Posted on 11/25/2004 7:52:43 AM PST by HighWheeler
Hoo-boy. It's a hot time in the old blogtown.
The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's announcement on Tuesday that he was retiring as the top talking face of the network after 24 years.
"This has been a simply outstanding month," crowed a poster on http://www.freerepublic.com. "Bush won, Arafat died, we're kicking ass in Fallujah, and now this!"
Typically, the above-quoted "Freeper" didn't get that Rather may be down, but he certainly isn't out. When he steps down as front man for The CBS Evening News on March 9, he will stay on as correspondent for the still much-watched 60 Minutes, as well as perform other assignments.
So it was a bit premature to be celebrating the defeat of the veteran journalist who has inspired anti-liberal websites such as http://www.RatherBiased.com and http://www.BoycottCBS.com, not to mention Doonesbury's ridiculous foreign correspondent Roland Hedley Jr., an R.E.M. hit and "Rather-gate."
As comic Jon Stewart recently pointed out, last September's 60 Minutes II fiasco, which had Rather questioning President George W. Bush's National Guard service with documents that could not be authenticated, was the only scandal of the election campaign to have merited a "-gate."
Which brings us to those pajamahadeen, the online brigades who claim credit for bringing those documents into question — and forcing Rather to apologize for his reporting.
The right-wing bloggers proudly dubbed themselves that — a play on muhajadeen, as in Muslim guerrilla fighters — when former CBS exec Jonathan Klein, in the wake of the scandal, complained to Fox News that "bloggers have no checks and balances.
"You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances (on network news) and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."
By checks and balances, Klein meant the rigours of professional journalism — and not the opinionating of the blogosphere.
Ironically, bloggers mostly feed off the work of professional journalists who do the legwork. But, like parasites too stupid to realize they are killing off their hosts, the pajamahadeen don't get it every time they dig more dirt for our mass grave.
"Network news is dying and good riddence (sic)!" jubilated one of them yesterday.
It's true that journalism's checks and balances have been known to fail. When they do, news organizations crash and burn in spectacular fashion. But, much like the thousands of airplanes that land safely every day and don't make the news, major disasters are few and far between.
Still, the credibility of the corporate media continues to plummet.
In March, the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism published The State of the News Media 2004, which documents an increase in superficiality and sensationalism, the declining reach of newspapers and network newscasts, cutbacks in newsroom resources and, most significantly, rising public distrust and disdain for our reportage.
Then, in June, the Canadian Media Research Consortium, a national project led by three University-based organizations to promote research on the media, (http://www.cmrcccrm.ca) came out with its Report Card On Canadian News Media. While it showed that Canadians are significantly more positive about our news sources than Americans are, citizens here believe that "powerful people or organizations" have too much influence on the media agenda.
One thing is clear from both studies: The shift from mainstream media to alternate sources such as the ethnic press, cable networks and the Internet, are threatening the future of the solid, stolid mainstream journalism.
And we don't know how to deal with it. Recently, for example, the news came from the U.K. that staid old papers are going tabloid, while the Washington Post will lighten up — all to attract elusive younger readers.
As for the newscasts of the type that Rather hosts, well, one look at the commercials for arthritis pills will tell you plenty about their demographics.
Paradoxically, young people are crowding into journalism schools, many of them in search of network TV stardom.
Still, the pajamahadeen are waging war on the mainstream media.
That includes the paper you're reading, even if you're not reading it on paper, since it is the actually selling of this paper which pays for the content you may now be reading gratis.
By the end of today, who knows how many bloggers will have had at this column? Many of them often shoot me down — and some do a pretty good job. (See letitbleed.blogs.com)
But, just like trigger happy celebrants in the Middle East, who have yet to figure out that what goes up must come down, they can't see that, by firing up at us, they will also kill themselves.
I can see it.
Try http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/mn/MNFRAfire98_7_1.jpg
Yeah I pasted it into the browser and it popped up . After I saved it it let me see the flamin bird !
Funny........Hope Eeeeek lets the Mom cook. Hate to see him and his homeless !
I'm off to Sisters casa for dinner ! Stay safe !
By checks and balances, Klein meant the rigours of professional journalism — and not the opinionating of the blogosphere.
Ironically, bloggers mostly feed off the work of professional journalists who do the legwork.
Wow, is this guy an idiot. Let's see what he has said in this article. First, the bloggers uncovered that the documents were fake. Then he says we lack checks and balances. People in denial are often also delusional, as it this writer.
On this forum are a great many experts and specialists from different fields who gather here to discuss issues and post breaking news as it happens. The combination of the knowledge here with it's sources and internet skills makes it a smarter, faster media that the old media will not be able to keep up with. We also grow in size while old media shrinks. We are the future.
It takes a rather (pardon the pun) self absorbed, elitist attitude to think that someone of common stature needs to shoot upward to hit them. They don't hold the high ground by any stretch of the imagination.
Like the poor, journalists will always be with us. We will not run out of "professionals".
...the multiple layers of checks and balances (on network news)...
Antonia, learn to think of us as just one more layer. The difference is that we are an independent layer and we operate after the fact.
For years the Old Media had no independent fact checking and bias monitoring. When Owl Gore invented the internet he inadvertently made this possible. This was to the Old Media what a giant meteor strike was to the dinosaurs. The OM now has a stark choice facing them--evolve or die.
The concept of "checks and balances" in the OM is not particularly accurate. What we really have is a "PC check" or a "mechanism for preservation of liberal bias".
Let me give you a contrast. When Dan broadcast the forged papers the only real check he had to go through was "does this fit within the potitical agenda of the network"? Since it did, no further checks were necessary.
However, when the OM did all the legwork on the Clinton-Monica Lewinski story, the news would have hurt a liberal. The OM applied an impossibly high standard of fact checking. Matt Drudge didn't find the story on his own, he was given a gift by disgruntled OM reporters who saw all their legwork headed for the trashbin of obscurity.
In both instances, the internet provided an independent balance to the OM. Shockingly, both times resulted in damage to liberals and the OM.
Power has shifted Antonia. Get up and ride the new wave, or get burried by it.
I thought the Sun was the Conservative Toronto paper???
bookmark
Yes, we do...each other. The major news propaganda machines don't even check themselves. They think they can say what they please, spinning stories to their political viewpoint, and all without question.
Let's face it: These propagandists are simply PISSED that the Internet exposes them when they LIE!
"CBS News, where more Americans get lied to!"
Source please. EVERY report I've seen shows 60 minutes in the pit.
BMP
It isn't just about balance - its about simply reporting the news. Its about keeping all opinion out of a story and instead simply reporting what happened. A reporter shouldn't have any point of view except that of the observer. They report, we decide.
We gladly feast upon those who would subdue us.
This guy thinks that the world couldn't go on without his paper. When I can read direct reports from soldiers fighting in Iraq, when we at FR get reports of events from around the world instantaneously, when we have an enormous wealth of FReepers expert in any field you can name, when we see stories on TV or in the papers 5-10 days after they've appeared on FR...tell me again why we need the dinopress.
By the way, welcome to the tar pit...
Hey Zerbisias hope your reading this Idiot!!
The MSM are worried, hahaha!
side note: not sure how I feel about newspapers quoting what freepers say here..??
Coming to J school with the wide-eyed zeal of a watchdog. Leaving as a Lefty lapdog.
They also aren't used to news being a two-way street, with commentary coming right back at them - they are too used to news being a one-way corridor for them to feed us their liberal pablum, and expect us to lap it up. Maybe, once in a while, one of them will allow a 100-word letter to the editor to be printed. Naturally, such constraints make it impossible to convey more than one or two related points, which is hardly ever enough to even lay out the scope of all the errors or biases in just one of their articles, let alone dissect them at length.
That puts them between a rock and a hard place. They will gain credibility but their ideological message will move decidedly to the right. We see this in talk-radio, the moment you tread in the dead zone of liberalist dogma, you lose market-share and eventually fail.
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