Posted on 02/14/2005 9:12:05 AM PST by Congressman Billybob
An article by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post on the Eason Jordan resignation quoted Steve Lovelady "of Columbia Journalism Review" as saying of this event, "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." This struck me as a grossly unprofessional remark by anyone who claimed to be a journalist.
So, I wrote a detailed letter to the Editor of the Review, demanding an apology. Back came a letter this morning from Mr. Lovelady, which makes it clear that neither he nor the Review have a clue about the blogosphere. They do not understand our work, nor do they understand why Jordan had to go.
I wrote back to Mr. Lovelady. Those three letters follow in the order they were written. I think y'all will conclude from reading these letters that the Columbia Journalism Review, which is both the temple and contains the high priests of the MSM, is grossly out of touch with the real world in 2005. Read, and weep.
I have received no reply from the Editor of the CJR.
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To: the Editors of the Columbia Journalism Review
From: John Armor, Esq.
re: The Lovelady quote in Kurtz's article
date: 14 February 2005
Ladies & Gentlemen,
You apparently have a journalistically incompetent person working for your magazine.
Here is a quote from Howard Kurtz' article in today's Washington Post about the resignation of Eason Jordan from CNN.
"Hours after Jordan stepped down, 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.' "
If this is an accurate quote, then Steve Lovelady is an incompetent journalist. Here's why I reach that conclusion:
I am one of the "salivating morons" as part of the "lynch mob" which brought down Dan Rather, and hit CBS hard. We were at work seeking to get a transcript, preferably a copy of the video tape, from Davos, so we could hang Eason Jordan's precise words around his neck like a dead albatross. Like all good journalists, we prefer first-hand evidence rather than second-hand hearsay, even if there are multiple hearsay sources who basically agree and seem reliable.
As I told the attendees at a dinner in Asheville, N.C., Friday night, Jordan was our next "target of opportunity," as Slim Pickens said in his second-greatest movie, Dr. Strangelove. I predicted then that Jordan would resign, or be fired, within 30 days. I did not expect results as quickly as they came.
My concern here is about being called a "salivating moron" and a member of a "lynch mob." A little investigation of the facts should be in order before such labels are attached.
I am a graduate of Yale (two majors), Maryland Law (highest honors, Con Law), Ph.D. work at American University in Public Policy, author of seven books and more than 550 articles, briefed 18 cases in the US Supreme Court. Anyone who cares to, can use Google and Amazon to track down my particulars. On the Internet I am known as Congressman Billybob. Overall, I have published about three million words, give or take a few paragraphs. My next book is on Thomas Paine. (Yeah, right, I am a "salivating moron" and I hang out with a "lynch mob.")
The bottom line is this: I have a fairly typical background of the members of the "Pajama Patrol," as we have called ourselves ever since Joel Klein of CNN (then of CBS) dismissed us as "a bunch of guys in their pajamas, in front of their computers." My friend "Buckhead," for instance, has an able background but less achievement than I, because he is quite a bit younger through no fault of his own.
Steve Lovelady should not be dismissing any group of people as "morons" and a "lynch mob" when he knows nothing about us as human beings. That indicates a case of political bigotry, which is a fatal flaw in any would-be journalist. I render no judgment about whether Mr. Lovelady is "too dumb to swallow his own spit," a phrase we occasionally use here in the backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I know nothing about him other than this one quote as reported by Howard Kurtz.
But I would say he owes us a mite of an apology. What do y'all think?
If you take accurate journalism seriously, I expect to hear from you.
Sincerely,
[personal information deleted]
Post Script: Perhaps the CJR should publish an article about the leaders of the "new media." I don't count myself as a leader, but I know these folks well.
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Steve Lovelady wrote:
Brent Cunningham was kid enough to pass your note along to me.
The quote is accurate, but your interpretation is not. I did not say every poli-blogger, or even every blogger gunning for Jordan, is a slavering moron.
I did say, "The slavering morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." That is not the same as saying that every poli-blogger, or even every blogger gunning for Jordan, is a slavering moron. It is to say that those who do fit that description have prevailed in this instance. And believe me, for every one of you, there are 100 of them out there yammering away with mob-like glee.
If you doubt the accuracy of that characterization, I invite you to a long thread on Vodka Pundit on the topic yesterday. Please read each post -- there are 75 or so at last count, including a few from me -- and then come back and tell me these guys are playing with a full deck. Or that it is I, not they, who owe an apology.
I don't think you can. And that blog is just one of dozens frothing with blood and spittle over the same issue.
The hyenas are still gnawing the bones.
Perhaps that's why this morning, if you take the time to read,you will discover that even the high priests of the poliblog world -- Jeff Jarvis, Captain Ed, Jay Rosen -- are publically wringing their hands over what they have wrought. As well they should.
Steve Lovelady
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Dear Steve,
I was surprised to hear from you. It is to your credit that you did respond.
You suggest to me that I should read the posts on Vodka Pundit is misplaced. I read hundreds of posts every day from the "tin foil hats" on both the left and the right. I have never had the slightest doubt that such people exist, and file their screeds on the Internet.
But you make the mistake of confusing the players for the fans.
It may well be that the fans of the South Thwackingham Football Team are dangerous hooligans. But that leads to no valid conclusion about the Thwackingham footballers on the field who actually score the goals.
There are perhaps 200 people in the blogosphere who are at the cutting edge of all the issues that may arise. All of us operate the same way that I was trained to function as a lawyer. Assemble the evidence, reduce it to a cogent argument, and then argue it to the jury. In our cases, the "jury" is a few hundred editors in the MSM who make the decisions about what will be reported, and how. In our cases, we know that the jury is predisposed to bury the story we are promoting, so we always have an uphill fight.
Our work is "peer-reviewed" in that tens of thousands of people will read what we write, and some will seek to take it apart, brick by brick. So what we write has to be solidly based and defensible.
Now we turn to the issue of whether Eason Jordan should have been forced out. In my judgment, and that of many leaders in the blogosphere, he should have been fired years ago, when he admitted that CNN had coddled Saddam Hussein by suppressing negative stories about him, in order to keep its Baghdad Bureau open. Any news director who will suppress the truth for institutional gain, does not belong in the business. So, the Davos speech was the second major reason for dumping Jordan, not the first.
I was amazed that he resigned so swiftly. I conclude that he realized we would get our hands on the videotape of his remarks, and that that tape would have made his career sink like a brick in a well. We had reconstructed his comments from second-hand reports, but apparently the actual tape was even worse than we imagined.
The people who "prevailed" in l'affaire Jordan were not the followers, whose "spittle" offends you. It was the leaders of the effort, including me. We were right to push Jordan to resign. We are not "slavering morons." And you DO owe us an apology.
Lastly, the tenor of your note to me suggests that you still lack a working understanding of what the blogosphere does, and why it is important. It is important that the Columbia Journalism Review develop a real understanding of the "new media." Absent such an understanding of an influence that will more and more drive the MSM, the Review and its staff will become increasingly irrelevant to its subject, like a buggy whip factory in 1910, puzzled by the decline in its market.
Sincerely,
John Armor (Congressman Billybob}
It was. It was one of the first instances where they had to react to us - and they played catch-up the entire time, except for the group that thought it sufficient to merely follow the lead of the NY Times and declare the Swifties to be liars without actually bothering to prove such.
But the MSM, for the most part, was hardly involved in this story. And then they all woke up Saturday morning and saw that a big fish had resigned. It all went down with nary a peep from the MSMers. And that is a monumental change in the relationship - and not just with the MSM, but with all large media outlets. The panelists on Fox News Sunday, the Wall Street Journal and even Joe Farah over at WND have tried to downplay this using various methods. But the reality stands. The hounds of the blogsphere did not require the MSM to come along and pull the final trigger - the hounds brought down the the big prey by themselves. And the MSM riders on their fine horses are looking at that pack of hounds and wondering if they could pull them off their horses as well - and getting a cold feeling down by their saddles.
This forum allows me to comment on anything...from foreign policy and democrat political tactics to the Westminster Dog Show and car chases on Fox. How empowering is this ability to have my words read by thousands!
And the power that I have is something that the MSM do not want me to have; they wanted that power of being heard reserved for themselves.
Congressman, your comment about separating the fans from the players was spot on. Even here on FR we do this. There are members whom I trust for their opinions, and then the rabble who run in one direction or another depending on the topic. I think you made a very astute observation.
Thank you , Billybob, for standing up for us. Our voices are just as important as those of the MSM, and in fact more so. God bless Jim Robinson for this site, and for the inspiration to others.
Yup. Anyone who doubts that this is going to be a real war, with real casualties, hasn't the slightest clue about the way the Old Media has been behaving since their Watergate days. Many of them are big L Liberals who got there simply to "change the world" - along with their liberal buddy-buddy professors. Much has been going on under the surface during the last 10-15 years of the internet and talk radio coming to age, and they really haven't seen it coming until this year.
As for me, when eight years ago, the lamestream media stated "We don't think we're going to be covering the political conventions anymore: they've just become an infomercial for the parties", I said to everyone I knew, "Who cares! By then I'll be able to watch them gavel to gavel on the internet!" Most didn't believe me, but that is exactly what has come to pass - and it IS how I watched the RNC convention. This is only the tip of the iceberg as to how the Old Media is going to be marginalized - they will be following the lead of the people in the near future, if they wish to stay in business.
However, they won't go down without a fight. They have not yet gotten very nasty, but they will - and we at FR are on the front lines of those they will be nasty to. By their overt bias against Republicans and conservatives during the last year or three, they have done us a favor though, and hastened their eventual demise.
Dirtboy: You're forgetting how they were determined to bury the SwiftVets, and failed in the end. Remember the story about the Demodog operative in sKerry's campaign HQ saying, "Don't worry about them - that story won't ever get out into the public." WE got it out there, and kept it there, despite all their efforts. I'll agree that this Jordan story is another step in the evolution, but it isn't that great a step, the way I see it.
Don't bother reading it. He will cite several examples of "homophobia, racism and bigotry" and declare victory. YAWN!!
I'm not forgetting that at all. I fought my local rags when they claimed the Swift Boat vets were liars without proving their claims.
My entire point is that the MSM was part of the battle over the Swifties. But with Eason Jordan, just about the entire story played out without MSM involvement. That is the major change, over just a few months since the Swifties.
The three major stories have been Rather, Jordan and Gannon. The Gannon story was interesting because the media pounced on it but then stalled, like a driver that can't decide whether to cross the intersection or not. On one hand, they could bash the Bush administration. OTOH, the natural conclusion was to thoroughly examine all reporters at WH briefings which they DON'T want.
The Bush Administration should demand a thorough exam of all WH reporters and hire Craig Livingstone to do it.
The greatest part of FR is, when you spend some time and learn the "players", you discover who really knows what they are talking about. The need to discover that, of course, is the downfall, too - so many seek to opine on items that they don't have much basis, and that can lead to difficulty for newbies, including, I suppose, the Old Media who are trying to figure FR out. We have a great wealth of experience and knowledge in almost any field, collectively, and in almost all stories, it becomes obvious who has the real insight - but that process is not very straightforward, so someone watching briefly how it is done is easily misled.
In addition, and in many stories even more important, is the collective memory we have represented here --- almost every topic has some super-involved folks from the past: Clinton scandals == Alamo Girl and her many assistants, for example, but that is not the only one. I daresay if you brought up nearly any story history from OJ, to Nick Berg, to Iraq War(s), to JFK.jr death, to cosmology, ..., etc., you would quickly find FReepers who were deeply involved in that story. But that's not the only thing: we have a collective college education as well as life experience education that no newsroom in the country is able to afford and call on as rapidly as we have it at our fingertips. And, now that it seems none of them care to even try to do research any more, on such simple topics that are dealt with in easy historical documents or common sense (the proportional fonts of the CBS FRAUDcast comes immediately to mind), they are at a real disadvantage.
In addition, none of the real movers here have any trouble doing honest and real research on the 'net (and many have their own personal resources complimenting that)... and most of the Old Mediots seem to have no ability there.
I understand your point. I guess that I just consider Jordan small potatoes compared to that story, so I see that feat as having been just as indicative of the power now. However, your revelation earlier in the thread, of the fear now apparent in the Old Mediots when they start in on the 'net is new, and I am grateful for that observation from you... (I haven't even had the ability to pipe ABCNNBCBS into my TV for over 15 years now, so I necessarily missed that) --- Now the battle is really joined, but I think it is way too late for them to recover in the face of their faltering strenghth and our increasing strenghth... They are dangerous - as the Germans were during the Battle of the Bulge - but unless they can manage something very low percentage and unexpected, they will lose their dominance.
Got your Big Gulp cup handy?
Right with you, dirtboy.
Marker ping
"I'll agree that this Jordan story is another step in the evolution, but it isn't that great a step, the way I see it."
I agree. What everyone is missing is that there were two liberal DEMs who witnessed this attack on our Military and called Eason on it during the forum. I believe they and their friends may have had more to do with the resignation than the blogosphere. I find the swift resignation incredible as LIberals don't resign, because they don't have absolute moral and ethical standards. The point I am trying to make is that this may be a political move by the Dems in the aftermath of 2004. They are trying to remake their image of hating the military and inbred media bias.
Good Morning, CBB.
I will be sure to catch your column.
Thanks so much for sparring so effectively with Columbia, and for your many words of wisdom and experience for us.
Thank you for posting here. Am looking forward to your comments.
You suggest to me that I should read the posts on Vodka Pundit is misplaced. I read hundreds of posts every day from the "tin foil hats" on both the left and the right. I have never had the slightest doubt that such people exist, and file their screeds on the Internet.Brilliantly put. It is easy to take a commenter from any blog (right or left) and illogically infer that the whole lot are raving lunatics. I am amazed day after day by the coherence and intelligent thought I read on blogs.But you make the mistake of confusing the players for the fans.
I think you were too kind to him. Perhaps it's true that there are a couple of hundred influential bloggers and blog-site managers, and perhaps it's true that some of the comments on a typical thread may be inane. But as a rule, especially here in FR, a substantial number of the replies are intelligent and constructive.
And even "Pass the popcorn" doesn't necessarily indicate that the poster is a moron. Maybe he just doesn't feel like making a keen analytical statement at that precise moment. Maybe he's just in the mood to sit back and enjoy the action. Why not?
Some of the most important internet campaigns started within the threads, not at the top, Buckhead being the best known instance. And if someone posts something fallacious, stupid, or unproved, the responses are usually quick to point that out. The cooperative process is important, and that extends far beyond a couple of hundred people.
That's also true at the other end. An influential blog posts the evidence that Dan Rather promoted forged documents on 60 minutes. That wouldn't have done the trick if it hadn't quickly spread to 10,000 other blogs, not to speak of people who understood the significance emailing alerts to their lists (which is quite a different matter from the knee-jerk forwarding of propaganda that too often characterizes email campaigns on the left).
Excellent work. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I monitor a couple of the Lefty sites that are similar to Free Republic. They're semi-literate, and they NEVER examine both sides of the question. It's all "Bush is EVIL, and the Republicans are STUPID!", and the posters never allow the facts to get in the way of a good, slavering Two-Minute Hate.
It's like taking candy from a stupid baby, as we used to say about the way the Demmies used to treat the Pubbies during the impeachment wars...
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