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.
The great untold story of the media today.
and Amen to that.
I have a cousin that is an editor for a news paper. She and I trade barbs every now and then because I know that the crap her paper prints is half true at best and I call her on it. She hates that people have access to news sources via the Internet and complains that her paper is slowing downsizing. I can't help but smile and tell her either simply report the facts or find a new career.
F' the Toronto paper. I don't care what they think.
LOL!
In the words of Anna Nicole Smith, You guys are freeking genius...make me beautiful.
Good work
Oh yea and I don't even own any pajamas so bite me Mr. Canuck.
Wrong, Antonia. If distortion and agenda is all the MSM has to offer, then we're better off without them.
For the most part, it appears the Pajamahadeen only oppose the vile lying scum that predominate the MSM and those who side with them. You, for instance.
She is dead wrong. Nothing proves this more than the huge amount of votes that President Bush received. People are more well-informed *thanks* to the bloggers.
Well worth the expense
Content?
YIKES, that picture you posted of the author sceered me. What's funny is that she's making a face like "Aren't I cute?" Scary. And yes, manly.
"A search of this guy's previous writing shows a lot of his articles pushing the gay agenda"
Well...knock me over with a feather...
Just goes to show you how many people read FR!
INteresting info about the viewership of network news. Thanks for posting it.
The "Pajama Patrol" shield is great too. :)
Parisites is the wrong biological metaphor. Predators. Since the left uses Darwinism as its creation myth, here's something they should appreciate (heh! heh!):
The 'niche' occupied by the press in the 'ecology' of a free society is the dissemination of news (recent facts relevant to public policy) to the citizenry. When a news organization, reporter or anchor instead propagandizes by substituting opinion for fact and worse outright falsehoods (cf. D. Rather), it becomes 'less fit'. Predators (bloggers) 'cull the herd' making by
removing less fit individuals (brining down D.Rather, for instance) leaving a 'more fit' species (press).
The MSM should be grateful for us.
Isn't it marvelous how Darwinism can be used to explain anything if one is just creative enough?
What does it say about journalism that during this time of war in Iraq, war against terrorism, post election analysis and whining here, in Ukraine, Spain, Afghanistan, the upcoming elections in Iraq, the murder of Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim, the gnashing of teeth by the Hollywood elite, the Clinton library, the growing situation in Ivory Coast, that all this "journalist" has to write about is us?
"I admire many mainstream columnists, including Molly Ivins (a heroine and model), Helen Thomas, Paul Krugman, Robert Scheer, Richard Cohen, Maureen Dowd, Katha Pollit, David Corn, Lewis Lapham, etc."
What a hoot! Checks and balances my a&$...
What the author of this piece does not realze is what you clearly and quickly thought of. We may not break the story here on FR, but such is the wealth of talent and experience of the members that we can quickly place the story in correct content and context. We can ID the errors of fact, recognize the substitution of opinion for news and do it before the print edition hits the newsstands.
They really don't get it!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
We are really, really, I mean REALLY getting to them. Maybe we should institutionalize!
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