Talking Points and the Major Media

I note a charge against Fox News leveled by Democrats recently: that it routinely regurgitates Republican talking points as news.

Now this is curious on 2 levels:

(1) Republicans don't use talking points. Talking points are memos issued by the Democrats to the troops so that whenever an issue comes up the main Democratic points will be repeated almost verbatim by every Democrat who can get themselves quoted in the Major Media. The idea is that if the public keeps hearing the same thing over and over from many different media sources, then through sheer volume and repetition, it will come to be believed as true (e.g. the phrase 'Bush lied us into war,' a patently and demonstrably false accusation that is believed by large segments of the public simply because the Democrats have repeated the phrase over and over and over and over ... ).

The disarray of the Republican party the last few years by itself shows that the Republicans do not use this talking points tactic. But further, it is just a fact that there is no concerted effort among the GOP to dictate what all Republicans must say on any given issue. At most, there are conservative think tanks, magazines and commentators promulgating position papers, articles and opinions on any given issue, and some of these can be quite influential among Republicans. But there is certainly nothing like a single mandated script that every Republican must follow.

(2) If there is no script for the party faithful to follow, it is beyond silly to suppose that Fox News is taking its marching orders from Republicans.

Now if all this is true, then why would the Democrats make such a charge?

To be continued

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