Thursday, June 03, 2004

Media mavens

My favorite moment from Alexandra Polier's excellent piece on the attempt to smear John Kerry with a concocted "intern scandal":
One reporter had a little girl call up, assuming I wouldn’t hang up on a child. They even made her say, "Can I talk to Alex?" And when I said, "Yes, it's me," a reporter jumped on the line. CNN's Zain Verjee wrote beseeching notes, slipping them under the front gate. It was like a horror movie where the zombies are on the other side of the door and then an arm comes through the window. Stuck with Kerry's denial, each of the American networks had hired a local fixer to approach me for a big sit-down. "Tell me it's true and we're on the next plane to Nairobi!" ABC's Chris Vlasto e-mailed hopefully.

But of course, since it wasn't true, they stayed put. Funny about that.

As always, Atrios is your one-stop shop for the lowdown on Vlasto (including a recent shot).

What a nasty piece of work Vlasto is. And people wonder why I think the chief problem with the media has been its takeover by conservative ideologues who will do literally anything to attack Democrats. It's precisely the kind of behavior that conservatives consistently accuse nonpartisan journalists of engaging in, usually when they're simply doing their jobs.

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