Posted on 05/19/2005 7:24:17 PM PDT by Asphalt
In light of the Newsweek debacle, I thought it apropos to revisit another example of the MSM's willingness to inject stories into the media bloodstream with the intent of trying to damage this president and his administration. I'm referring specifically to The New York Times and the story of Al Qaqaa.
First, a little backstory. Three weeks ago I sat on a panel with Clifford May discussing new media. May cited his experience with the Al Qaqaa story as an example of the growing power and speed with which new media can analyze, critique, and rebut charges emanating from the MSM.
You probably remember how it all went down. Eight days before the election The New York Times, reporting in collaboration with CBS News' 60 Minutes program, dropped a bombshell report alleging that some 380 tons of high explosives had vanished from Al Qaqaa after U.S. forces failed to properly secure the weapons facility.
But May, along with astute bloggers like Wretchard and others, quickly raised a number of legitimate questions about the story. At issue were conflicting reports about when and how the explosives at Al Qaqaa were removed as well as concerns about the main source of the story: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, a man accurately described in this Washington Post editorial as "an adversary of the Bush administration on Iraq since well before the war."
May, who served for a number of years as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, says the Al Qaqaa story did not meet the paper's traditional standards but made it onto the front page anyway. Shortly after the story broke, May sent a letter to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, asking for answers to a specific set of questions about the Al Qaqaa story. To this day those questions remain unanswered.
Flash ahead to April 26, 2005: Keller delivered a speech at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies where he said, among other things, that The New York Times should aggressively defend its work against conservative cries of media bias. Ironically, Keller brought up Al Qaqaa in the context of this discussion - but then let the cat out of the bag when questioned about it:
Mr. Keller said he had been alarmed when discerning readers cited the explosives story as evidence of bias. But why didn't the paper wait until after the election, someone in the Baltimore audience asked him? Because, he said, people needed the information then, while they were deciding how to vote.
It speaks volumes about the mentality of the MSM that the executive editor of the country's largest and most influential paper is shocked and "alarmed" to learn that readers (especially the "discerning" ones!) would view the publication of a story clearly unfavorable to President Bush, released one week before the election and based on allegations primarily from a source with questionable motives, as a politically-motivated hit job.
It's the same mentality that allows Keller and The New York Times to find no problem devoting considerable resources to President Bush's national guard records but to ignore the story of the Swift Boat Veterans for more than two weeks before going to print - not with an article reporting the allegations against John Kerry but with a front page piece alleging a "web of connections" between Karl Rove and the Swiftees.
Unfortunately, it's the same mentality that allows Newsweek to get lazy with its sourcing and fall under the assumption that the worst rumors and allegations circulating about U.S. forces are true.
And if Bill Keller really is serious about aggressively defending The New York Times' work against critics who complain of bias, he can start by answering Cliff May's questions about Al Qaqaa.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I am shocked....shocked I tell you...by none of this.
I hate to say it, but back in days of the Vietnam War protests, with the exception of a few nut cases like John F. Kerry and Jane Fonda most of the protesters were young, irresponsible college-age kids, many of them high on drugs and many of them anxious to dodge the draft.
In contrast, today you have many, many older people in positions of power and influence, not to say privilege, who are behaving in much the same way. Pinch Sulzberger evidently hasn't grown up one wit from the days when he was a hippie war protester. Bill Keller is behaving no better than one of those druggies in Haight Ashbury. Evan Thomas is no more responsible than a crazed Weatherman or SDS leader.
It truly is disgusting. There's no excuse for it.
The Old Media is for all practical purposes above the law.
Aside from the relatively new ability of the private citizen to publicly bust them in a demonstrable lie (as we here did in Memogate), they cannot be policed from the outside. This new private ability is of as yet uncertain potency. For the time being, the Old Media continues able to escape serious financial and legal ruination as consequence of misdeeds of scale and import sufficient to land anyone else in jail or in the morgue.
Unless and until that changes, or they are given compelling motive to honestly and effectively police themselves from the inside, they will continue to do as Newsweek and CBS have done.
It is not sloppiness: It is the ARROGANCE of the Untouchably Safe, playing power games without risk of consequences to themselves.
is it bump my thread day? seems everywhere I look I see you. hehe.
our clones are everywhere
The mentality behind the MSM? Selfishness, pure and simple. Selfishness and cowardice.Cheap talk about how bad everyone is who has to make decisions and live with the results - who have to work to a bottom line - makes journalists feel superior to the people who make the country work. That is pure selfishness.
The MSM coheres in the idea that nothing actually matters except PR, and each individual component of the MSM gets good PR from all the others. Provided, of course, that the favor remains mutual. But the moment any person or institution ceases to support the pretensions of any of the others, all of the others will turn on him and drum him out of "objective journalism."
So the MSM is at bottom a mutual admiration society and a non-aggression pact which makes the MSM cohere in selfishness and fear. It is united for the purpose of picking on people who are natural Republicans - people who have responsibilities and who naturally make mistakes because they actually do things.
The result is that the MSM is hyper partisan under its facade of "objectivity"; liberal politicians do not so much lead and direct the MSM as they follow it, and operate in symbiosis with it.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
That such a theory can be plausibly posed says a great deal about the credibility of the MSM.
You use the media as your focus but you are basically describing human nature, or at least a particular embodiment of it.
Don't dismiss sheer incompetence just yet. I was forced to dump Newsweek in 1964 (thereabouts). The trend was there and the last straw was a story on how people living on social security were "starving" because they could only spare $26 per week on food. I felt sorry for a few minutes. Then I realized my wife and I were spending less than half that rate on food and eating very "high on the hog": Filet Mignon cookouts at least once a week, and lots of other (relatively) expensive foods. Had we needed to scrimp by we could have gotten by on $5 per week. So Newsweek's story was completely bogus and meant only to propagandize about Social Security.
I claim they are biased because they are both poorly educated and poorly informed.
normally, I'd bank on dumb, but the coverups and stonewalling after the "errors" suggest a less innocent cause.
It has been my objective to explain the MSM without resort to tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. Your comment gives hope that I might be getting close.
Let me shift my tinfoil so I can scratch my head on that one.
Nah, I understand and thanks for letting me know we are on the same page.
You effort has to be difficult at times in that you have to assume certain people (MSM) are acting in good faith, though misguided or misinformed, when you know they aren't.
The main difficulty I perceive is credulousness - falling into the hayseed mode and assuming that the MSM are acting in good faith. We've grown up being bombarded with a fantastic barrage of propaganda to the effect that journalism is objective, and I find I have to constantly remind myself that the conceit of journalistic objectivity is a degree foolishness which makes buying the Brooklyn Bridge from a seedy character on the street look like "due diligence." As Adam Smith put it, "It is age and experience alone that teaches incredulity. And they seldom teach it enough."We should all strive for virtue, yet one of the virtues we should strive for is humility. And what does humility consist of but restraining ourselves from boasting of the virtues to which we aspire. The trouble, for those who work in journalism, is that there's no money in humility. Journalists are a bunch of carnival barkers. And the freak show that they are selling is the length to which they will go to hype bogeymen. They strain at gnats and swallow camels in order to sustain the pretense that we should trust them rather than the businesses and other institutions on which we do and must depend.
Rush parodies journalists beautifully when he boasts of "talent on loan from God" - which is actually humility pretending to be arrogance - and rants about how perfect he is. But the crucial point is that he doesn't con anyone that he is objective, he is openly conservative. And although the old Fairness Doctrine and the only-too-new Bush-McCain-Feingold "Campaign Finance Reform" horse hockey put a premium on the pretense of objectivity - actually denigrated humility - Rush and the other openly conservative commentators are consistently more reliable sources of information than "objective journalism."
What is the standard by which a source of information should be judged? Well, the Old Testament says that if someone declares themself to be a prophet and says that God will do something, then if the prophesy doesn't come true the speaker was a false prophet (and must be executed). These days we don't execute commentors (or, more's the pity </hyperbole>, reporters) whose words consistently fail to hold up in the light of time and experience. But we can and must do the virtual equivalent, with our remotes. CBS, Newsweek, et al are on notice.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
Media bias bump.
"...most of the protesters were young, irresponsible college-age kids, many of them high on drugs and many of them anxious to dodge the draft...today you have many, many older people in positions of power and influence, not to say privilege, who are behaving in much the same way."
Same group.
bttt
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