Posted on 11/25/2004 7:52:43 AM PST by HighWheeler
Hoo-boy. It's a hot time in the old blogtown.
The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's announcement on Tuesday that he was retiring as the top talking face of the network after 24 years.
"This has been a simply outstanding month," crowed a poster on http://www.freerepublic.com. "Bush won, Arafat died, we're kicking ass in Fallujah, and now this!"
Typically, the above-quoted "Freeper" didn't get that Rather may be down, but he certainly isn't out. When he steps down as front man for The CBS Evening News on March 9, he will stay on as correspondent for the still much-watched 60 Minutes, as well as perform other assignments.
So it was a bit premature to be celebrating the defeat of the veteran journalist who has inspired anti-liberal websites such as http://www.RatherBiased.com and http://www.BoycottCBS.com, not to mention Doonesbury's ridiculous foreign correspondent Roland Hedley Jr., an R.E.M. hit and "Rather-gate."
As comic Jon Stewart recently pointed out, last September's 60 Minutes II fiasco, which had Rather questioning President George W. Bush's National Guard service with documents that could not be authenticated, was the only scandal of the election campaign to have merited a "-gate."
Which brings us to those pajamahadeen, the online brigades who claim credit for bringing those documents into question — and forcing Rather to apologize for his reporting.
The right-wing bloggers proudly dubbed themselves that — a play on muhajadeen, as in Muslim guerrilla fighters — when former CBS exec Jonathan Klein, in the wake of the scandal, complained to Fox News that "bloggers have no checks and balances.
"You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances (on network news) and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."
By checks and balances, Klein meant the rigours of professional journalism — and not the opinionating of the blogosphere.
Ironically, bloggers mostly feed off the work of professional journalists who do the legwork. But, like parasites too stupid to realize they are killing off their hosts, the pajamahadeen don't get it every time they dig more dirt for our mass grave.
"Network news is dying and good riddence (sic)!" jubilated one of them yesterday.
It's true that journalism's checks and balances have been known to fail. When they do, news organizations crash and burn in spectacular fashion. But, much like the thousands of airplanes that land safely every day and don't make the news, major disasters are few and far between.
Still, the credibility of the corporate media continues to plummet.
In March, the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism published The State of the News Media 2004, which documents an increase in superficiality and sensationalism, the declining reach of newspapers and network newscasts, cutbacks in newsroom resources and, most significantly, rising public distrust and disdain for our reportage.
Then, in June, the Canadian Media Research Consortium, a national project led by three University-based organizations to promote research on the media, (http://www.cmrcccrm.ca) came out with its Report Card On Canadian News Media. While it showed that Canadians are significantly more positive about our news sources than Americans are, citizens here believe that "powerful people or organizations" have too much influence on the media agenda.
One thing is clear from both studies: The shift from mainstream media to alternate sources such as the ethnic press, cable networks and the Internet, are threatening the future of the solid, stolid mainstream journalism.
And we don't know how to deal with it. Recently, for example, the news came from the U.K. that staid old papers are going tabloid, while the Washington Post will lighten up — all to attract elusive younger readers.
As for the newscasts of the type that Rather hosts, well, one look at the commercials for arthritis pills will tell you plenty about their demographics.
Paradoxically, young people are crowding into journalism schools, many of them in search of network TV stardom.
Still, the pajamahadeen are waging war on the mainstream media.
That includes the paper you're reading, even if you're not reading it on paper, since it is the actually selling of this paper which pays for the content you may now be reading gratis.
By the end of today, who knows how many bloggers will have had at this column? Many of them often shoot me down — and some do a pretty good job. (See letitbleed.blogs.com)
But, just like trigger happy celebrants in the Middle East, who have yet to figure out that what goes up must come down, they can't see that, by firing up at us, they will also kill themselves.
More drivel from North of the Border. And a journalist from a respectable publication coined the phrase "pajamahadeen".
Blah, blah, blah, blah, checks and blah, blah, zippity-doo-dah whatever.
Highness...
(curtsey)
I've been wondering how you've been doing since I don't get over to the UT too often. You all right?
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS: Thank you for validating what I already thought of propagandists such as yourself. How's Canada? Stay there.
Hear, Hear!!! You couldn't be more correct.
Molly Ivins defected already? Thank God.
ROFLMAO.........thanks!
Haw haw haw, MSM is a major disaster. Read just about any MSM newspaper, watch just about any MSM news broadcast, and the overall effect is like the reporter came from Mars.
Wishfull thinking does not a news story make. An error the MSM has been making for many a year, and the strain on their credibility is telling.
I'm posting at number 373 or so on this thread. Has it occurred to y'all that the authors purpose in writing this might be to provoke the bloggers? The more time bloggers spent generating comments about this insipid article is less time spent sharpening our claws on the MSM itself.
good point, RK will get on with other things!
This writer is wrong. When the papers peter out, we will devote our time to much more worthwhile pursuits, such as NASCAR and hunting.
Bingo. And the ironic thing is that the role of the "free press" was to keep government honest. When the press began to not only try to keep government honest but to INFLUENCE outcomes with biased one-sided reporting, alternate news sources were born. THEIR role is to keep the MSM honest.
The blue's are for Socialism and proudly claim the founders of Communism as their heros.
Kerry lost because he is basically a Socialist. Bush won because he stands for American Values and never wavers from that foundation. I will stay with President Bush, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan etc. all the real Americans. Let the left lament all they will, they are certified blithering idiots, raised in schools with teachers who are blithering idiots. They think Trotsky, Stalin or Castro, all dictators, would give them a chance at freedom? No…they should try to live under Communism for awhile…..as I said, Blithering Idiots All.
Hey Antonio,
It looks like you could use a set of pajamas!
Nonsense, until FR, MSM has had no checks and balance.
The only checks and balances we need here is that you don't lie, you don't cuss, if you produce facts they must be correct and you let one another know when they've crossed the line. Poor Dan Rather, his checks and balances aren't as good as ours.
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