Kathleen Parker: There are a lot of ignorant people on Free Republic who are destroying newspapers.
Posted on 03/15/2009 10:03:55 AM PDT by Zakeet
Pseudo-conservative Kathleen Parker’s ongoing method of getting her columns published in the Washington Post – bashing conservatives – took another sleazy turn on Sunday, with Parker asserting in the Post that conservatives who accuse the media of a liberal bias are "non-journalists" who stoking "ignorance," like Rush Limbaugh (not to mention groups like the Media Research Center.)
The biggest challenge facing America's struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry.Yes, Dittoheads, you heard it right.
Drive-by pundits, to spin off of Rush Limbaugh's "drive-by media," are non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias.
That would seem to be a direct slap at MRC, who could be accused by a liberal of "demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so" (founded in 1987). Could there be a better way for Parker to bow and scrape before her syndicators at the Washington Post Company than to decry that American newspapers are the lifeblood of democracy, and they’re being unfairly maligned by ignorant and unprofessional hooligans?
Frankly, the idea that "drive-by pundits" who decry liberal bias are "non-journalists" is simply not true in many cases. Start with Bernard Goldberg, a long-time veteran of CBS. (I’m not a "non-journalist." I’m a journalist who writes about journalism. Just because the Washington Post wouldn’t hire me doesn’t mean I’m not a journalist.)
Then, there’s simply the flawed logic that a "non-journalist" can’t criticize the journalist. If a plumber came into your home to a fix a leak and instead flooded the place, could the plumber argue "non-plumbers" have too much "ignorance" to complain?
She makes a lame feint to the idea that "there is some room for media criticism" and yes, some newspapers are liberal, but the charges of conservative media critics are comical:
Constant criticism of the "elite media" is comical to most reporters, whose paychecks wouldn't cover Limbaugh's annual dry cleaning bill. The truly elite media are the people most Americans have never heard of -- the daily-grind reporters who turn out for city council and school board meetings. Or the investigative teams who chase leads for months to expose abuse or corruption.These are the champions of the industry, not the food-fighters on TV or the grenade throwers on radio. Or the bloggers (with a few exceptions), who may be excellent critics and fact-checkers, but who rely on newspapers to provide their material.
As others have noted, the Internet can't quickly enough fill the void created by lost newspapers. In time, some markets simply won't have a town crier -- and then who will go to all those meetings where news is made? What will people not know? In such a vacuum, gossip rules the mob.
That is simply a cartoon, a mudslinging campaign commercial script that could be paid for by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Clearly, the average talk-radio host doesn't make Limbaugh money, just like the average newspaper reporter doesn't make Katie Couric money. You don't dismiss the overwhelming evidence of liberal media bias by trying to distract people by talking salaries, that somehow, newspaper reporters are heroes because they helped install Obama while they made a five-figure salary.
The column is titled "Frayed Thread in a Free Society." Parker’s not a conservative. Because a conservative would argue the opposite: that liberal newspapers are a threat to a free society, not conservative media critics. Liberal newspapers are the ones who wanted to make America safe for terrorist suspects. Liberal newspapers are the ones whose coverage of Iraq screamed that they wanted America to fail. Liberal newspapers are fully behind turning America into just another European-style no-growth socialist republic.
If Parker wants to fly her liberal flag and claim that only the "ignorant" believe in consistent liberal bias, then why doesn't she actually address the evidence, instead of just throwing bombs?
Kathleen Parker should look in the mirror and see just who is the "drive-by pundit."
Kathleen Parker: There are a lot of ignorant people on Free Republic who are destroying newspapers.
Pray she goes senile soon. Oh, wait ...
The US needs some reporters. Send the “journalists” off to blogging land with the rest of us.
Who cares what this Vichy Republican is saying?
She is certainly not offering any constructive advice and she certainly is not down for our struggle.
With “conservatives” like Kathleen, who needs DemocRATS?
She couldn’t recognize ‘bias’ if you tatooed it on her forehead and gave her a mirror.
My goodness, I haven’t even been near a newspaper in years! How can I destroy something I don’t even use? ;^)
She’s just trying to be like her hero, Arianna Huffington.
No - it’s liberals and Democrats that are doing it by not subscribing and those evil corrupt corporations by not advertising ....
She’s obviously an idiot.
It’s called supply and demand.
Rush and Levin’s ratings are way, way up, because people want to hear what they have to say.
Newspaper circulation is way down because people are no longer interested in reading DNC propaganda.
I would hope that as more and more of the MSM loses their jobs that maybe they will begin to wake up and start to take Obambi to task finally!
Rushes plan to destroy all newspapers is working. Keep up the good work Rush.
Kathleen Parker - one of ‘Bama’s pre-emtive surrendercons?
the truth is, newspapers destroyed themselves.
beginning after ww2 and climaxing in the 80’s family newspapers across the nation were bought by corporations.
these corporations turned the newsrooms over to college educated, j-school grads, all leftists.
meanwhile, new technologies have grabbed the attention of younger people. they avoid newspapers.
Sounds like we got the old Gray Lady on the run. Good.
She misunderstands the idea of “elite media.” The issue is that the MSM considers the conveyance of news and information to be their sole purview and that their editors are the final word in what constitutes “truth”. The “elite” media see THEMSELVES that way, and it has nothing to do with paychecks.
El Rushbo is mi amigo. At least Kathleen didn’t take a cheap shot at Rush’s size or pain killers history.
There is this conceit among journalists that they are “professionals” in the same sense as doctors and lawyers, i.e., highly-trained specialists who require years of pst-graduate education. This is, of course, false. The typical professional journalist is no better educated, no more “professional,” than the typical Internet blogger.
To see thst liberal bias is not some right-wing phantasm, she should read Bernard Goldberg’s “A Slobbering Love Affair,” in which he lets fawning, pro-Obama journalists damn themselves with their own words. Or she should read “Red Hot Lies,” which documents media complicity in the distortions and exaggerations of global warming “science.”
Or maybe she should read her own column of a few days ago in which she chastized Obama and the media for falsehoods and errors of ommission in the stem cell debate.
Guilty
It is obvious she has contracted the dreaded "McCain Syndrome".
That affliction causes you try to make friends with your enemies by making enemies of your friends.
It didn't work for McCain either.
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