Writers in pyjamas leave the professionals behind

New Zealand News ^ | September 18, 2004 | Roger Franklin

[bvw]

"For us ink-stained wretches, it's tantamount to a diagnosis of cancer on our profession. If we choose not to do our jobs - if, like Rather, we permit the perception that political sympathies count for more than facts - what credibility do we have?

The short answer: about as much as Joe McCarthy on the morning he awoke to find that Murrow had exposed him as a bully and a fraud."

He gets it. In New Zealand, a man with barrels of ink gets it.

He has met the unstoppable -- and we have bottomless wells of pixels.

His role is not changed! Just more clearly defined, more clearly known, more clearly accepted. Truth and goodness, will sustain -- the false, the mean, baseless haters, the vain and unhumbly proud -- are fiercely torn away and ground to nothing.

He is turned in the fire to a fine edge, not burnt to ash.

[Safetgiver]

Legions carried standards. I suggest the "eagle" for the FReeper Legion: No, No! A moose in full battle regalia!

[bert]

Let's hear it for the Kiwi's.......

[Major Matt Mason]

Exactly 50 years before, CBS broadcaster and TV news pioneer Edward R. Murrow took to the airwaves with a blistering indictment of Red-baiting drunk and Cold War smear artist Senator Joe McCarthy.

Gee, do you think this guy hates McCarthy? He gets most of it right in this column, but his attacks on JM show that he is a liberal member of the "old media".

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[An American In Dairyland]

I was talking about Watergate, not the Kennedy election. Everyone knows that election was fixed. Just ask the dead people in Chicago.

[Pilsner]

A moose in full battle regalia!

Mandatory "A møøse bit my sister once" BTTT.

[bannie]

It's all about comfort: We can think better 'cause our ties aren't cutting off the blood to our brains and our high-heels aren't drawing our attention away from 'em.

[bannie]

I need to know about the MOOSE! I have the proper clearance AND the need to know!!!

[captmar-vell]

bump!

a new paradigm shift

[pepperdog]

Well here is a place you can buy tee shirts and such, but no PJs yet. Wish someone would put out jersey tee and shorts which is my preferred freeping outfit.

http://www.cafepress.com/righties/384949

Mrs PD

[BabsC]

Lucky me, I'm retired and freep till good weather pulls me outside.

Lots of privacy and comfortable pj's unless I have to go somewhere.

[BabsC]

I would except I have two spoiled Siberian huskies that prefer a cooler climate than my nude body cares for.

[BabsC]

I also understand Nixon had just recently had oral surgery, wisdom tooth extraction or something and had a slight shadow on his jawline indicating he hadn't shaved or at least not very well.

Those that heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon won, those that watched on TV thought Kennedy had.

[BabsC]

This could be hugh and series.

[WIladyconservative]

But did you get stooned by your beeber?

[WIladyconservative]

vey vey series!

[Tribune7]

as Joe McCarthy on the morning he awoke to find that Murrow had exposed him as a bully and a fraud.

How could he say such horrible things about Congressman Joe Kennedy's godfather????

[Tunehead54]

I didn't realize Burkett was unstable.

---

Just a couple of mental breakdowns and a history of filing lawsuits based on conspiracy theories - "normal" for a dim. ;-)

[AFPhys]

But the TV networks and national newspapers had little to do with exposing the dirty tricks behind this election-season assault on Bush.

Yes, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal belatedly advanced the story. But they weren't by any means the chief agents of the allegations' demolition. That credit goes to America's "citizen journalists" - the amateur sleuths who are sitting in their homes and pounding out web logs, exposing what they see as the institutional biases of the Establishment media.

Seventy years ago, the celebrated American commentator A.J. Liebling wrote that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one". Now, thanks to the internet, everyone does, and politics and the media can never be the same again.

This is one of the best written articles I have seen about (in effect) the death of the Old Media.