BDS strikes Vanity Fair again. Back in March of 2005, I linked to a Weekly Standard piece by Noemie Emery in which she noted that the magazine’s rampant case of Bush Derangement Syndrome was hurting its circulation:
ON MARCH 6, THE Drudge Report noted the fact that newsstand sales for the magazine Vanity Fair had plummeted by 22.5 percent during the last half of 2004, attributed by the editor to three successive covers that showed pictures of . . . men. What Drudge did not cite is the parallel fact that this slide tracks exactly with the mutation of the magazine from a great escape read of the guilty-pleasure variety, the place to go for fatuous film stars, Princess Diana, and society murders, into a Bush-bashing rag of the fiercest variety, one that at times last year seemed almost possessed.
After rapidly shedding readership, it’s now trashed its credibility as well, as Ed Morrissey notes:
National Review Online has a symposium of people quoted in a press release by Vanity Fair that purported to show neoconservative abandonment of the Iraq war. VF had agreed not to release the artice before the midterm elections, but in a bit of dishonesty, repackaged quotes out of context in order to build interest in the article. Now, the sources of those mangled quotes strike back at VF.
I’d say the people quoted have every right to feel betrayed, but isn’t this sort lying about a story now understood as par from the course by the elite media, and a huge reason why they’ve earned their drive-by media sobriquet?
Morrissey concludes:
The article has much more, especially in conveying a sense of betrayal and abandonment of ethics at Vanity Fair. All of them had been told that their interviews would not be published until January, and more than one of them said they raised their concerns about their words being taken out of context before agreeing to the interview. Vanity Fair, it seems, has much more interest in partisan politics than in honest analysis and journalism — which is hardly surprising, given the track record to which Michael Ledeen alludes.
Read the rest–and be sure to read Ed’s commenters, as well.
Related: Responding the Washington Post’s admission that their coverage of the Allen-Webb race leaned just a trifle in Webb’s favor (with 92(!) stories referring to “macaca” as of mid-October), John Hinderaker writes:
Has this election cycle represented the high water mark of liberal media bias? I’m not sure; there hasn’t been anything as out of bounds as the 60 Minutes document forgery. But day in and day out, I have the sense that the current cycle might set a new standard. The liberal media are determined to drag the carcass of the Democratic Party across the finish line, come Hell or high water.
For the media, it’s a just a stepping stone on the path to 2008 and Hillary’s epochal inauguration. For the rest of us, it’s just a path on the road to 2014.
Update: Michael Steele tells the Washington Post to “eat it“.
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