Posted on 09/27/2013 9:35:17 AM PDT by navysealdad
Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Paging Peter Zenger.
It’s interesting to note that even an extreme left-wing pub such as the Guardian is to the right of our MSM. And - their writing is of much higher quality.
By and large, they also appear to be much more intelligent than our sorry lib arts bottom-O-the-SAT dwellers.
(I’ll neglect the glow-bull warming clowns - which are pretty consistent in their scientific ignorance on both sides of the pond.)
Translation: I'm a journalist and I'm always the smartest guy in the room.
I'm always amused when "journalists" make statements about how they're just the recorders of what goes on in the world when they're the biggest purveyors of lib/leftism and the gatekeepers who keep the pertinent news/info away from the rest of the country.
couldn't agree more. I'd love for someone...ANYONE...to dig into this story and tell us the truth!
At one time reporters were told to ask: who, what, when, where, and why? The news pages had the facts, no matter who the facts made look bad, and the editorial pages had the opinions. Objectivity in journalism, as well as long hours of investigative work to validate the facts, went away when the Marxists took over the journalism schools. Today, the White House sends out a spin story via email or fax and the media in unison spout the talking points within minutes. News today is emotion based propaganda with zero effort to seek the truth, much less back the story up with hard cold facts.
The only way to change the media is for a conservative billionaire to purchase a major network, or a chain of newspapers, and to force the reporters to report news objectively as well as shift the balance of opinions on the editorial pages. Reform will not occur in the leftist journalism schools and the leftist editors and reporters will certainly not reform themselves.
The founding fathers held a very realistic rather than moralistic regard for the press and assumed that it would behave as it always had, that is, scurrilously and avariciously but in pursuing their own selfish interests they would perform the public weal a service and expose the scurrilousness and avariciousness of politicians.
Seymour Hersh has entirely too high an opinion of himself and his colleagues.
Interesting. Perhaps, but I won’t hold my breath, some liberals will break out of the protect Obama at all costs mentality. The more likely outcome, however, will be to label Seymour an addlebrained old fool.
There's a current thread about NBC launching a week of programming to help launch Obamacare.
Weren't they the ones that did a NFL in a dark studio to "save the planet"?
Me three. "Buried @ sea ....". Sure.
“Too much of it seems to me is looking for prizes. It’s journalism looking for the Pulitzer Prize,”
BS! What journalists are these days is simply another arm of the Obama press office. They are ideologues who want to see the ‘total transformation’ of America. They are not interested in facts.
Seymour should be at least a little more honest about this!
Being a DC liberal insider, ole Seymore is consummately a part of the HUGE problem. Yet all the slurping sounds made by pressitutes bestowing sloppy BJ's on GayMuzzie are so ear-shattering --even by the backAlleySally standards that prevail in DC-- that ole Seymore knows he has to get out in front of it, somehow.
Time to get Mavericky..!
So he hooks up his tweed blazer with the leather elbow patches and puts down his pipe, and starts googling stuff that REAL AMERICANS do and say and think.
Quite a new experience for him.
Remember when Kerry MOSEYED INTO that gun shop and asked, "Where do I buy ME a HUNTIN'''' licence?" ??
Remember that?
Kay, well this article is exactly THAT.
You got me on that question, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case.
Maybe the black box from that helicopter has some clues.. Oh wait, the "black box got washed away in a flash flood"!!
..and ‘HOW’!
Agree. Hersh has ridden his VietNam expose’ days like a hobby horse for forty years. His grandiosity is epidemic among the MSMers. If he’s so concerned let him un-ass himself and go out and do some reporting.
I was in the media for about half of my adult life, and most of the complaints about it are understated. The problem isn’t bias, though. All writers carry with them some sort of bias about the world, and that bias is found in all writing. The problem is honesty about the bias.
Somewhere in the mid-20th century journalists started thinking of themselves as objective gatekeepers of information, to paraphrase Walter Lippmann’s phrase. That’s the moment that the stereotype of the reporter changed from a hard-drinking failed novelist to the Watergate-style advocate changing the world for the better. Readers recognize the hypocrisy of some writer telling them about objectivity when the bias is obvious to see, so circulation declines and people stop believing the media. As well they should, speaking as someone who was inside the business.
That’s also why Rush and Levin - and Colbert and Mahar - have loyal audiences. Rush’s bias is out there for everyone to see, and a listener can gauge reaction based on what is known about Rush’s beliefs and attitudes. If the New York Times simply admitted they’re a socialist mouthpiece for the American left, their circulation would skyrocket.
I saw this when I was the editor a little newspaper in Oregon. Every week I would publish a “this week in history” section of the editorial. I’d go back to the microfilm files of the three newspapers in that town - one paper for the Republicans (progressives), one for the Democrats (racist and xenophobic) and one for the Populists (back East bankers are the cause of all our problems). Each paper was wildly opinionated, and often just plain wrong. No one apparently cared, as circulation was close to 100 percent for all three papers. I sense that the citizens were entertained and amused. We would be, too, if we had a similar situation today.
Free speech and publication is all about expressing ideas. I have no doubt Peter Zenger and Thomas Paine were cranky, loud, opinionated people. They probably would have sneered at the idea that objectivity is a worthy goal, and the concept of a “fairness doctrine” would have driven them to frothing at the mouth.
In any case, I could see the implosion of the print media back in the middle 1990s and got out when I could. I only miss interviewing interesting people. Otherwise, it’s a business that is committing slow suicide.
bfl
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