Posted on 01/13/2005 4:23:03 AM PST by StoneGiant
PEGGY NOONAN
MSM Requiem
After the Dan Rather scandal, American journalism will never be the same.
Thursday, January 13, 2005 12:01 a.m.
The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over. That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard.
Is it annoying that the panel that issued the report did not find liberal bias in the preparation and airing of the Bush National Guard story? Yes, but only that. It's not as if anyone has to be told. I hate to be cynical, and this is cynical, but the panel that produced the report was not being paid by CBS to find liberal bias. It was being paid to do the anatomy of a failure with emphasis on who did what wrong.
... snip ...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Many articles have referred to journalistic standards.
Does anyone know what those standards are and who enforces them?
Isn't it true that if a profession must have defined standards and an enforcement body to be considered a profession?
Brilliant! Thanks for posting the whole thing.
"It was being paid to do the anatomy of a failure with emphasis on who did what wrong."
I would suggest the panel was being paid to find a version of the truth that would protect CBS from libel, slander and felonious violation of about every election law on the books.
"Myopic Zeal" - That can be made to mean anything the defendant needs it to mean. Look what Clinton did with "is"!
"The MSM didn't come into existence because of a brief period of political comity. The MSM rose because it had a monopoly. And it fell because it lost that monopoly."
Thank heavens for choices and the internet...
I am still amused that the libs can have all of the alphabet networks, 2 mostly lib cable networks, PBS and go bonkers over Fox News..which features left and right.
It does a very good job of weaving through the minefield, doesn't it?
3 Conservative forces, 1 phony "Which ever way the wind blows" O'Blowhard....
Noonan is an excellent writer but even "Real and actual news" can be slanted. Look at Iraq -- 90% of the country is peaceful and in better shape than under the Saddam Regime. But the MSM covers Falluja and its ilk since it makes for more sensationalism and advancing the liberal agenda. The MSM has reverted to the Hearst era and no one has the guts to tell them.
Peggy Noonan is usually an insightful journalist, and I would love to agree with her. But the fact is, American journalism IS the same. Nothing changed with the CBS report. It was a standard corporate whitewash in the face of egregious wrongdoing, and yet Dan Rather survived. Les Moonbeam survived. Andrew Wayward survived. And CBS News survives.
Nothing changed. At least as far as the lame media are concerned, it's business as usual.
This enforces IronJack's Second Axiom of Politics: Liberals Never Learn.
Ms. Noonan forgets that there is as much bias in what is covered as how it is covered. Witness the silence on Clinton's rape of Juanita Broderick, and their endless pursuit of Bush's National Guard service.
Are their cameras there when mass graves are discovered in Iraq? Barely.
The network media are not good at covering the news they choose. When a story is breaking and they don't know which way to go with it yet, they do OK. Otherwise, its pure crap.
The world wide web is the greatest invention for the advancement of human knowledge since the printing press
What a 'lady-like' way to lay it on the line! Bravo!
But what Rush has been saying for a while now is true: They aren't getting away with it anymore. It's one of the reasons--maybe a key reason--they are out of power. You're right, they aren't dead and gone, but they are checked now, both in the sense of a check on their power, and also in the sense of literally checking their facts. That's the fundamental change. It came from "below", not from them. They don't have to cooperate for it to happen.
I agree. Bill O'Reilly is a phony. He claimed for years that the MSM did not have an ideological bias, only an elitist bias. Now that that position has been proved laughable, O'Reilly pretends he never argued the point.
His backing of Dan Rather is disturbing and his inability to ignore criticism from even the most obscure sources peculiar. How can a serious political commentator continually engage in public spats with a moron like George Clooney?
Of course, all of this is superceded by his sexual improprieties with a co-worker while he is married and has a young child.
Mostly what I see in the major media is a load of some reporter's opinion/slant on the facts they are reporting. It is there in the tone of voice, and the "but this" and "but that", and the gratuitous insertion of some bad news along with a snippet of good just to be "balanced", and the guotes from dunderhead "experts" to insert the liberal spin. I just quit my local paper, which more and more had only ads and wire stories from AP that I read yesterday on here and editorials from the New York Times that were also on here if I had any desire to read them, which I usually don't. Why a local paper in conservative Utah would think I would be intersted in what M. Doud had to say is a stumper.
Personal integrities aside, the network changed the terms of evening news and helped marginalize the big three. That's undeniable. Cable news played a role in pulling the plug on CBS.
But the entire episode is merely an example of something much bigger and much worse.
The Left has excused purjury, sexual assault, rape, forgery, lying, and deceit, has announced repeatedly that character is of no importance, and its operatives have attempted, perhaps successfully, to disenfranchise American service personnel serving abroad in combat.
Those of Left excuse and rationalize immorality and depravity with inconsistent, shallow explanations, designed to support their agenda, their positions of power, their comfort and benefits, or even their sense of control;
However, all of this clearly reveals a moral disintegration of the Left--and not just the American Left, the Left of the entire Western World.
A large part of Western Civilization has succumbed to a moral confusion and depravity that threatens the existence of the West and is an integral part of the decadence that has gripped the West. The depravity of the American Left is part of this decadence.
Whether or not the West will recover from this decadence remains to be seen.
The American Heartland remains healthy, strong, morally and strategically clear, and ascendant.
The American Heartland is the best hope of Western Civilization and of the world, and the American people, in their rejection of this decadence and their insistence upon the importance of moral values on November 2, 2004, gave great impetus to this hope.
However, if the West should succumb to this decadence, it will fall--and something else, something far worse, will take the place of Western Civilization.
The CBS matter has already been recorded in history. No amount of whitewash will cover it up. The people of the world will not be fooled by the sobs and tears of those responsible, no matter how they deeply sympathize.
But the CBS matter is merely the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is moral corruption, depravity, and decadence that has infected the entire Free World, and the American people must lead the way in cleansing the world of this decadence.
You mean Fox News? Agreed. But Bill O'Reilly is hardly representative of Fox News. Brit Hume would be far better, or just the Fox News logo. But hey, I really wasn't trying to bag on you or your efforts to put together an image montage (no good deed goes unpunished, eh?), just using a smart-aleck comment to make the point that O'Reilly is a bozo, while Rush, Drudge, and Free Republic have done so much for conservatism. No big deal, just kidding around.
Bill O'Reilly is a phony.
I agree... here's a letter I sent to Bill O'Reilly. Boy, was I shocked when it wasn't read on The Factor:
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Mr. O’Reilly,
I’ve been noticing a Mainstream Media character in your suit, professing to be Bill O’Reilly. But this craven maven-of-the-airwaves is a blind supporter of Dan Rather… which infers that there’s no intellectual honesty in the spiffy Joseph Abboud suit.
Can you help me find O’Reilly? Perhaps he’s been captured by Jesse Jackson, and is undergoing mind-meld reprogramming even as you read this….
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Sorta sad, isn't it?
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