"Bloggers Don’t Have the Standards and Ethics of Big Media Reporters ... Like Me!"
Posted on 01/06/2008 5:32:51 PM PST by jdm
This is almost too good. It’s the standard Big Media snobbishness about bloggers — coming in a quote from one of bloggers’ biggest punching bags, Helen Thomas:
“What I really worry about is that I think the bloggers and everyone, everyone with a laptop thinks they’re journalists,” Thomas said. “And, they certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics, and so forth. There’s a deterioration.”
“[T]hey certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics . . .” Well, she’s right about that.
Here’s one example.
On January 2, crab-grass blogger Dan Riehl wrote a post about a wide array of media outlets that got taken in by a phony Facebook entry for Bilawal Bhutto.
On January 3 — the next day — the L.A. Times’s Rosa Brooks published a column that quoted the phony entry:
And who knows? Maybe Bilawal’s not such a bad choice for the Pakistan People’s Party. A history student at Oxford, he already has a constituency — at least on Facebook, where someone has established a new fan group called “Let’s not assassinate Bilawal Bhutto because he’s hot, OK?” Bilawal’s own Facebook profile is fairly modest: “I am not a politician or a great thinker. I’m merely a student. I do the things that students do like make mistakes, eat junk food … but most importantly of all … learn.” Still, “My time to lead will come.”
The L.A. Times has since issued a “For the Record” item that states:
Pakistan: Rosa Brooks’ Thursday column about political dynasties cited a quote from Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Facebook profile. Facebook has since found the entries to be “not authentic” and disabled them.
This papers over the fact that the writing was on the wall the night before Brooks’s column ran. At 7:59 p.m., a New York Times blog quoted a Facebook associate warning that the account had been set up by someone else — and blogger Riehl had picked up on it by 11:03 p.m. But dinosaur Big Media columnist Brooks still had a column printed the next day quoting the phony entry.
If Rosa Brooks had bloggers’ standards, I guess the L.A. Times wouldn’t have had to issue that correction.
But Helen Thomas is right. We don’t have their standards.
(Via Michelle.)
Thank God.
Helen has standards? Who knew?
nor the dashing good looks....
How about that?!
Bloggers are not old washed up wind bags.
Helen Thomas has ethics?
In the words of the immortal Jerry Seinfeld whilst stealing the marble rye:
“SHUT UP YA OLD BAG!”
As long as we’re discussing standards, I understand the Thomas has become the SI unit of Ugly. The English system is still using the Sandra Bernhard.
She is quite correct, although not in the way she thinks.
She thinks she is a journalist? She needs a shrink.
I have long contended that journalists are ignorant, biased, and lazy. I should add to that description: completely lacking an ethical foundation.
Good thing that bloggers don’t measure up to this standard, they wouldn’t last long if they did.
I pity the mirror that told her those lies.
So, until they can come up with a licensing standard (something that could provably be revoked if the person was found to be biased), then I would put my trust in the places I think serve the public good with better intent and accuracy.
I’ll choose the more reliable of the internet sources over her, any day.
Post an inaccuracy on FR and you’re likely to get nailed on it in less than 5 minutes.
I’ve been involved on both sides of this. My inaccuracies were not intentional, but it is very helpful to be corrected so quickly.
ROTFLMAO
I don't think Helen is aware of FreeRepublic. We have been exposing biased and sloppy journalism for years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.