Posted on 09/20/2004 2:21:04 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
WITH THE revelation that CBS News aired what appear to be forged memos as part of its "60 Minutes II" story on President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, the "memogate" story shifted from Bush vs. Kerry to old media vs. new media. Hours after the show aired, questions about the authenticity of the memos, purportedly written by Bush's then-superior officer Jerry Killian in 1973, surfaced on right-of-center blogs (short for "weblogs"). By the next day, those questions were also being posed by the mainstream media such as The Washington Post and ABC News.
A defining moment in the Battle of the Media came when former CBS News executive Jonathan Klein said in a television appearance defending the story, "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."
To many denizens of the blogosphere, this comment exemplified the arrogance, elitism, and cluelessness of the "old media." And let's face it, the bloggers had every reason to gloat when, shortly after Klein's statement, new information surfaced suggesting that those vaunted checks and balances at CBS News had failed rather miserably in this case. According to a report at the ABC News website, some of the experts CBS consulted prior to airing the story warned the producers that they had doubts about the documents' authenticity.
This is hardly the first time the "old media" have suffered a black eye in recent years. Journalists at some of the most esteemed print publications -- Jayson Blair at The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize finalist Jack Kelley at USA Today, Stephen Glass at The New Republic -- have been exposed as fabricators. Dateline NBC has been caught rigging a truck for a crash test to simulate the desired results.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
MARK STEYN:
Dan's been play-acting at being a reporter for so many years now -- the suspenders, the loosened tie, and all the other stuff that would look great if he were auditioning for a cheesy dinner-theater revival of ''The Front Page''; the over-the-top intros: ''Bob Schieffer, one of the best hard-nosed reporters in the business, has been working his sources. What have you managed to uncover for us, Bob?'', after which Bob reads out a DNC press release. Dan's been doing all this so long he doesn't seem to realize the news isn't just a show.
Very well put.
The relationship between the "old" media and the US populace is parasitic.
The liberal media are constantly sucking the life blood out of the capitalist system by encouraging dependance on government rather than individual effort.
But all of this esteem and Pulitzer Prize stuff is all just incestuous. They just sit around and tell each other how great they are.
Tailwind was a CNN production.
The perps in that case were Peter Arnett, April Oliver, and Jeff Greenfield.
How Greenfield esaped that debacle I'll never know . . .
But 10,000 "lone wolves" make a huge pack with resources and initiative that dwarf anything the major media can use.
A quote that will live in infamy. Let them eat cake!
Fact is, there are a LOT of VERY serious issues that should be pushed HARD about the documets.
1. The widow and son were IGNORED
2. Document experts were IGNORED
3. Hodges was MISLED
4. The old secretary was NOT INTERVIEWED until afterward
5. The opinions of the experts were MISREPRESENTED
6. The swift boat veterans were MALIGNED
7. George Bush's roomate DURING HIS GUARD YEARS, who AGREED TO SPEAK TO THEM WAS TURNED DOWN BECAUSE HE WAS TOO "PRO BUSH"...
And the list goes on. Fact is, this was a HIT PIECE ON BUSH. And just because dnCBS owns up to fake documents does NOT CLEAR THEIR PROPAGANDA / DNC REPORTING!!
If the documents were the ONLY ISSUE in this, without all of the other plainly propaganda driven results, it wouldn't be such an issue.
THE DOCUMENTS ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG! THE ICEBERG IS THE MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION OF THE PUBLIC!!
Just a bunch of pajama wearing, computer toting lone wolves, tired of listening to the media dogs all barking the same old tunes.
Dear Mr. Klein;
You probably work in NYC and contrary to your opinion, people in NYC do not have a monopoly on intelligence. The guy who sits in his living room in his pajamas probably has a good job, lives in a nice house with a nice family and does not commute over twenty hours a week to and from work. More than likely the guy in his pajamas does not have a degree in journalism. He probably has a degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics or business.
You might find this hard to believe, a degree in journalism is completely over inflated relative to its value to the work place. Less than a century ago, journalists, pardon me, I meant reporters, only needed to graduate grammar school to get a job at a news paper. Now it takes a BA or an MA to write an article at the same sixth-grade level the reporter would write a century ago. The ironic thing about the reporter a century ago is that he didn't have a liberal education, pardon me, I meant brainwashing, from a school like Columbia University. The reporter a century ago understood the difference between truth and falsehood. Today journalists can't distinguish between black and white, everything is some shade of gray. This leads to sound thinking like, "the memos are forgeries, but the story they tell is true."
The reason why people are turning to alternative sources for their news is because most of those people are smarter than you and they know the difference between right and wrong. Only a fool would would spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education that they already received in grammar school. People are recognizing this, and you are truly a fool. Just look at what you have to show for your life. You are intellectually dishonest, close-minded, hateful and have zero appreciation for the people fight and give their blood for your 1st Amendment rights. On top of that you probably wear pajamas. Real men do not wear pajamas.
I agree with this. I think that for the most part the bloggers "re-scale the news" rather than report the news. They can minimize stories followed by the old media pack that don't mean very much (e.g., Abu Ghreib) and bring to the fore the stories that should receive more coverage but do not get it from old media (e.g., Kerry's Cambodian Christmas). Mostly, they are a reactive medium. Even the stunning demolition of CBS's news organization by TankerKC, Buckhead and others was a reaction to documents put out by CBS in the first instance.
The bloggers themselves take a lead role in explaining the world ("re-scaling the news") through their analysis of the news. However, generally speaking they also do not originate news stories, but instead comment on stories originated by the old media.
As time passes, it will be interesting to see whether uncovering the news stories continues to be the primary responsibility of the old media or whether news stories will come to the our attention through some other means.
Or as Terayzuh would say, let them go naked!
To the left "there are no good guys, there are no bad guys...."
To the right there is right and wrong - good and bad.
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