage: how is it possible? How is it possible that a bunch of unfunded, disrespected, volunteer bloggers did a better job of day-to-day coverage of the state's most important political figure--than the Strib, the PiPress, and MPR and all their minions?

That is a question that Lambert tried to answer, and it is the question I will try to answer in this space, tomorrow. And I will also try to explain why the biggest news media in the state (and all their award-winning reporters, columnists and editors!) did practically nothing of value on the Bachmann story...year, after year, after year, after year.

LINK:
http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordp...

LINK: Eric Ostermeier of the Humphrey Institute claims that MNdy was doing too much Bachmann coverage, back in 2010...
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/s...