Letters to the Editor
Nequals1
Published Letters: 332 Editor's Choice: 7
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Validation of Extant Infotainment Overtaking Journalism
[Read the article: Hillary and the mean kids on the bus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn has picked up and elaborated on an example of transparent bias on the part of the press. Given that very little coverage and attention has been paid to core issues: Constitutional restoration, intended use of executive power, domestic and foreign policy platforms, economic and military perspectives, it comes as no surprise that the "reporters" on the campaign bus reference junior high school in their language, descriptors and attitudes towards the various candidates.
It explains the hostility towards Edwards: he's just too cute. Hillary - Glenn nailed that one - she's the smartest girl, answering all of the tough questions, and speaking in complexity and nuance. Obama: he's the new kid, athletic and he talks a good game.
If one uses junior high playground and cafeteria culture as a press reference point, the coverage lines up accordingly.
Interestingly, I recently attended a conference sponsored by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities called, "No News Is Bad News: The Role of the Media In Our Democracy." The sole blogger among the panelists was Marcy Wheeler, and she addressed the inequalities of coverage by the media of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. None of the panels or panelists addressed the quality of the presidential campaign coverage.
The blogosphere, I believe, acts as a collective filter, fact checker and verifier (I love Josh Marshall's term, veracifier) of media reports. Bloggers dive deeply and broadly, and collectively they expose false reporting, misreporting and lack of reportage. However, as was pointed out at the symposium, and as Glenn has done, the weakness is the lack of funding for citizen journalism and bloggers to be able to get full press access to sources, there is a general lack of credentialing for bloggers, and there is no organization in the blogosphere as there is in media corporations.
Several of us commenters here recently tossed out some models of organizing new media.
I think the time is ripe to move forward with new models that demand and deliver transparency, accurate reportage, blogosphere communal editing and accountability for standards and practice in reportage and commentary, and to develop and fund bloggers to work as integral members of the media so that news is reported on time, accurately and with accountability to all potential and actual readers.
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Empty messages from commentariat and from candidates. What's a voter to do?
[Read the article: Worthless chatter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am grateful to you for placing the trend of empty prognosticating in context. May the voters wake up and being to engage in substantive dialogue with the candidates. And may the corporate nooz moguls feel the repercussions in their pocketbooks as viewers and readers turn off and turn the page.
But I have been just as stymied when asking specific questions of the candidates via their website contact features. I always get placed on their seemingly bottomless well of donor solicitations, but I have yet to have one single specific question answered.
While watching the C-SPAN coverage of one of the Democratic precincts last evening, I heard another seemingly informed and engaged caucuser relate the same experience.
That tells me that the candidates are just as culpable for messaging mist instead of mass.
I still feel entirely disconnected from the process. So far, no candidate has even deigned to respond to this voter's questions. Does this simply mean corporatism business as usual with voters used as wampum?
Show me the evidence. I'd love to be proved wrong.
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Premature Ejaculation Prognostication
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've just returned here from a quick stroll around the intertubes, and Howard Kurtz' column let fly one of the Village media truisms:
"The media's chief benchmark is money, and Mitt Romney had truckloads of it and Huckabee very little."
You said it, Mr. Kurtz. Instead of covering the candidates based on the substantives: their ideas, their experience, their stances on issues, and their voting records, you cover it based on their campaign war chest $$$$$.
And the premature ejaculation prognostication misses by a mile.
When the media returns to investigative reporting on the substantive evidence, methinks that the "miss by a mile" problem will be remedied.
This isn't difficult to understand if the media would attempt to replicate an aware and informed voter's quest to determine who the best qualified person is for the biggest executive role in the world.
Experience, judgment, public record of action, stance on issues, commmitment toward upholding the oath of office, stance toward the use of executive power, strategies and style of administration.
Cover the above for all of the declared candidates, and I'll pay attention.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010404004.html
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"Social Unraveling" is just another tabloid sales lure
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't get all hetted up about "playing the race card" or any other race factor. This is a fabricated faux problem entirely a creation of the commentariat.
Allow the demographics to speak for themselves.
Jim White: I hadn't thought about the possibility of assassination of Obama and fomenting racial unrest. That deserves more contemplation and thought.
However, given the overall rapidly and critically widening economic gaps, I think that the inability of people to provide themselves with the essentials will be the overriding driving force of change and reaction. And that is crossing all demographics with immediate impact.
I think that voices such as Krugman and Moyers are far more accurate in identifying extant circumstances, issues and trends than are any tabloid traditional media noises.