If you take a swing through the rightwing news media, one thing jumps out at you immediately -- what you find there is virtually indistinguishable from what you find on talk radio. It's a collection of scandal pimps, outrage manufacturers, spinmeisters, and out-and-out propagandists. What you won't find is a lot of factual reporting.
And this leaves conservative news consumers open to a lot of big surprises. Conor Friedersdorf uses the Hagel confirmation to illustrate the problem.
The Atlantic:
...Americans who get their news from anti-Hagel conservatives discovered Tuesday that much of the analysis they've long been fed on this subject left them as misinformed about the likely course of events as they were about Mitt Romney's prospects for victory during Election 2012. Of course, a single nomination battle isn't nearly so consequential as a presidential election. This is nevertheless another reminder for the rank-and-file on the right: Demand better from the journalists whose work you patronize, or remain at an information disadvantage relative to consumers of a "mainstream media" that is regularly outperforming conservative journalists.
Rightwing punditry and blogs lost it when Hagel was confirmed and twitter lit up with condemnations of Sen. Rand Paul, who
cast a surprise vote for Hagel. But Hagel didn't win by one vote. He cruised to easy confirmation with eight votes to spare. The small, hundred vote electorate that is the Senate makes the math very easy -- Hagel was confirmed in an 58% landslide. Instead of blaming the media sources that had steered them so wrong, conservative news consumers blamed Paul...[
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