RANT
OR RAVE
HUFFINGTON
09.09.12
Edward Klein’s
The Amateur
spent 14 weeks
on the Times
best-seller’s
list.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the organization, said in the report that “the
American news media in its coverage
of the candidates appears increasingly
to be a conduit of partisan rhetoric and
less a source than it once was of independent reporting.”
Does increased partisanship in the
media create greater divisions in the
public or are outlets serving up increasingly partisan fare to meet market demands? Hard to say, but what’s
clear is that the gap between the views
of Republicans and Democrats has only
widened in recent years. Americans’
“values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any
point in the past 25 years,” or when
the organization began tracking such
views, a June Pew Research Center
study found.
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION
PHOTOGRAPHS
BY WENDYCREDIT
GEORGE
TK
Since Obama’s election, several more
right-leaning outlets have launched and
expanded, including Breitbart’s “Big”
sites and The Daily Caller, showing the
increased level of interest in taking on
the Democrat in the White House. Conversely, the liberal Nation magazine saw
its circulation double during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The publishing marketplace, like
cable news and the Internet, often rewards the most extreme assessments
of Obama; a book’s allegations or arguments are amplified to millions of
li