Why does Howard Kurtz think Sean Hannity is relevant?
By John Amato Sunday Mar 22, 2009 2:30pm
[media=7644 showimage] (h/t Heather)
ON CNN's Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz tells us that what Sean Hannity says makes him a "relevant" news source.
John makes a good point. And you wonder why our country is so messed up. I'd like Howard Kurtz to explain to us why anything Sean Hannity says about Democratic politicians or anything in politics is relevant? He's a right wing talking point machine that misquotes and lies at every turn and gets paid millions of dollars to do so, but to Howard, he's relevant. Relevant to whom and/or what?
I'll tell you. Hannity is relevant to the Village insiders because, as Howard said, as soon as Hannity said Tim should be fired, the media picked up on it immediately. Why does that happen? Is Glenn Beck relevant too? Will the media be looking for those FEMA camps with him? We highlight on C&L these right wing propagandists to expose how insane their positions are and how they influence the "liberul press." It's basically been part of our mission statement from the beginning. Before liberal blogs came aboard, the right wingers were able to run roughshod over the media and our country without any critical analysis or context for the most part. That has changed dramatically, as most of America is turned off by the likes of The Limbaugh National Committee.
ON CNN's Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz tells us that what Sean Hannity says makes him a "relevant" news source.
KURTZ: Come back to this sort of scapegoat argument, because we had some conservative pundits -- I mean, the thing here is that both liberals and conservatives are equally ticked off I think about the bonuses. We had some conservative commentators like Sean Hannity saying Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, should be fired. And then within about a day or two, I would see stories that would say, "Tim Geithner: Can He Survive?"
So, again, are we stepping out of the reporting role, into the role of trying to nail some of these officials?
ARAVOSIS: I think what is interesting in this case with Geithner is you see a lot of liberal critics as well. And Paul Begala, this morning on CNN, compared Geithner to Rumsfeld going into the war. And not in a good way. The fact that you have so many liberals bringing up the fact that they're not sure that Geithner should have been there to start with and that he should remain -- Sean Hannity is irrelevant. I mean, he's like Rush Limbaugh.
KURTZ: But he's not irrelevant.
ARAVOSIS: Of course he's going to criticize. I know, but my point is, Sean Hannity and the right will always say those things. They don't create the news. What's created the news is the fact that liberals have also joined in. That's newsworthy and that's interesting.
John makes a good point. And you wonder why our country is so messed up. I'd like Howard Kurtz to explain to us why anything Sean Hannity says about Democratic politicians or anything in politics is relevant? He's a right wing talking point machine that misquotes and lies at every turn and gets paid millions of dollars to do so, but to Howard, he's relevant. Relevant to whom and/or what?
I'll tell you. Hannity is relevant to the Village insiders because, as Howard said, as soon as Hannity said Tim should be fired, the media picked up on it immediately. Why does that happen? Is Glenn Beck relevant too? Will the media be looking for those FEMA camps with him? We highlight on C&L these right wing propagandists to expose how insane their positions are and how they influence the "liberul press." It's basically been part of our mission statement from the beginning. Before liberal blogs came aboard, the right wingers were able to run roughshod over the media and our country without any critical analysis or context for the most part. That has changed dramatically, as most of America is turned off by the likes of The Limbaugh National Committee.
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Or maybe you'd rather give Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs a platform? Because John Aravosis is just as big a bigot as any of those I just named. But I guess it's okay that Aravosis hates, after all, he's on our side and he hates transgendered Americans, not real people. Hypocrisy on the left is as bad as hypocrisy from the right and telling off racial bigots while praising transphobes is hypocrisy indeed. I can't get more disappointed in Crooks and Liars than I am right now.
That's beside the point. The question Amato is asking is why does anything that Hannity (who will fall back on being a pundit--not a newsman when confronted with facts) say instantly have credibility with the Villagers that make up the media?
The fact is that many liberals had issues with Geithner from the moment of his nomination. But that doesn't make the impact that Hannity (who is just going to reactively hate on anything the Obama administration does) makes.
Aravosis has his issues, and I don't think Amato is excusing those. He just happens to be the person there to state the obvious: Hannity is irrelevant to everyone outside of the Beltway Bubble.
boy. I bet that gets him all sprung...
For me the real issue is "Bailout, Bankruptcy, or Nationalization?"
Obama and Geithner are going for the Bailout.
The Right (Ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee Senator Richard Shelby) favors Bankruptcy.
The Left (Nobel Prize winner Prof. Paul Krugman) favors temporary Nationalization.
But note that Bankruptcy and temporary Nationalization amount to the same thing - put the mega-banks under the management of the government, break them into their pre-merger components, nurse each component back to health and return them to the private sector.
The only separation between the Right and the Left is terminology.
It's only "the Center" - the Corporate Center - that wants the Bailout.
Why don't they skip all the middle-men and just quote Roger Ayles and Richard Mellon Scaife?
Insanity is about as relevant as Rush Limbaugh's pilonidal cyst.
calls Hannity relevant because most of these guys are so afraid of being tagged with the "librul media" title that they make people like Hannity relevant. What they don't understand is that no matter how far they step to the right to prove that they are not the "librul media", it won't matter. It's a very useful and very effective tool for the right to dismiss anything that they don't agree with. Hannity isn't anything but a propaganda spouting angry prick. And if the day ever comes when Glen Beck is considered relevant, that's the day I start looking for a new country to call home.
HOWARD KURTZ IS MARRIED TO A MAJOR REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE NAMED SHERI ANNIS. HE IS NO MORE A NEWSMAN THAN RUSH LIMBAUGH. HE IS A BOUGHT-AND-PAID-FOR PROPAGANDIST OF THE CORPORATE RIGHT
I'm not surprised. I've never liked Kurtz and his patronizing tone toward net roots folks and blogs. It was from him that I first heard the "MSM" meme that soon afterward became echoed all over the blogosphere to my dismay. He gets respected because he takes a supposed "objective" look at the media. It's all done to con Americans, the corporate media always protects its own even as it pretends to "search for truth" which in reality is their always biased version of it.
"I'll tell you. Hannity is relevant to the Village insiders because, as Howard said, as soon as Hannity said Tim should be fired, the media picked up on it immediately. Why does that happen?"
IMO it is a 20 year phenomenon begun when reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine and the GOP started buying up all available talk radio stations and paying others to put limbaugh on. hannity seconds all major talking points and framing limbaugh starts every news cycle with, amalgamated crap from the heritage foundation, the club for growth, the RNC, etc. the rest of the national and local blowhards all pile on with localized personalized versions of the same GOP propaganda, reaching a crowd the size of the one that voted for obama.
every day, every news cycle, a giant media bandwagon takes off from 1000 stations with a smorgasbord of GOP talking points and one liners and red velvet chairs. by the end of the day they're prechewed and laundered and ready for the lazy celebrity talking heads to pick and chose from. the media knows the GOP talking points they read in the morning have been pounded into the earholes of tens of millions by the end of the day.
one local yakker reading chamber of commerce talking points can undo the work of thousands of citizens volunteering a few hours and dollars here and there. on the national level they decide what molehills get made into mountains and what is and what isn't acceptable in the rest of the media. the medium that popularized the term 'political correctness' is the biggest political correctness cop and censor-by-threat.
unfortunately most of the people who are the butt of those attacks have no idea. how much time has been wasted by commentators and pundits analyzing political trends while ignoring the most dominant political force in the country the last 20 years because it gave them headaches to listen to it? unfortunately there has been no searchable database of national talk radio transcripts to follow the migration of the talking points and framing into the rest of the media.
I agree with you about the ronny ray gun actions that put us where we are today.
If any rational person thought that Woodward and Bernstein were up against the man reporting on Watergate, then today would be a sad day indeed. Watergate would never have come to light if it happened today. Besides being jailed for not revealing their sources, Woodstein would have been shut down in the first weeks of the scandal.
I read a report in the early 90's that ronny rag gun used Watergate as one of his reasons to kill off the Fairness Doctrine. He was setting us up for the climate of news phobia that we have today.
Ronny was a first class thug, as much as Nixion.
I think Kurtz is saying he's relevant because so many conservatives listen to him and he explained his point by saying that he said Geithner should be fired and soon after many people were saying it. Now it may or may not have been a result of Hannity saying that, but to deny that Hannity has a lot of influence is wrong... he does... unfortunately.
John, the question isn't "Why does Howard Kurtz think Sean Hannity is relevant?" It's why does Howard Kurtz think he has any journalistic moral ground left to stand on after HIS coverage of the Iraq War build up and the Bush presidency? He took their bait and drank their Kool Aid and now wants to judge others? Give me a break!
{ Here, I fixed it for you. Please do not post in all BOLD lettering or in all Caps. Thank You. Sm}
It isn't the messenger, it's the message that makes these people "relevant". Hannity is relevant like the milkman is relevant. No one questions the qualifications of the the milkman. But he is relevant. There will always be a milkman.
is a bit of a twat, and he emitteth more than the occasional queef.
It's the irrelevant logrolling even more irrelevant.
First of all people have to remember that cable news (CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews) are entertainment channels with a news problem. For example, they made going to war more like a football game than a serious endeavor. Why? For ratings. Why do people watch Billo and Hannity and Beck and others like them on both sides of the aisle? They are entertained not by what they say but how they say it. What makes people like Billo and Hannity and Beck relevant is that there is a sector of the population that thinks like they do. There is a sector that feels that those talking figure heads are the last spokesperson that they will get.
If some of the treatment I receive on this website is any indicator of a larger opinion held nationwide, then yes they do become relevant. I hold a more conservative viewpoint because I am more moderate and have been labeled a troll and told to go kill myself. This country is becoming more and more polarized every day. And as that polarization continues then talking figure heads on both sides will gain more and more relevancy to their constituents.
It is time that there was a moderate talking head on these cable news networks that can point out the good and the bad of both parties. If the moderate voice is heard then it could lessen or end this polarization. Without it conservatives and liberals will keep duking it out until one side is made extinct. And may I remind people that an oligarchy is just as bad as a dictatorship and that it was a lack of representation that caused the revolutionary war and one of the causes for the civil war. How many times must we suffer the repetition of history before we learn our lesson?
Too bad Kurtz faced such a weak panel. A tougher panel would've challenged his assertion that Sean Hannity isn't irrelevant. What did he base this comment on?
Is many kinds of asshole. As long as people listen to him and he sways votes, and convinces people of the bullshit he spews, he's not irrelevant. Is he going to be a fulcrum point that anyone leverages around. Some people he convinces, like my mother-in-law. She doesn't know enough to know he's full of shit.
for Beck's FEMA camps. C'mon Murdoch, give me a new 4WD, gas card, enough spending cash for beer, bribes and hookers, plus a bunch of phony documentation, and I'll find your damn camps. Or build a reasonable facsimile that will convince your stupid viewers.
thinks Hannity is relavent because nit-wits of a feather , flock together!Fuck both of these ass holes!
Kurtz is irrelevant because he is simply full of it and doesn't know what that smell is which follows him around like Pig Pen's cloud.
Kurtz and putz.
This sorry excuse for a "journalist" has always been a Repug shill.
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