Cowardice in the Newsroom (crusading reporters bullied by Right-Wing extremists)

Miami Herald ^ | 9/6/04 | Wasserman

[pabianice]

psychosis [sy.KO.sis] (n).

“The inability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. Psychosis is a term used to describe a severe mental illness. Psychotics are characterized by a variety of symptoms that most people consider abnormal. These include experiencing delusions, such as the notion that one is being persecuted or conspired against. Psychotics may see things which don't actually exist and hear Voices (i.e. God) when no one is around. They often exhibit compulsive, irrational, ritualized behavior, esp. when such behavior serves no purpose or is even harmful or disruptive to those around them. They show no concern for others but may exhibit total self-centered behavior. Includes sociopathy, schizophrenia.”

DSM-IV

“…and that’s MISTER Sh*thead to you, Airman!”

[Drango]

journalism ethics

Oxymoron. I wonder what he thinks about the AP making up boos?

[Semper Paratus]

He got his panties in a twist over a softball game?

[sauropod]

read later

[zeebob]

Hey, those are Marines! NOT AIRMEN

[EternalVigilance]

But it's hard to read the hand-wringing confessionals from news organizations that now realize that they got the prewar story wrong without concluding that the real problem was they were afraid to tell the truth.

This person is mentally ill, you're right.

But the struggle to not let it show is epic.

Alas for the author, the bias shows in the end, as it always does.

[pabianice]

Hey, those are Marines! NOT AIRMEN

Exactly.

[reformed_democrat]

The underlying problem is that news then becomes a negotiation -- not a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality, as it always is, but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience.

Is this what I think he's saying -- News depends on what your truth is and how you tell it?

a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality

C'mon! This can't be a real article. It's from some freshman's Psych 101 term paper.

[TigersEye]

... but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience.

What comes to mind?

Homo lobby.
Feminists.
Enviro wackos.
Rainbow Coalition.
Hand Gun Control Inc.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

KERRYTHINK
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "Kerrythink" involved the use of Kerrythink.

[Brett66]

The performance of this country's finest news organizations in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of March 2003 will be remembered as a disgrace.

It's obvious where Wasserman stands, now drop the pretense of being objective.

[AnAmericanMother]

Just D**N.

My daughter is looking at W&L (she wouldn't be majoring in journalism though.)

I had heard (from some pretty good sources, including recent graduates) that W&L was a conservative school. What gives?

Pinging the resident FR W&L guy . . .

[Steely Tom]

Oh my. Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.

Not just any old run of the mill professor, but the Knight professor of Journalism Ethics.

I'm in awe.

(steely)

[reformed_democrat]

We were just talking about this:

The underlying problem is that news then becomes a negotiation -- not a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality, as it always is, but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience.[He's speaking of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy here] News of great significance becomes not an honest attempt to reflect genuinely contradictory realities, but a daily bargaining session with an increasingly factionalized public, a corrupted process in which elements of the news reports become offerings -- payments really -- in a kind of intellectual extortion.

We always knew the MSM wrote opinion pieces, not facts. Now they're finally admitting it (and defending it -- LOL!) And they wonder why no one loves them anymore.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

"That's, Sergeant."

"Well if you were in the Navy, you'd be an airman."

"No, if I were in the Navy, I'd be an admiral."

Note: Yeah, I know he'd be a petty officer second class in the Navy, "airman" is an Air Force term, but why assume that Kerry knows that?

[Chipper]

This cannot be real. He must truly occupy the highest of the ivory towers to believe a word of what he wrote.

[Condor51]

This guy us a professor?!?!?
I think not. A stark raving mad leftist moon-bat is more like it.

[arasina]

This piece sounds a lot like F'n himself: blame the opposition for your incompetence. When the MSM has reached the point where they are attempting to explain their reasons for lying and spreading propaganda to the public, we know The New Media are making progress. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say we are WINNING...but then, TRUTH always wins.

[Grampa Dave]

What has this lunatic lib upset is simple. Thanks to the internet, Free Republic/Drudge and conservative blog sites, the maggots in charge of the media can't get by with the big lie any more.

A prime example was the homosexual activist, Tom Hays, who pretends to be a reporter for the Ass. Plicks, and his lies about the boos this weekend re GW and the crowd.

AP was forced to admit that the serial lying maggot, Hays, lied and got caught. At first the AP tried to hide the fact that their maggot activist wrote this hit piece against GW. That was shredded, quickly.

Now, the foundation of the lunatic left's pr wing for over 6 decades is being exposed.

This is the foundation of the lying lunatic left mediot arm of the DNC:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

-- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

Yo Wassermaggot, the lies of the mediot maggots will not fly any more. Those days are gone.

[DAC22]

My reply to Mr. Wasserman

The problem arises when the Clinton boo story is nothing but a Leftist AP reporters brainstorm seized on by Left-wing Main Stream Media -- and the pressure to tell it comes not from a principled desire to deliver a factual account that is broadly emblematic of significant happenings in USA politics, but from a gutless attempt to buy off a hostile and suspicious fragment of the audience base know as Democrats


I like your article a bit more with a few edits, hope you don't mind.

DC