In the Blogosphere, Lightning Strikes Thrice

Washington Post ^ | 02/13/05 | Howard Kurtz

[kcvl]

STEVE LOVELADY*: I don't want to say that every blog out there is put together by a 14 year old kid in the basement. I mean there's some very solid ones. I haven't found one that devotes itself exclusively to campaign press criticism and commentary, and that's staffed by professionals who are articulate, analytical and fast.

******

*Steve Lovelady, a former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and current managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review's CampaignDesk.org

******

Steve Lovelady, managing editor of CJR Daily (formerly Campaign Desk) e-mailed PressThink with a reaction to the blog storm, and criticism of one of its leaders, Hugh Hewitt, who has broadcast the Jordan story on several platforms-- his blog, his radio show, a television appearence with Chris Matthews, the Weekly Standard. Lovelady, formerly an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Wall Street Journal among other stops, doesn't trust what he's seeing:

I have to confess, this tempest in a teapot that Hugh Hewitt is trying to stir up over Eason Jordan leaves me baffled. First, Eason has already said his remarks were misinterpreted, and that he was not imputing intent.

But he's more than a little dismayed by the number of reporters killed by friendly fire, and why shouldn't he be? If he weren't, he would be shirking his job as a boss who regularly has to send reporters into harm's way. Furthermore, it's not like Eason is the first to bring up this issue. Two highly-regarded professional organizations, the Committee to Protect Journalists ("Permission to Fire") and Reporters Without Borders ("Two Murders and a Life"), have issued reports on this problem.

And numerous blogs and websites have done their own work, most recently Resonant Information. Hugh needs to come out of his conservative cocoon and get a life-- not to mention a more comprehensive reading list.

This whole matter really exasperates me -- and makes me think all over again that all too many bloggers (Hugh Hewitt foremost among them) are little more than the equivalent of the idiots lined up at any sports bar critiquing the athletes giving up their hearts and their guts on the playing field.

[Personal Responsibility]

The little people don't know their place when dealing with the high and mighty liberal elites of CNN or CBS or the Columbia Journalism Review? Maybe the little people don't care.

Remember, the mighty lib elites are the same people who think they can spend your money better than you can. They can help you run your lives by decreeing you *must not* drive without a seat belt. Or bike without a helmet. Or own a gun. If I choose to not wear a seat belt or a helmet, that should be my choice. With that choice I absolve the car manufacturer, other drivers, bike makers etc...for injuries sustained that would not have been sustained otherwise? Sound like a decent deal?

Every problem that exists, to them, can be answered with the phrase "more government" instead of "Let the people make up their own minds".

That they think the news should be doled out in much the same way as our money and our laws is hardly surprising. They have the same air of arrogance as any royal family from the pre-revolutionary eras. Eventually, the liberal MSM will get overthrown by a popular revolt as more and more people discover the interent and the truth.

Won't that be great?

[Pikamax]

Interesting little cleanup by the Washington Post pointed out by Mickey Kaus.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17462-2005Feb11.html

"Several CNN staffers say Jordan was eased out by top executives who had lost patience with both the controversy and the continuing published gossip about Jordan's personal life after a marital breakup. Jordan's authority already had been greatly reduced after a management shakeup. "


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002178496_cnn12.html

"But top executives are also said to have lost patience with the continuing gossip about Jordan, including his affair with Marianne Pearl, widow of the murdered reporter Daniel Pearl, and subsequent marital breakup."

[kcvl]

[Blogs are] not all the same; but maybe 88% of them are all the same----a handy recipe of innuendo, spin & PR, undercooked and then slapped onto the Internet without a care for accuracy or accountability. I'm always amused when residents of the blogosphere accuse mainstream media of self-satisfaction. In fact, mainstream media are wracked by angst and handwringing and undergoing a major identity crisis, one that has been written about at length ------while the blogophiles are busy congratulating each other for being such fine fellows, all in a closed loop, and righteously denying that they too have an obligation to serve the public interest. In other words, the common wisdom as to who is smug and who is not has it exactly backwards (as common wisdom so often does). We'll be continuing the debate today. Glad you're enjoying it.

Steve Lovelady

PS - We're working on putting together a sort of Comments feature----but it won't be open to every lunatic on the planet who thinks he has a bright idea. When you do that, you just contribute to the static.

[Southack]

"Three dramatic departures in recent days have highlighted the one-strike-and-you're-out nature of trial by Internet. Eason Jordan quit under pressure as CNN's chief news executive Friday night over his remarks on U.S. soldiers killing journalists in Iraq, following a relentless campaign by online critics but scant coverage in the mainstream press. In past episodes, journalists have been forced to resign, or news organizations to admit error, after Web commentators helped push a controversy into newspaper and television reports. In Jordan's case, the middle step was all but skipped."

The beauty of this paradigm shift is that *because* the Corrupt Old Media insists upon trying to spike stories about the treason among their own kind, that leaves us as the sole players to frame the issue.

The irony is that they could have better protected their own (e.g. Rather, Mapes, Raines, Jordan) had they covered the respective scandals hard enough. Instead, all of the tough questions, and all of the useful data, was found in areas that they didn't control on-line.

Nor has the Corrupt Old Media learned its lesson yet. For instance, the Corrupt Old Media still hasn't published the contents of Senator Rockefeller's leaked Senate Intel Committee memos...which means that we can go after that Democrat at a time and place of our choosing. That entire story is ours, and ours alone, to shape as we see fit...simply because the Corrupt Old Media isn't competing with us in framing said issue.

Ditto for the Sandy Berger theft and destruction of top secret U.S. intel.

Ditto again for the Washington Post's subterfuge and conspiracy to keep MD4Bush's identity and relationship to reporters secret. Such actions leave the entire playing field open to us, where we can go at our own pace and will.

Thus, in their desire to see big scandals remain anonymous, they leave the playing field open to bloggers and political forums.

Ooooh, throw me into that briar patch!

[kcvl]

9/17/2004 11:19:37 AM

From STEVE LOVELADY, managing editor, CJR's Campaign Desk: I can't answer Tim Graham's question [below] as to why Romenesko hasn't received more letters about the CBS furor, but Graham has truly been visiting another planet if he thinks the press has been an absent party to the controversy, or that CBS is being given any kind of pass by its competitors.

Not hardly, what with the Washington Post, Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and ABC News, plus half the blogosphere, swarming all over Rather like hungry wasps. If nothing else, that phenomenon ought to be reassuring to those benighted souls who imagine that "the press" is some sort of ominous monolithic force. To the contrary, the press has a distinguished (or disgraceful, depending on how you look at it) record of turning cannibalistic whenever one of its own wobbles or goes down on one knee.

As to the import of the matter -- if the documents, forged or not, had actually broken new ground, then this might be "one of the biggest media stories in recent memory," as one impassioned e-mailer declared to me. But they didn't; they're not nearly as incriminating as the Ben Barnes interview that preceded them, or the flurry of reporting last winter and spring on the still un-explained Alabama Absence of young George Bush.

As Michael Kinsley puzzled in the Los Angeles Times, if CBS indeed turns out to have been conned, the question is -- why? †Why rush to print, as it were, with dubious documents that allege no more than is already known ?

And as for a relative ranking of "big media stories of recent memory" -- is the CBS episode of the magnitude of, say, Jayson Blair deceiving the readers of the New York Times not once, but dozens of times, month after month? Or as big as Jack Kelly deceiving the readers of USA Today not once, but apparently hundreds of times for years on end? Or as big as the systemic failure of the mainstream press to question the fatally flawed rationale for war in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq? Or even as big as the press's inexplicable delay before it finally began investigating the veracity, or lack thereof, of the charges leveled at John Kerry by the swift boat veterans?

Rather is a visible target, as high-visibility as they come, so it's inevitable that the wolves, both inside and outside of the media, begin to salivate as they circle. And if he was conned, that's damaging -- as damaging as, say, Tailgate was to CNN a few years back, or as NBC's rigged explosion of a General Motors car was a few years before that.

But come on, guys -- try to get a grip. It's not Watergate. It's not even Rathergate. So far, it's no more than Fontgate.

[Fido969]

What is that, the love song of J Alfred Prufrock?

[Fido969]

Doth Postie protest too much.

[kcvl]

There are two sides to most stories, but the two sides are not always equally valid, and they don't necessarily warrant equal attention in the press. Steve Lovelady, the managing editor of The Columbia Journalism Review's CampaignDesk website, thinks reporters are so afraid of being perceived as biased that they are reluctant to make evaluations of controversial, partisan attacks like those from the anti-Kerry veterans. But Lovelady thinks that is a big mistake. "It shouldn't just be he/said she said," he argues. "It should be he said/she said/we say - and here's why we say it."

What Steve Lovelady is advocating, of course, is precisely what thousands of political weblogs do every day. Which is why they have emerged as the big media winner in this campaign. They have broken the stranglehold that Big Media once had as the exclusive gatekeepers of what is a news story and what isn't.

More here...

[Grampa Dave]

The continuing arrogance of the MSM Mediots to ignore these stories and to spike them plays right into our skills.

They can ignore and spike them all they want too. The truth gets out on the internet, and soon the pressure like a tidal wave removes the bad actors, not funny commedians, tone deaf singers, publishers, reporters, anchor men and now Jordan has been crossed.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Forget the FRmail I just sent you. :)

[CyberAnt]

First of all - Eason Jordon brought about his own undoing by lying through his teeth. And .. I do believe it was a bonefide journalist who first reported what Jordan said, albeit on the internet.

Secondly, "the middle step was all but skipped." Yes it was .. because the MSM has become irrelevant - just like the democrats.

Thirdly, "we used to control the speed" - loosely translated - WE USED TO BE ABLE TO HIDE THIS STUFF BETTER!

[kcvl]

Rahtergate...

In all of the hubbub, the Columbia Journalism Review--America's premier media criticism outfit--was notably absent. CJR's blog did not mention the story until September 14, and then only in passing. Goaded by the blogosphere, they addressed the matter head-on later in the day, when managing editor Steve Lovelady wrote, ". . . we're not in the business of saying, 'You may be a bad boy; drink your medicine.' We're in the business of saying 'You are a bad boy; drink your medicine.' And, as of this moment, despite the flurry of charges and counter-charges, it's not clear whether CBS has been had by some undercover operative intent on smearing the president, or whether the network itself is the victim of a smear campaign."

More here...

[Brimack34]

Next thing you know the MSM will call bloggers vigilantes.

[kcvl]

Steve Lovelady, managing editor of CampaignDesk.org, says he's been appalled by the "everyday occurrence" of this approach by reporters on the campaign trail.

"Reporters seem to think they've done an adequate job just because they give both sides a chance to state their case," Lovelady says. "But if that's all you do, you may have satisfied the imagined constraints of objectivity, but often you haven't told the reader anything.

"It's the most common and infuriating flaw in the press today. Reporters just don't measure what each side said against the known facts. It shouldn't just be he said/she said. It should be he said/she said/we say -- and here's why we say it."

September 7, 2004

[Mo1]

What they did to Jeff is disgusting. I wonder why they don't "report" that MSNBC's Campbell Brown is the daughter of Jim Brown*, former Louisiana Insurance Commissioner, a felon convicted of insurance fraud in Louisiana who is connected to the DEMOCRAT PARTY including Edwin Edwards? I would call that closer to a political party than Jeff Gannon.

HA! .. That would NEVER happen

[Mo1]

Next thing you know the MSM will call bloggers vigilantes.

They did

From the article ...

Steve Lovelady of Columbia Journalism Review e-mailed his verdict to New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."

[kcvl]

Steve Lovelady:

"We all, journalists and non-journalists, have information that we 'release' and information that we keep to ourselves. There are cases aplenty in which journalists, quite properly, recognize a higher interest at stake than informational freedom. If you had information about, say, upcoming troop movements in a time of war, would you print it? We hope not. Bob Novak recently took heat for publishing information that outed a CIA operative. The criticism was justified, in our view, even though there was no indication that his action put lives at risk. Others, offered that scoop, refused to publish it. Given that journalists make exceptions to the 'information freedom' imperative, why should protecting the legitimacy of the democratic process not qualify as one of those exceptions?"

[Southack]

"they're not nearly as incriminating as the Ben Barnes interview that preceded them, or the flurry of reporting last winter and spring on the still un-explained Alabama Absence of young George Bush." - Steve Lovelady

Steve Lovelady Caught Lying Again 1 Year Later; Ex-Guardsman Says Bush Served in Ala. ("I saw him each drill period)

[Mo1]

Ummm ... Have reporters ever heard of using Common Sense when reporting????