Posted on 08/06/2008 2:39:53 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
With media stocks plummeting, a noisy army of pundits is predicting the imminent extinction of print newspapers and magazines. I hope they're wrong--for two reasons.
The obvious reason is self-interest: If freebie blogs and news aggregators kill off the National Post and its ilk, then I'm going to have to go back to my high school job, manning the drive-thru at McDonald's.
But I have a more noble reason, too: a genuine, altruistic desire for an educated citizenry. Not to be old-fashioned, but there are certain kinds of important stories that simply cannot be covered, except by deep-pocketed traditional media organizations employing professional journalists.
This thought struck me with particular force on Sunday, as I read "Malwebolence," Mattathias Schwartz's extraordinary article about Internet trolls in this week's issue of The New York Times Magazine.
You probably have met an Internet troll -- even if you don't know the term. They are the juvenile cretins who infest Internet message boards, taunting the earnest types chatting away about Gossip Girl, or Barack Obama, or Scientology. Their method is to post willfully ignorant, insulting messages, then sit back and enjoy the righteous, impotent fury aroused among the true believers.
Trolling is an inherently nihilistic activity -- which is why most trolls tend to be adolescent males, the sort of specimens who would otherwise entertain themselves by using bathroom graffiti to libel the sexual habits of high-school classmates. But there is a small elite that has turned trolling into a full-time calling. They congregate on anonymous Web sites such as 4chan.org, and informally tally the "lulz" they've earned by humiliating others.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
Like who should be winning an election?
Like what Obama MEANT to say?
Like Obama's European Vacation?
Like how a Republican reportedly said MACACA?
Like the money it takes to forge National Guard memos, coordinate with the DNC, and fax them from Texas?
Or maybe he's talking about helicopter coverage of car chases that last 2 hours.
You probably have met an Internet troll -- even if you don't know the term. They are the juvenile cretins who infest Internet message boards, taunting the earnest types chatting away about Gossip Girl, or Barack Obama, or Scientology. Their method is to post willfully ignorant, insulting messages, then sit back and enjoy the righteous, impotent fury aroused among the true believers.Trolling is an inherently nihilistic activity -- which is why most trolls tend to be adolescent males,
Trolling was and is a part of the Undemocratic Party win strategy...
Punk the prez? - Moby's anti-Bush tricks (Beware of the Moby Dicks) (New York Daily News 2/09/04 Rush & Molloy)
One of Sen. John Kerry's celebrity supporters is ready to pull out all the stops to get him elected. Republicans are shrieking over a suggestion by rocker Moby that Democrats spread gossip about President Bush on the Internet. "No one's talking about how to keep the other side home on Election Day," Moby tells us. "It's a lot easier than you think and it doesn't cost that much. This election can be won by 200,000 votes." Moby suggests that it's possible to seed doubt among Bush's far-right supporters on the Web."You target his natural constituencies," says the Grammy-nominated techno-wizard. "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion.
"Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, 'What's all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?'"
Moby didn't claim that he believed the abortion story...
[snip]
Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said, "I doubt that Moby was suggesting anybody suppress the vote. We did not use any dirty tactics against any candidate.
I guess with the MSM stocks dropping, wouldn’t it be a good time with a relatively well-funded conservative group to get together and purchase one of the media organizations and get it in shape? Get rid of the bias in the news room?
Notice the author compares Barack Obama to Gossip Girl and Scientology. I wonder if he did that because he thought they were popular? Maybe like Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton?
Holden: If the buzz is any indicator, that movie's gonna make some huge bank.Jay: What buzz?
Holden: The Internet buzz.
Jay: What the f*** is the Internet?
Holden: The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to b**** about movies and share pornography with one another.
< /Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back >
Big media doesn't like it when you talk back.
I thought that there was even more vicious online harassment and investigation OF critics by Scientologists than BY the critics of Scientology.
“You mean like the success of the surge in Iraq?”
Right on! The only true “Journalist” to come out of Iraq is Michael Yon and a few other independent souls who funded themselves and brought us the truth!
How about Rathergate?
How about CNN (Eason Jordon) “editing” their coverage to keep a man in Bagdad when Saddam was still in power?
How about the French TV rable-rousing coverage of the Palestinian boy who they claimed was murdered by the Israeli army that has been recently found to entirely false.
How about the many proven examples of fauxtography eagerly published by this same “professional” and “deep pocketed” media? It seems that all the deep-pockets accomplish is to attract the most despicable con-men & con-women of our society!
I am thoroughly disgusted.
I am quite proud that I canceled my only newspaper subscription 4 years ago. I hope all the journalists can find gainful and HONEST employment that adds to our society in the future. I think working at McDonalds is probably a step up career-wise for this “journalist”. It is about time he started pulling his weight...
Some key events may have happened before your time or before you paid it much mind but the historical replays and quotes from some events had to make it into your subconscious.
The way the uber partisan Walter Cronkite (who we were ensured was "the most TRUSTED man in America") declared that the war in Vietnam was now unwinnable.
I was reading in a book of old TV Guide articles about the blowback from the networks' coverage of the 1968 DNC riots in Chicago. The public felt that a sacred trust for objectivity in coverage had been violated. The journalists seemed to have a chip on their shoulders (and complained of getting roughed up by thugs in the convention hall, even Mr. Cronkite).
They wanted to cover the views of Eugene McCarthy's supporters. They went from being the fringe of the Democrat Party to running the ship and the networks in 40 years.
There is no objectivity in reporting today. The memos have come out how they will push for issues and candidates. They editorialize within news stories.
If you read only one major daily newspaper (or view one network), you are MISinformed. Funny thing is, between the wireservice stories from AP that appear EVERYWHERE and the buzz buzz buzz between the networks (they ALL lead with the same stories), you get the same “news” and take on it regardless of which MSM orifice it oozes out of.
Mark Steyn commented once [on a Hugh Hewitt show] that everywhere but America, journalism is the “profession” people choose when they have failed at everything else.
I spent 10 years with one of the alphabet networks and saw the ‘news’ created first-hand.
To call them ‘journalists’ is a misnomer. There was very little original reporting; by the time I left there was no shame in combing the daily paper and retyping stories word for word, couching it as ‘published reports’.
Every single one of them was a rabid liberal, and I don’t just mean the on-air people. The writers, the editors, the camera guys. All were die-hard unionists.
Examples: Abortion was never presented as anything but a right under siege; guns were always bad; all republicans were greedy and heartless; nationally elected republicans were, to a person, ‘stupid’. Only liberal democrats possessed the intelligence to ‘save’ us from ourselves. The thing is, these stupid journalists never looked at the consequences of the ideals they championed: how many times did they ride past bullet-ridden public housing and ignore the failure? How many corrupt politicians and union bosses went away to jail, yet those same governments and unions somehow remained pristine?
Education is always under-funded; oil is bad for the earth; profit is always excessive. It would be funny that it’s so narrow minded, if it weren’t so god-damn dangerous.
And speaking of unions: most of the tv people I worked with were in unions. I’ll never forget... once in the midst of a job action (the union walked out over some perceived slight, and the company locked the door behind them) I ran into a union guy. He told me how he’d been censured by the union for questioning the leadership at a rally. He was appalled to learn that the union was taunting the company’s 16 lawyers at the bargaining table. He asked how many lawyers the union had at the table, and was told that their representative, a local steward, ‘has always been interested in the law’. Needless to say, the unions got their clocks cleaned on that contract, and went back to work sulking and angry with their tails between their legs.
This moron is lamenting the fact that he and his ilk have been laid naked by their own criminal acts: lies in support of their socialist agenda exposed by people with information in their hands.
Screw him, and screw them.
I spent 10 years with one of the alphabet networks and saw the ‘news’ created first-hand.
To call them ‘journalists’ is a misnomer. There was very little original reporting; by the time I left there was no shame in combing the daily paper and retyping stories word for word, couching it as ‘published reports’.
Every single one of them was a rabid liberal, and I don’t just mean the on-air people. The writers, the editors, the camera guys. All were die-hard unionists.
Examples: Abortion was never presented as anything but a right under siege; guns were always bad; all republicans were greedy and heartless; nationally elected republicans were, to a person, ‘stupid’. Only liberal democrats possessed the intelligence to ‘save’ us from ourselves. The thing is, these stupid journalists never looked at the consequences of the ideals they championed: how many times did they ride past bullet-ridden public housing and ignore the failure? How many corrupt politicians and union bosses went away to jail, yet those same governments and unions somehow remained pristine?
Education is always under-funded; oil is bad for the earth; profit is always excessive. It would be funny that it’s so narrow minded, if it weren’t so god-damn dangerous.
And speaking of unions: most of the tv people I worked with were in unions. I’ll never forget... once in the midst of a job action (the union walked out over some perceived slight, and the company locked the door behind them) I ran into a union guy. He told me how he’d been censured by the union for questioning the leadership at a rally. He was appalled to learn that the union was taunting the company’s 16 lawyers at the bargaining table. He asked how many lawyers the union had at the table, and was told that their representative, a local steward, ‘has always been interested in the law’. Needless to say, the unions got their clocks cleaned on that contract, and went back to work sulking and angry with their tails between their legs.
This moron is lamenting the fact that he and his ilk have been laid naked by their own criminal acts: lies in support of their socialist agenda exposed by people with information in their hands.
Screw him, and screw them.
You're a contemptible idiot, but what the heck, why should I have all the fun?
We're talking about you at FreeRepublic http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2057276/posts
Enjoy the 5 minutes of fame, but make sure you polish up those drive-thru skills
IncPen
He responded:
From: jkay@nationalpost.com
Subject: Re: We're talking about you
Date: August 6, 2008 10:37:43 AM CDT
who said I was famous even for five minutes?
For the PeeWee Herman answer he sent me, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that this twerp got beat up alot as a child.
Exactly. Would anyone but the Left miss the NYTimes? There are many news gathering groups nowadays, Cable, Satellite, Talk Radio et al which could give quicker news, some analysis , and blogs on both sides could provide their bias which people would finally know is biased: Right or Left. No one is fooled about blogs. All know Moveon is Left and Redstate is Right. That is how it should be. Meanwhile, many news media outlets still, still call themselves objective, like All the Times , Globes, Free Presses, yet we know they are lefties. End the media majority and both Left and Right would be correctly identified for all to see and respond to.
I worked in the print media and radio for 20 years before changing professions in the middle 1990s, and the death of the print media is not due to its obvious biases. Impartial journalism is, by definition, impossible. Objectivity doesn’t exist among human beings. We all come to the table with our own culture, biases, experiences, and expectations.
And so the print media is dying. I saw it coming 15 years ago, and the death is slow and agonizing. However, it has nothing to do with the lack of objectivity and impartiality in newspapers and magazines.
Please allow me to explain what I mean here.
The idea that the media should be impartial comes from the reaction in the early 20th century from the yellow journalism of the 1800s. Newspapers and magazines in the late 19th century were fabulously biased, to the point of regularly printing lies, scandal, and libel against anyone who didn’t agree with the prevailing politics and feelings of the editor and publisher.
In the little Oregon town where I was editor of the newspaper, there were three newspapers in 1900 - a Republican paper, a Democrat paper, and a Populist paper. All of them were spectacular in their bias. All of them had nearly 100 percent circulation in the households of the town. I would often print some of that bias in the history column under my editorial, too.
When the ideal of objective journalism emerged, readers at first welcomed it as a new and interesting change. The problem, however, is that reporters translate and interpret events for readers (even radio picks and chooses which quotes to broadcast), and eventually the bias of the reporter comes through.
This bias wasn’t much of a problem when the newspaper you read was locally produced and a “mirror for its community,” to quote Horace Greeley. The publisher would use his ink to promote local industry, the editor would pontificate (often to the good humor of his community), and reporters would be a part of the local landscape.
That started to change about 30 years ago with twin changes: the growth of media conglomerates and the growth of advocacy journalism.
Newspapers started getting swallowed up by large corporations whose interest was a profit margin, not serving the local community. Reporters became interchangeable cogs, going from paper to paper (which I’ve seen in person). As a result, the reporters and editors no longer reflect the community.
Then there’s advocacy journalism. You can blame Woodward and Bernstein. Reporters made their names by advocating a viewpoint, as in the news articles from “Rolling Stone.” Soon enough, advocacy became the norm (again, a change which I witnessed). Often that advocacy comes from an academic insularity, not the community, and the readers suddenly find themselves confronted with media which challenges their viewpoints instead of reflecting their community. Not surprisingly, circulation drops. To make matters worse, no one in the media wants to give up what is now considered the “norm” for journalism - objectivity. You can’t be an objective advocate, and the reader correctly infers that the media consists of lying bums.
The solution is simple. Be honest.
I’m listening to Limbaugh right now. I know where Limbaugh is coming from. His biases are right up front. The same is true with Savage, Mark Levine, Glenn Beck, and the other radio commentators I listen to. None of them are suffering from slowly evaporating listenership. The same is true with the Internet. Biases are embraced. Go to the DailyKos and you know what you’ll be getting. The same is true here.
Opinion can be both informative and entertaining. Leno is basically journalism in his monologue. He just uses humor and wit to get his point across. So is Dennis Miller. There is room for Victor Davis Hanson and Thomas Sowell out there for the serious, but no one seriously thinks that those gentlemen are intellectually objective. They are making a point.
This is actually what the First Amendment - and journalism - are supposed to be about. Robust opinion and a sharing of ideas mean, by definition, lots of biased viewpoints. The reader or listener (or viewer) then make up his or her mind. If the New York Times put on their masthead, “All the news from a progressive point of view,” the readers would admire their honesty. In the meantime, though, poetry is basically dead, too, and its death didn’t really hurt literature.
Isn’t “unhappy liberals” a massive redundancy?
Most of my over 20 years in the Army was on ships and boats. Often we would work on a project and reporters would check us out. We always made clear we were regular army Transportation Corps.
Invariably the story would come out calling us “Corp of Engineers”!
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