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.
Same here, I subscribe to no newspapers and watch no network news.
Free Republic sorts the news and unspins the spin. Why wade through a bunch of leftist crap when I can get real news from the net?
A little more refinement of this idea. I would love it if there were an additional button to the ones provided at the bottom of a post:
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
The additional button would be, [ Suggest Edit ] or [spelling comment] or something like that. Everyone who clicks on that button ends up sending a private (or public, whichever is most effective) reply to the original poster and generating an automatic notice that they should consider using this new service. And then, the next time a liberal quotes from FreeRepublic with the bad grammar & poor spelling included, as they are wont to do, we can slam them for elitism and picking on the poorer people in our forum who can least afford the service.
The actual selling of car ads and classifieds pay for the paper. Watch the internet finish off that source of revenue.
Great show, one of the absolute best ever, in any genre.
Whining little pissant doesn't have a clue that all we're trying to do is get to the truth which the so-called journalists of the elite media refuse to report. They've long since stopped reporting the news and started trying to create it in the image held in their feeble imaginations. They decide how things "should" be, and try to make it so.
Obviously, distinguishing between fact and opinion isn't taught in journalism school.
"No, I have no problem with bloggers. Bloggers have a problem with me. I am devoted to many bloggers, on the right and the left. If I had the time -- not to mention the computer know-how -- I'd be blogging too."
I agree.
That eerie intro set the tone perfectly, didn't it?
Just to make things clear: my last poiced was directed at Airhead Antonia, and not you, DBeers!
At least she admits they are going down the tubes.
"A few weeks after I wrote that, State revised its Global Terrorism Report, restating the figures to show that incidents were at a 20 year high."
Yeah, that's how a raving moonbat from Planet Commie Nutbar would phrase it.
The "facts" as reported by CBS are, "Initially, 190 acts of terror were reported in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks reported for 2002. On Tuesday, the State Department said there were 208 acts of terror last year, a slight increase from 2002."
So, attacks were up by 5.05% in comparison with 2002, but included none on American soil.
Anti-American, Anti-Bush leftist filth in the State Department (sorry to be redundant) looked at that and said, "Hmmm...5% is really not all that bad, especially since there haven't been any sensational attacks involving Americans. How can we make this look worse? How can we give our catamites in the media more to work with in bashing Bush?"
And a senior foreign service officer broke off a fantasy of the 12-year-old houseboy he'd had when posted to Indonesia, and said, "Yo! Word up, homes! Looky here: what we do is issue a report that says attacks actually went *down*. I know, I know, that will initially make Bush look good, but dig this: We let that report simmer for a little while, with "progressives" denying it and Bushies flaunting it.
"The Bushies will be *way* out on a limb, relying on this report, then we saw the limb off behind them. That will hurt their credibility and the Bush regime's credibility, and all our butt buddies who were denying the accuracy of the report will be "proved" right."
Then they all went over to Barney Frank's house to celebrate with some cocaine and underaged male prostitutes.
Sound like a fairy tale? I guess, in a sense, it is. But if you think it implausible, then you don't know the State Department.
lol -I always assume the best.
"they can't see that, by firing up at us"
To quote Charles Winninger in Nothing Sacred, "I’ll tell you briefly what I think of newspapermen: the hand of God reaching down into the mire couldn’t elevate one of them to the depths of degradation—not by a million miles."
Yo, Zerbeastias, here's a clue for you: the gutter is in a downward direction from where we stand, and the mire makes a very good backstop for rounds that go all the way through.
Does that mean leftist, lying, in-your-face anti American reporting?
Only so he can pump out puff pieces on how Hillary is the exalted queen of heaven, and we should all bow down to her Holiness.
Sheesh, what a stupid baboon!
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