Do you work in the U.S. national news media? Do you dislike being bashed? Too bad. Get used to it. Fortunately, most journos already are conditioned.
From the NYT commentary by Mark Leibovich:
SARAH PALIN'S national opening last week was judged an unqualified success by the media elite, even though much of her debut speech Wednesday night was devoted to whacking the media elite.
“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone,” Governor Palin of Alaska said, drawing the wildest applause of what would be the raucous night of the Republican convention.
Ms. Palin capped off a succession of speakers, — Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee — who took turns pummeling their favorite target, the news media, which in turn gave the news media the chance to talk about its favorite subject all week (the news media).
We have played this video game before. Indeed, the Republican tradition of media-bashing goes back decades, at least to the convention of 1964 when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower called out "sensation-seeking columnists and commentators," and the Cow Palace in San Francisco burst into jeers and catcalls at the reporters there. The sentiment was immortalized in Richard Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew who memorably charged that many in the press corps were mere “nattering nabobs of negativism” — and for good measure — “an effete corps of impudent snobs.”
In other words, the bashers and bashees have been through this and know the drill. There was an almost homey familiarity to the ritual. And despite the hot words from the podium, it was hard to find a journalist last week who felt any unusual sense of siege or discomfort. ...
... Mr. McCain has presided over the most media-hostile convention in recent memory (though he did not partake himself in his acceptance speech Thursday night). His campaign seems to have made a decision to run against “media bias” to burnish the candidate and running mates’ reformer credentials.
They have many more weapons at their disposal than, say, the first President Bush did in 1992 when his supporters produced a bunch of “Annoy the Media, Elect Bush” bumper stickers.
Today’s generation of Republican media bashers have blogs, the Web, YouTube, blast e-mails, BlackBerry-alerts and a whole lot of other tools and outlets their forebears never enjoyed. That list also includes — some would say — Fox News, the highest-rated cable news channel and heavily favored by conservatives.
The blur of new media creates fresh opportunities for attack, counterattack, counter-counterattacks, odd alliances, strained allegiances, hidden agendas and, most of all, confusion. ...
On Thursday afternoon, Karl Rove, the former Bush political-swami-turned-Fox News-commentator, was walking out of the Xcel center when a reporter stopped and asked him if he could still bash the media since he is now in the media.
“I’m not in it,” Mr. Rove explained. “I’m around it.”
It’s not clear what the distinction is, or what he meant, but somehow it felt emblematic of the week in St. Paul.