Posted on 02/19/2005 12:16:20 PM PST by Pikamax
American media vs the blogs By Kevin Anderson BBC News Website, Washington
Eason Jordan came under blog-based scrutiny for comments at Davos Bloggers. Truth-tellers or vigilantes? Trophy-hunters or watchdogs? With the abrupt resignation of CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan, the American media are struggling with how to respond to bloggers.
Some see the bloggers as an explosion of free speech, a democratic counterbalance to media arrogance and a much needed call for greater transparency in the media, while others see bloggers as vigilante partisans bent on discrediting and destroying the media.
Blogswarm
The furore was touched off after bloggers questioned comments Mr Jordan made at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland about journalists killed in Iraq.
At the forum, he said that he believed that several journalists had been targeted by the military.
He was quickly challenged by many at the forum who thought he was implying that it was official US policy to target journalists.
Mr Jordan qualified his statements saying that he was trying to differentiate between journalists who died as a result of being at the wrong place at the wrong time and those who were mistaken for the enemy.
The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail.
Steve Lovelady, managing editor, Columbia Journalism Review World Economic Forum policy is that all sessions are off the record, but blogger Rony Abovitz posted Mr Jordan's comments on a forum sanctioned website.
Bloggers quickly set up a site calling for a release a transcript of the session, and Mr Jordan found himself in the middle of a blogswarm as the online pressure intensified.
Mr Jordan attempted to qualify his comments publicly, but it was too late, and Mr Jordan abruptly resigned.
Bloggers and MSM trade blows
But the mainstream media -the MSM in blog shorthand - fired back at the bloggers calling them "trophy hunters" and a "pseudo-journalist lynch mob".
In a segment called "Old Media Lost in Blogosphere" on MSNBC, left-leaning commentator Bill Press condemned bloggers as people "with no credentials, no sources, no rules, no editors and no accountability."
Steve Lovelady, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."
"This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only - caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back," he added.
Will Collier of the Vodkapundit was just one of many bloggers who fired back.
You, and Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather, and anybody else in print or on television don't get free passes because you call yourself 'journalists'
Will Collier, Vodkapundit blogger "We see you behind the curtain, Lovelady and company, and we're not impressed by either your bluster or your insults," he wrote.
"You, and Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather, and anybody else in print or on television don't get free passes because you call yourself 'journalists'," he added.
Dan Rather, long a target of conservatives, is resigning as the anchor of the CBS nightly news after the network could not vouch for the authenticity of documents he used as the basis for a story questioning President Bush's military service.
Minutes after the segment aired, conservative bloggers were calling the documents forgeries and had reproduced convincing copies of the reportedly more than 30-year-old documents using word processing software.
But amid the bluster, Jeff Jarvis, a media executive and the blogger behind Buzzmachine, said most bloggers just wanted more transparency not another big media scalp.
"Bloggers didn't want his head, most of us didn't. We wanted the truth. We wanted to see that transcript from Davos," he said on CNN.
Media for the masses
One thing both bloggers and some journalists can agree on is that business as usual is over in the American media.
"The MSM isn't over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth," wrote commentator Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal.
Weblogs are just a part of the digital, internet-driven revolution that is sweeping over journalism, Jay Rosen, New York University journalism professor and the blogger behind PressThink, told the BBC.
Suddenly, the tools of mass media are in the hands of the public, he said.
"There is a change in the balance of power," he said. "The ideas and assumptions that journalists held for a long time are up for grabs, open to questions, falling by the wayside."
He suggested that Eason Jordan could have saved his job if he had responded better to calls for more transparency.
He should have granted interviews to bloggers, Mr Rosen said.
And some of the failures are simply down to journalists' lack of understanding of the web, he added.
"If (CBS and Eason Jordan) had been literate at all in the internet, they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble," he said.
You know Steve, if the media had a lot fewer assholes like you, the "salivating morons" wouldn't be gunning for 'em.
Talk about clueless.
Outstanding; thanks for the link; thanks for the link.
True. However Mr. Anderson has told his own whoppers.
He's the guy singlehandedly responsible for the current myth that Nixon called the Warren Commission a "hoax". A lie Mr. Anderson has refused to correct. See here: Did Nixon Call the Warren Commission a "Hoax?"
I came to a very similar conclusion on another thread:
Jordan, at the height of his influence, needed someone whispering into his ear like a slave whispering to the conquering Roman generals of old - "You too are mortal". Since no one at CNN did it back then, we have to yell it at him now. And if he falls because of it, it is not because of our longing for his downfall but because his hubris made such an outcome inevitable. It's really that simple.
The MSM got so powerful that they felt they could shape and control the news - and that power completely clouded their judgement and separated them from reality - to where obviously false memos can still be true and the Swift Boat Vets can be declared liars without actually having to prove such. And bloggers are declared to be wild-eyed lunatics spewing lies and innuendo - when the MSM has become a parody of their description of us.
What we are basically seeing now is the lashing out of MSM tyrants who are losing their grip on power to the rabble on the street - something they must find both astonishing and humiliating, given the vastly-exaggerated sense of self-importance they have built up over the years. And like the fading tyrants of old, they will label us barbarians and savages even as our organization, technical saavy and commitment to our cause eclipses their empire and dismantles it brick by brick. So we'll still see the occasional cascade of journalistic boiling oil from the MSM ramparts - as we call in verbal JDAM strikes upon their pointy little heads.
What does it take to be a journalist? a reporter?
Remember the day when being a weathergirl meant she had a pretty body? (still true now just more clothing)
There is no "credential" required to be a MSM reporter. Just a mic and a camera or a computer and a newspaper willing to print what you write.
Those of the internet FORUMS and blogs are EQUAL to any credentials that the MSM mediots may profess.
I'm not defending Anderson, and trust the BBC as much as I would the Guardian. This thread doesn't reflect the source page accurately, that's all.
Your post is gorgeously quotable.
Thank you so much.
As Baghdad Bob would say,
"There are no bloggers in Baghdad."
Good points.
How about this? Instead of worrying about "how to respond" - stop being shills for the socialists and be real reporters, i.e, report the news, don't make it up.
.........managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."
Yep. That's professional.
................see bloggers as vigilante partisans bent on discrediting and destroying the media.
pointing out lies, distortions and deliberate bias is not "discrediting and destroying" - it is exposing lies - you destroy yourselves.
And some of the failures are simply down to journalists' lack of understanding of the web, he added. "If (CBS and Eason Jordan) had been literate at all in the inter net, they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble," he said.
How can you be a reporter today and not be conversant - "literate" with the Internet? I'm a retired writer - except for my column - and without the Internet to do research, like for checking FACTS - I'd have a hard time, not to mention that editors today expect to have stories sent via computer - you mean to say that all these editors/writers can't use the Internet? (that would explain why they are so confused when we recall things they said in the past! and why they use typewriters from 1971 :O) )
hmmm.
The internet is Freeperiffic...
Absolutely **EXCELLENT** post and thinking. I both agree with everything you state and applaud your stating it so well!
Like that one guy said, "I wish I'd said that!"
[grin]
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