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.
Obviously, he's never been exposed to the "rigours" of posting at FR. I'm happy to say I've dished out some of those "already been posted" and "what is your source" checks and balances myself.
Specifically, she's too stupid to realize that what we do holds MSM types to even higher standards than they are accustomed to, hence the annoyance.
Let's prove our point by scouring some of her own past work for errors and inconsistencies here .
Want a sample of how, well, idiotic she is? I randomly selected her October 13, 2004 column and found this little gem:
"CNN is blaming Canada this week, with an over-hyped and sloppy series purporting to show how we're just shot through with "terror loopholes" and "lapses" here in the frozen north. Seems we're a "staging ground" for "Canadian Jihadist Radicals."
Whoa, stop the presses (pun intended)! Is Ms. Zerbisias *gasp* casting subjective aspersions upon a respected, revered member of the mainstream media?
(*Nearly breathless*) Why, why, she's questioning the " rigours of professional journalism", relying instead on "the opinionating of" her subjective (and, I noticed, unsubstantiated) viewpoint? "Ironically" in this particular column, Ms.Zerbisias "mostly feed(s) off the work of professional journalists who (did) the legwork" on the CNN piece.
How shocking! She best be careful lest she "dig her own grave" with such comments.
Heheheheheh, nice job on the investigative reporting of an Old Media Journalist.
"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."
NOT UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF LIBERTY, the Liberal Left may liken informed citizens to "trigger happy" tyrannical jihadists, but they only unmask their own ignorance!
If they understood HOW and WHY America became the beacon of liberty for oppressed people from all over the world, they might liken knowledgeable citizens (the so-called "pajama" fighters) of 2004 to Paul Revere of the Revolutionary Period.
When will they learn that the intellectual boundaries of citizens are no longer limited to what the three major networks (mouthpieces of the Left) report as "fact" night after night? Modern technology has made the Dan Rathers of the world practically irrelevant for those citizens who search for truth.
You sound like a zoo tourguide explaining the bizzare habits of a near-extinct species of animal that only exists in afar away place.
(maybe you really are.)
Lemme get this straight. CBS couldn't figure out that the documents were forgeries when they were clearly printed on a laser printer. Meanwhile, within 48 hours of the 60 Minutes II report, or in far, far less time than CBS took to create and vet this story, freepers had completely dissected every argument on the memos, including refuting problematic arguments that CBS later used to try and discredit the arguments against the memos, such as the claim that typewriters back then couldn't do superscripts.
But we're the ones without checks and balances.
Debating points on FR are fire-tempered. The liberals completely fail to understand that process. Which is why we kick their rumps week after week.
This from the same paper:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1292272/posts
"Stripper Shortage a National Disgrace" - Toronto Star.
Really? How about an example? Jason Blair -- did that sink the NYT? The Pulitzer Prize Winner at the Wash Post who made up a 6-year old junkie? Did the Post crash and burn and the Pulitzer committee go out of business?
This is but another MSM flunkie rationalizing a failing industry that has been taken over by ideologues and incompetents.
What is crashing and burning are circulation and Nielson ratings --- across the board.
This knucklehead assumes we want the MSM to die. We don't we want them to REFORM OR DIE. There's a difference.
"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."
What is he talking about? So we should just be quiet? What a moron.
She doesn't get it. The Pajamahadeen is not about shooting bullets into the sky. It's about openness of information. It's about individual experts now owning virtual printing presses and broadcast channels through our participation in the web. It's about the ability to get past biased gatekeepers in our new media. Our celebration of the month of November honored this new reality; it was not an end in itself and it does not threaten our ability to promulgate truth.
Oooohhh! That is just soooo Canadian! Crawl back into your collective, Boris.
Major Clymer!
>>It's the author of this self-congratulting article who doesn't get it. If the result of the pajamahadeens efforts is a more responsible and accurate press, their work has been a success.<<
Honest truth: the odds of that actually happening are what, 1 in a million? We should recognize what we're doing: The MSM has become so opinionated and inflexible that we are destroying it by attacking. We're replacing news organs like the NYT and WP with net-based commentary akin to the Village Voice on the left and the National Review on the right. The center has not held, and it is giving way to chaos. Fox News is conventional warfare; blogs and bbs are guerilla warfare, and will result in anarchy.
So why do I support blogs and bbs? Because anarchy is better than the current police state. (And please, I am using "police state" as an analogy.)
OK, there was a picture of droopy dog, for comparison with Antonia, but it may not have published correctly. Just in case you were wondering why I reposted her picture.
8-) Keep digging.
One thing I would like you to think about, please. Where would the news sites you rely on get their news from if there were no old media doing the legwork? Seriously. Think about it. Will the bloggers get out of their jammies and attend news conferences, go to war zones, cover city halls and legislatures, investigate corporate/government corruption etc.? Even your adored Limbaughs and company don't get off their butts to do original journalism. All they do is react to what the old media do. So again, I ask you, what will be left when the old media die? Darkness. We ain't perfect but we do the job, for better or worse. Thanks for writing.
-----Original Message----- From:---------------
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 5:32 AM To: azerbis@thestar.ca Subject: (no subject)
The pajamahadeens are digging their own graves
You too can be replaced....
She really thinks a lot of herself, eh?
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