Writer says war unleashed against U.S. journalism

San Antonio Express-News ^ | May 21, 2006 | Sheila Hotchkin

[RayChuang88]

Marie Brenner, a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair magazine whose reporting career began against the backdrop of the Watergate era, said Saturday that war is being waged against this nation's press and journalists must stand together to turn back assaults on their freedoms.

Her speech opened the two-day San Antonio Express-News/Poynter National Writers' Workshop, one of several such journalism conferences held around the country each year.

In her speech, Brenner drew parallels between the Watergate era of the 1970s and today's "Plamegate" era, in which the disclosure of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity led to a criminal investigation that saw courts compelling reporters to reveal confidential sources. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for her initial refusal.

[pointsal]

JUST CURIOUS...

HOW DOES ONE ACQUIRE PRESS CREDENTIALS?

I comment frequently at the FR... does that make me a roving commentator?

Maybe JimRob will start issuing badges for donation levels... (hint)

[PGalt]

Truth is confronting propaganda. Good people are connecting rapidly.

[Dog]

I have just two words for Ms. Brenner.

Buckhead rules!!!

[PGalt]

Buckhead rules!!!

Worth repeating!

[Lancey Howard]

Notice it's always the scumbag liberal writers who like to spew this kind of paranoia?

[Larry Lucido]

If true, they should:

1) Not over-react.

2) Ask why they are hated.

3) Call for negotiations.

4) Don't fight back without a clear objective, a timetable for withdrawal, and a vote in congress.

5) Let the inspectors to their jobs.

6) Don't invade.

7) Disarm and use the money for national health care.

8) Avoid quagmires.

9) Withdraw all troops now!

10) Disarm.

[RayChuang88]

I sometimes really wonder did the MSM (e.g., Drive-By Media) bothered to read Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave. Published in 1979, one chapter of this book, "De-Massifying the Media," mentions that as communications technologies improve the control of information transmission by the big media companies will come to an end.

Look at what happened since The Third Wave came out:

1. Videocassette recorders (and increasingly hard-disk based digital video recorders) have rendered the whole idea of watching TV shows based on scheduled program time obselete, as people can watch the show long after the original airing. David Letterman admitted that much of his popularity came from the fact The Late Show with David Letterman on NBC was one of the most recorded shows on VCR's, which had become wildly popular by the early 1980's.

2. There has been an explosion of the number of channels of TV programming available, thanks to the arrival of 70+ channel analog cable TV, 120+ channel digital cable TV, and 150+ channel small-dish satellite TV. This severely split the demographics of viewers, to say the least.

3. The arrival of the DVD in 1997 marked a major sea change in how people watch movies. With DVD's very high picture and sound quality, many moviegoers are now foregoing trips to the theaters and instead wait for the movie to come out on DVD, especially now with the price of home theater systems and non-CRT rear-projection TV's rapidly dropping in price. 4. The rapid drop in production costs has resulted in many more specialized magazines on the market, severely eroding the power of Time, Newsweek, and so on.

4. The arrival of proprietary online services in the 1980's and the public Internet in the 1990's drastically altered how we get our information. Instead of waiting for the evening news or the next day's newspaper to read the news, people can get news as fast as it can be posted on the Internet, and comment on it just as fast. The Rathergate fiasco is--in my humble opinion!--the moment that Toffler's vision of a de-massified media achieved its defining triumph.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Our war cry is "do your job and give us the news, not your biased opinions."

Opinions in print are called editorials, not news. People who make up stories are called novelists, not journalists.

[VOA]

Many journalists act not just as seditious arse clowns...
but also as just arse clowns:
http://www.regrettheerror.com/

[Fruitbat]

Well...if they (journalists) would quit acting like seditious arse clowns there would be no need to go to war against them.

But War is what they started, and so War is what they got...

Yeah, no kidding. They lie, cheat, fabricate, indoctrinate, but then when the chips fall against them even so slightly, or even level the playing field, they're the biggest bunch of whining cry babies on the planet.

[bert]

....I sometimes really wonder did the MSM (e.g., Drive-By Media) bothered to read Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave....

Great observation. I am a Toffler fan and will dig out the Third Wave to review that chapter.

To carry the thought further to todays situation, the entire war on terror is the result of Islamic Future Shock. They are overwhelmed with the rapidity of change. They have missed entire developmental stages experienced by western societies.

[Smokin' Joe]

In her speech, Brenner drew parallels between the Watergate era of the 1970s and today's "Plamegate" era

Yep. They both begin with a consonant and end in "gate"...

(Why every scandal has to have "gate" for a suffix is beyond me. Imagine "Teapot Dome-gate". Sheesh.)

There is a war on and the press are trying to lose it despite miitary efforts to the contrary.

The press hate the current president, as they did Nixon, (transferrence, anyone?), and are trying to hound him into ineffectiveness, in a time of war.

[rrrod]

Hey MSM.....we are just getting warmed up!

[piasa]

Marie Brenner, a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair magazine whose reporting career began against the backdrop of the Watergate era, said Saturday that war is being waged against this nation's press and journalists must stand together to turn back assaults on their freedoms.

Perhaps Marie needs to look inward, and do what the media wingnuts tried to tell us to do after we saw our fellow Americans incinerated before our eyes on September 11... and ask herself "Why do they hate us?"

Why do Americans hate the Old Media, Marie?

Could it be because you are trying to destroy everything we hold dear?

[piasa]

She said journalists have an obligation to shine a light on what is happening.

Like you put a "light" on what happened on when the WTC was bombed the first time in 1993, and then struck by hijacked aircraft in 9/11/01? When you censored the events of 9/11 so much that years hence people will think that attack was bloodless because there was virtually no published photos or video? Your "light" is pretty selective.

Dim bulbs.

[wmileo]

..".said Saturday that war is being waged against this nation's press and journalists must stand together to turn back assaults on their freedoms. "

This from people who write negatively about Israel, Christianity, Patriotism etc. These are easy targets with no repercussions for them. But when there are jokes circulating putting Islam in a negative light, they refuse to print them. Why? because they are cowards. How then are we to believe that cowards will stand together to confront anything when their are real consequences? When there are risks to take and consequences to pay, all you will see is their backside.

[Little Ray]

Good! Does that mean we can start shooting 'em?

[TChris]

...said Saturday that war is being waged against this nation's press and journalists must stand together to turn back assaults on their freedoms.

I have yet to hear of one case of a journalist's freedom being assaulted. What I see is increasing demand for accountability for their writing. Of course, juveniles have always considered accountability to be a draconian restriction on their freedom.

True journalism from the MSM died a long time ago. It has been replaced by liberal advocacy, and taught as such by journalism profs.

[GSWarrior]

Perhaps if they stuck to asking questions and writing down answers they wouldn't feel like they under attack.