Posted on 09/11/2004 7:26:18 PM PDT by Pukin Dog
Edited on 09/11/2004 9:23:55 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Open Letter to the Main Stream Media: We are not amateurs and we are going to kick your butts.
We have watched you for years try to tell us how to think, what to think, who to vote for and what to believe based solely on your own agenda. In past years, you have come to think of yourselves as the fourth branch of government, the movers and shapers of opinion and the arbiters of truth.
In case you have not been watching, America is sick and tired of you. We are turning away from you in record numbers. Your audience and readership is declining faster than you can say the word 'bias', and instead of recognizing the trend, you have only become further entrenched and determined to force society to play by your rules.
Technology has allowed us to ignore you, and in many cases, replace you altogether. I grew up watching Walter Cronkite every night, not yet aware of his agenda, his bias and his overwhelming desire to turn the nation against its leaders unless they agreed with him. I saw him replaced by the most dishonest, agenda-driven anchorman this nation has ever produced. That Dan Rather is one of you should be enough to make you feel dirty.
You believe yourselves to be solely qualified to pontificate on the day-to-day events going on around the world as if journalism school gives you a special insight into the truth. When I was in college, people went to J-school only if they flunked out of business school and did not want to become teachers.
Well guess what?
The world is on to you.
Persons with knowledge and experience are not only ignoring you, but replacing you as sources of information. These sources, which don't need anything but their personal experiences and skills when sharing information with the public; persons who have spent more time learning and doing than you ever will, are generally more accurate and informative than you know how to be.
The Internet and Blogosphere would scare you, if you were smart enough or honest enough to know better.
People with practical knowledge and experience discussing current and historical events with more ability than you, are sharing more factual and in-depth information, and at a rate which you could never compete. We are relegating many of you to overpaid gossip mongers, while you don't want to acknowledge that we are eating your lunch.
You take polls, trying to convince us of what people are thinking as you have always done, but now, knowledgeable people are analyzing your methodology, your weighing and sampling and pointing out if your polls are to be believed. You can no longer expect what you say to be taken for gospel, because we are no longer amateurs about information. Someone, somewhere on a little web site is going to smoke you out, report your biases, and make you less believable than you once were. Count on it.
You can tell us that Swift Boat Veterans for truth are liars, and NOBODY is going to believe you just because you say it. Have you checked the Non Fiction Best Sellers lists lately? But even then, we know enough now to notice when book sales are based on giveaways, fund-raisers, pre-orders and the like, to notice when you want to push sales of your favorite liberal author when their book sheds no light, tells no truth, shares no facts, but only advances what you want us all to think about you and yours. We are not buying it anymore.
I'm writing this, because I know you are watching. Just as you watched last week when one of us 'amateurs' beat you at your own game. It happens here all the time. Free Republic is not a group of 'amateurs' or nutcases, as you like to think of us. This board is a slice of America, filled with people from all walks of life, whose cumulative knowledge dwarfs that of you and your 'hired experts'. I was offended to read your reaction to people here and at the Blogs who shared what started here regarding your fraudulent flunky Dan Rather, and his attempt to pass off what was clearly a forged document as legitimate news.
You attempted to deride us, not take us seriously, dismiss us as partisans (which is apparently only a bad thing if one is conservative) and generally ignore the wealth of information we passed along to the public about one of yours trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We nailed Dan Rather, not you, and you can't stand it.
Last week, you tried to suggest that Republicans booed Bill Clinton after Bush wished him well. We caught you. We got in your face and made you take it back, because you lied. Don't you hate that? We Internet-based losers made you back down, when you felt totally free to mislead the nation about the behavior of some you don't agree with.
It is only going to get worse for you.
You can no longer tell us anything, and expect to be believed without question. You can no longer mix your agendas into your 'news' and expect to get away with it. We may not catch you every time, but eventually we will, and then many of you are going to have to get real jobs. And when you do, you are going to need more than the ability to mislead, lie, slander and ignore people who don't agree with you. In the future, expect for Blogs like Instapundit and others to be on you like a fly on stink when you attempt to mislead us.
Yesterday, you attempted to paint the young LT. Bush as a poor pilot, because he attempted multiple landings a few times while flying a training jet. Stories like this are the reason why Network News has lost half of its audience over the last 10 years. Could not one of you pampered info-princes figure out that a military pilot WANTS to practice landings as much has he/she possibly can? I guess not, when you are blinded by ideology to the degree that any information you receive can only be interpreted in the negative.
You want to call Bush AWOL, but you don't want to talk about his hundreds of flying hours in a jet that has killed lesser aviators, you only want to discuss what furthers your agenda, because you know that when Democrats win, YOU are in charge. You don't want to talk about our President's Master's Degree from Harvard while at the same time Al Gore could not hack Divinity school.
Don't you wish you could regulate us? We know you spend your nights praying to the gods of the Fairness Doctrine, hoping to silence us. Sorry, but we are here, and we are not going anywhere. Too bad we can't say the same for you. It is you who is being silenced as your audience is paying more attention to us, and tuning you OUT. Fox News is in 50 million fewer homes, but they managed to beat you silly during the Republican Convention. How did that happen? US; that's how. Because of us, the Internet, the Blogosphere, Talk Radio and others, the nation no longer see you as the gatekeepers of information.
Take a lesson MSM, though it hurts, try a little fairness. Give balance a shot, and stop being a mouthpiece for the liberal agenda. Pretend if you must, that Conservatives are not Neanderthals long enough to get through a news segment. I know it must hurt to not be able to prove your superiority to us in all that you do and say, but try it.
Finally, just embrace the horror, folks. You might actually learn something from us merry bands of 'amateur' journalists. You see, we don't have an audience to please. We don't have to sell ad-space, or get face-lifts to keep our jobs. That leaves us free to share information on the subjects we might know a little something about without angering our liberal masters. On Free Republic, you can at times find as many threads angry at Republicans as you can Democrats. We don't have to hire experts, if we don't know something, we can ask a fellow FReeper or use Google, much faster than you can pay someone to tell you what you want to hear.
On Free Republic alone, there are experts in many fields. We have writers, poets, engineers, aviators, artists, journalists, (they keep that on the down-low), lawyers, historians, teachers, politicians, current and former members of all branches of the military; all who actually know what they are talking about without having a script (or DNC talking points) shoved in their face.
The choice is yours, MSM. You can join us in working to share information with a hungry audience, or you can be replaced. We don't need Nielson, just a web site and an idea. Instead of insulting the remainder of your dwindling viewers, readers and listeners, why don't you just agree to cut the crap, stop the parroting of the NY Times long enough to do your own work, and finally decide to become REAL journalists again.
I'm not saying we are journalists; we have jobs and careers beyond 'he-said-she-said'. We do like to share what we know, and we don't even get it right every time. However, the truth is in the numbers. We have them and they are growing, while yours are shrinking more rapidly every day. If you don't change your ways and soon, you are going to become irrelevant before this decade is over. Many of you already are. We only tune in to 'Petah' Jennings to watch him bravely strain to keep his composure whenever he has to report a Democrat election defeat. On a good night Chris Matthews total viewership barely equals the number of viewers on the Oxygen network.
The trends are in our favor. If you don't wise up, we will kick your agenda-driven ass.
I'm Pukin Dog.
Very well done rant and said better than I could elucidate it.
Red
Take a look at this site. I was trying to find
the provenance of AFM 35-13 using google, and found the
sites below.
They are lefty sites, which refer to the documents
MONTHS ago.
August 2004:
http://www.talkaboutinvestments.com/group/misc.invest.stocks/messages/880901.html
April 2004:
http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2004/04/21/who-da-man/
Feb. 2004:
http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/003279.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=3261
Which has this text:
Chris,
Yeah, this aspect of the story may die. But the media has a sense right now that there's stuff in the records that Bush doesn't want people to see, and they'll continue to follow that thread.
This document got posted over at Atrios's site, and it has a couple of interesting things. First of all, there was another guy (James Bath) who got suspended the month after Bush for refusing to take his physical. He's been linked to Bush before, but what interested me was this bit:
"Off[icer] will comply with para 2-1, AFM 35-13. Authority: Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13."
Anyone know what this means? I assume it has something to do with the regulations they violated, but googling on the reference (and I also tried assuming that it means Air Force Manual) turned up nothing.
The words This Document are hypertext.
The words linked to Bush are hypertext, and lead to
this site:
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html
which contains the text:
Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")
This is PRE Kerry, PRE election, even PRE 9-11-2001
smearing of Bush...
Could this be why Rather is saying the facts are genuine?
(Can't vouch for the authenticity of the allegations
about Bath. But they sure would make tempting material
for Rather to chance typing up a 'contemporary copy'.
Any thoughts?
Also, any way to save these sites so they don't disappear
down the memory hole?
hee, pajama clad and lovin' every minute of it.
(anybody see that seinfeld episode lol)
This internet thing has been a bane in their plans alright. Thought they had it managed and then boom, that darn Al Gore goes and invents the internet.
What he said.
Yes.....this board is the BEST slice of America.
I have a new respect for lawyers, got get'em !
Calm down! I didn't say that EVERY 70 year old watched the networks. Sheesh.
Really Good, Pukin Dog.
If this were a redneck West Texas saloon, and CBS were some white trash dude that had saddled up alongside you at the bar, and you had finished with that, why I'll bet he'd be reaching for the nearest longneck to pound you over the head.
Well, phoey on them anyways, and GOOD! It means you are getting your point made.
This Mainstream Old Media cannot avoid us any further. We are an army of experts, connected to facts, data, sources, friends and routes to information, that CBS and the whole OLD MEDIA put together can no longer match.
But isn't it always like this when information at the grassroots is used to sweep elitist tyranny out of power? What we are witnessing is the same kind of effect that Radio Free Europe and word-of-mouth had in creating huge crowds in Prague and Warsaw, and bring down That Damn Wall.
I know in my case I can call up hundreds of sources, both human and cyber, around the globe, at any time of the day in many different languages (particularly in Asia) and get critical news out--coupled with my own analysis--sometimes on hot issues that then take CNN, CBS three to four more pathetic hours to even begin to latch on to, often making factual or biased errors in the process, relying on their bevy of snot-nosed J-school grads just out of Columbia to tell us all what to think. Phooey on them!
You have EVERY RIGHT to rub it in their face like you just did. I know they are reading this.
And...there....is....not....a....damned.....thing....they.....can....do....about....IT!!!
Thank you VERY MUCH!
And may I add, Dan Rather better have to leave because of what he did and has been doing. He's a lying, arrogant pig!
I am almost 70, still up at 12:45am, reading everything I can here at FR and the blogs.
Hubby reads the newspaper.
We have not watched MSM in many years.Never have network programming on except for hubbies sports.We just stick to FOX.
yikes, I am still dressed..need to get into jammies soon
Joyce
Because of us, the Internet, the Blogosphere, Talk Radio and others, the nation no longer see you as the gatekeepers of information.
Recall; HRH Hillary said as much; the Internet needs a 'gatekeeper'. That's like writing a Letter to the Editor, where some pointy-headed twerp with no real-life knowlegde will determine what your facts are. Thank God for the Internet and thank Jim Robinson for Free Republic.
>>You can no longer tell us anything, and expect to be believed without question. You can no longer mix your agendas into your 'news' and expect to get away with it.
You go dog!
This is so good, I can't stand it
>>Fridays N.Y Times were being posted,Krugman,and his fellow sleaze merchants were talking about Rather's forged memo's as if they were holy scripture.
They were in on it....I bet the 9/11 timing was also.
"Forgive the rant, please. Just venting."
Pukin Dog, you vent anytime you feel it necessary.
Outstanding post!
Case in point, the Beslan Massacre, they barely coverd it on the opening day and the follow up was a pre-filtered and watered down exercise of walking on eggshells. Look at the crisis in Sudan, the only network which is actively following this is FNC. All the others relegate it to the scrawl line.
I work in a non-profit industry where the staff is heavily infected with the collectivist mentality. I'm quite outspoken - even to the point of being considered pugnacious by my peers - about all things Civic & American.
You well know what I mean; they call me a "radical right-winger" and I respond that they are the radical-leftist; toss in the word "fascist" and Right in conversation - until I stand 'em up and remind them that Hitler was a National Socialist and that Fascism is yet another bastard child from the failed ideology of the Left; wonder how I can be a conservative when I have been so "oppressed" (due to their expectation of how my Puerto Rican ancestry is supposed to result in my being a faithful, lock-step, enlightened, hyphenated-American who should be grateful for all the "wunnerful" things the obviously more intelligent Dhimmi-crats are doing for my ethnic group)... and hundreds other daily events which I amusingly catalog in my "Little-Orwell" memory banks.
I tell these folks how revolutionary the Internet is because - like our Founding Fathers - we now have our own "townhall" where citizens can freely discuss issues, come up with real-world analyses, implement efficient solutions, and (not least important...) ID the inevitable snake-oil salesman who rambles into town on his crickety wagon (or via MSM "news" reports, same difference). They still don't get it.
Your post above was inspiring and completely expresses my own belief and feeling about this. In the dual-context that (A) we are living in revolutionary times (and I do believe this calmly and completely...) and (B) I am a military man, the effect of your words upon me was a Rally to the Flag moment. Not a rant, as you so modestly put it.
Keep the Faith, Semper Paratus
CGVet58
Bump.
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