Posted on 08/11/2008 7:35:23 AM PDT by mondoreb
Blogosphere: Doing the Research the Mainstream Press Won't Do
MSM: Trying to improve the Bottom Line?
Simon Scowl at Deceiver is upset.
He's discovered that the blogosphere, which was the only place--besides, of course, the National Enquirer--doing any digging into John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter and his cover up operation--is serving as the Mainstream Media's unpaid and uncredited Research Division.
Weird, huh? Deceiver was the only place talking about this stuff for at least a week and a half, and all of a sudden everybody else has been doing original research on it the whole time? Or maybe it doesn’t count as research when we do it, since we’re just a silly gossip blog with a hot-pink logo. Maybe that’s it.
Dear Serge F. Koveleski, Patrick Healy, Toby Lyles, and everybody else at the New York Times:
You know the blogs and tabloids beat you to this story. Everybody knows. It wasn’t exactly difficult, considering you guys waited almost three weeks for John Edwards to give you permission. You’re not going to salvage your reputation by pretending otherwise.
Also, somebody should talk to whoever writes your headlines. “Behind a Meeting That Exposed Edwards’s Affair”? Why not just type out an equivalent number of Z’s?
Signed, Your uncredited researcher
UPDATES at Mainstream Media Uses Blogosphere as Unpaid Research Wing in Edwards Scandal UPDATE#1: pending
DBKP also has been affected. A few weeks ago, the Times of London's SARAH BAXTER, inserted material from our July 23 John Edwards Affair: Interview with David Perel, Editor-in-Chief of the National Enquirer into her Times' story--without a word about the source where she stole the material.
We wrote about the plagiarism after being alerted by blogger, Doug Ross in MSM Stealing Blog Content: Times Online Joining Growing MSM Trend?. Baxter's article (readers will have to do their own Googling--the Times gets no link here) gives the impression that she contacted National Enquirer's Editor-in-chief, David Perel and talked to him.
Our three letters to the Times remain unanswered. The Times Online still carries Baxter's story with our material, without attribution.
These two cases are not the only ones: one reader alerted DBKP yesterday that portions of a story posted on one network's website "sounded suspiciously like something you wrote about a few days ago".
We read the article and suspected a little--okay, a lotta--rewriting may have occurred. But, what the hell? At least, some effort was expended by a Mainstream Media reporter furiously trying to get up to speed on a story Big Media blacked out for nine months with all the fervor of a religious zealot.
Of course, the MSM wouldn't have had to resort to these shady practices if just one of the members of their clubby community had investigated allegations surrounding John Edwards nine months ago: but that would've put a dent in the invitations to the wine-and-cheese parties.
The only investigation came from the National Enquirer and a few bloggers. But, you wouldn't know it if you watched the Big Media frenzy of this past weekend. Some stories didn't even mention the National Enquirer by name--it became an unnamed "tabloid".
John Edwards' "confession"--forced on him by the "tabloid trash" National Enquirer-- transformed the MSM from an early-July Rip Van Winkle into August 8 Woodward and Bernsteins. Don't believe that? Readers only have to stifle their gag reflex and tune in to the MSM coverage.
Readers--and writers--of the blogosphere can expect more of the same. With MSM "news" organizations cutting staff in an effort to stay afloat, stealing from the blogosphere serves as a profitable way to "cover" stories previously denied to readers.
The John Edwards scandal is only the latest battle between citizen journalists and a MSM in a death spiral. It won't be the last. Big Media has proved incredibly resistant to changing editorial policies that have driven readers and viewers to find other, less left-leaning content.
Polls show that the percentage of people who trust what the MSM writes hovers somewhere between carnival barkers and used car salesmen. More Americans believe in UFOs than believe the Mainstream Media is unbiased.
The media reaction: attack citizen journalists and hunker down behind excuses of "standards" that drove ex-customers away with the highly-selective nature those standards were applied. Oh, and practice a code of denial that would make John Edwards proud.
The Mainstream Media wants to improve their bottom line?
Clean house of editors intent on serving up the same cheesy gruel of socialist opinion masquerading as news. The public's been onto that scam for years: falling stock prices and ad revenues confirm it.
Or CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times could try billing the Democrat National Committee for PR services rendered.
P.S. Welcome to the latest scandal, Simon. They won't report on this one, either.
by Mondoreb
image: dbkp reference file
More Americans believe in UFOs than believe the Mainstream Media is unbiased.
:::::::
Loving every minute of it — the leftist MSM is backsliding into the tarpits of history. Where they belong.
The 8th paragraph of the column says it all.
I have tried researching online, but apparantly not as adept as some in this field. Only came up with some business, Lucky Dog 15 LLC, but couldn't find out what service Lucky Dog provides, other than guessing Young is a paid fall guy-oooh his lucky dog wife and kids.....
It’s easy to put ringers into blogs.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08102008/news/nationalnews/real_dad_has_long_rap_sheet_123856.htm
For additional info about Mr. Young, try that. Seems he’s run afoul of the law on many occasions.
Andrew Young research is a hard one for anyone. We’ve been at it for awhile and there’s not a lot out there on him...he was employed for awhile at the NC Academy of Trial Lawyers (who knew there was such a thing?) and Edwards mentioned him as a “special friend of me and my family” in his book, Four Trials.
Some NCPAC guy noted that he was kind of a nerd.
Household income in 2006 for him and wife, Cheri was around $96,000, if memory serves. Oh, and as I reported last week, and confirmed already elsewhere: He’s living large with no visible means of support in Santa Barbara.
Although, now, who knows? Fred Baron could’ve already jetted him somewhere else by now.
Thanks everyone for the comments.
Forgot about that one. Although the information at NYPOST itself came from the same blog source we found weeks ago, Web of Deception.
Just thinking that Mr. Young's full story may be as fishy as Ms. Hunter's. I just can't figure out why Young's wife goes along with this. They all were apparantly living together in one house in Ca., until (per NE editor stating neighbor of theirs, saw) a moving van arrived a few weeks ago and looked like Hunter moved out.
There's just something stinky about this Young/Hunter connection...
The Mainstream Media wants to improve their bottom line?
Clean house of editors intent on serving up the same cheesy gruel of socialist opinion masquerading as news. The public's been onto that scam for years: falling stock prices and ad revenues confirm it.
They can't.The reason journalism is socialist is in journalism's DNA.
During the founding era, the First Amendment was written to protect freedom of speech, and of the press. This was at a time when "newspapers" were basically opinion journals. They were basically opinion journals for the simple reason that, lacking the telegraph and the Associated Press newswire, printers didn't have a ready source of news to which their customers could not, in principle, be privy by the time the newspaper went to press. So most newspapers cooperated with the inevitable by only publishing weekly.To ask journalism to "Clean house of editors intent on serving up the same cheesy gruel of socialist opinion masquerading as news" is to expect organizations which are built on one premise and culture to embrace the opposite premise and culture. No organization is capable of that; it can't be done.Consequently "newspapers" had to be opinion, rather than news, journals. In the mid-Nineteenth Century along came the telegraph and the Associated Press, and the business model of the newspaper changed. Suddenly the successful newspapers were the ones which focused on news, and pushed frank opinion into the background. That was a successful business model, but it came at a price - acceptance and promotion of the conceit that all reporters working for AP newspapers were "objective." If you couldn't do that, you couldn't participate in the advantages of the AP because none of the stories on the wire came from your own reporters.
So all AP newspapers go along and get along - so much for the vaunted editorial independence of AP members, which was what the AP used to justify the fatuous conceit of "objectivity" in the first place. The planted axiom of the conceit that journalists are objective is that journalists are above mere mortal civilians. And that creates a propaganda wind from journalism which favors the critic over the man of action - exactly counter to the famous
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena - speech by Theodore Roosevelt.And it is that propaganda wind which "liberals" align themselves with when they promote the idea that giving people who can't run businesses authority over those who can, and do.
BTTT
people heist my blog for ideas all the time.
Just a quick thank you for the later comments! I will “steal” with credit...some of this here! I’ve got an article put together Just From the comments on the stories I’ve put up at Free Republic.
It’s gonna have to be a 3-parter, though...there’s that much good stuff!
Again, thank you all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.