Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 360 Editor's Choice: 12
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Careful there Alex
[Read the article: Observations about John Harris' replies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Alex O'Neill
(David Gregory, for example, has frequently criticized the White House, and called them on various lies and inconsistencies.)
David Gregory has taken strong positions during press conferences, but I defy you to find a story of his that is nearly as strong. This is part of the disease, IMO. They spar with Tony during the presser, feel like they've done their jobs, and then write (or broadcast) a weak piece. Snow himself has said that while Gregory is tough during the conferences, his reporting is "fair."
[drat. Another thing I hate about this comment interface. I can't go back to the comment without opening another salon window, loading Glenn's site, finding the post, finding the comment so I can do another copy and paste. Glenn, please talk to these people. This LTE style interface is impeding communication.]
The problem is that most people are lazy thinkers. The idea that gets in first with the most is the one they stick with, and it takes a lot to dislodge it.
So how they did get that idea at first? Bush and Cheney implied it over and over again. Their quotations in the media were not followed by a truthful statement "However, there has been no evidence of any link of Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 bombings. NBC News can find no intelligence source who will back up the claim that there is a link."
The administration uses the Big Lie strategy all the time. The media has a responsibility to make that strategy impossible to implement in the United States. In this case they not only permitted the Big Lie to stand, but they also participated in the marginalization of the people who were actually correct, Americans like Scott Ritter and Howard Dean, international experts like Hans Blix.
The media was an active accomplice in peddling lies to the American people. There can be no doubt about that.
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Salon readers and GG readers.
[Read the article: Observations about John Harris' replies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/30/harris_replies/permalink/137173c03aee5b4e53794eb5a858e72c.html
WeikuBoy
Yes, there is a difficulty here in that in the previous incarnation of Glenn's blog, there was a vibrant community of commenters who interacted with each other, rather than posting unmoderated Letters to the Editor. There was actually a great deal of concern expressed that this LTE format would damage that community. We also should have realized that dropping the community into an environment where the current subscribers were used to the LTE format would find the conversational nature of the GG commnunity irritating.
This format doesn't permit a number of things that are consistent with blog commentary rather than electronic LTEs. So we've got the worst of both worlds--low signal to noise ratio for people who want to write and read LTEs and difficulty in maintaining a conversational thread for people who want to make blogging comments.
There could be a similar problem over at King Kaufman's column--there's a fair amount of back and forth there, as is the nature of sports fans--but the volume is low enough that it doesn't matter.
I really think Salon should adopt either a different or an alternative posting method for the daily columns that fits better into the blog comment paradigm.
Oh, and the main thing you complained about--document dumps from other sites without commentary or analysis raises the ire of the blog commenter folks as well.
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Mark Halperin, The Note and Trustworthiness
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's really getting bizarre out there in media land. ABC News is sponsor of the Note, a news source that looks first to Drudge for breaking stories. Mark Halperin consistently delivered Republican talking points in that venue.
Folks over at Disney need to realize that they've squandered their trust capital.
The new letters interface is a big improvement. Now if you can just add linking capability.....
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Next time
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn,
The next time you talk with someone in the media about confidential sources, can you please ask them how they justify the anonymous sourcing of something like this? Aside from forcing viewers and readers to just trust the journalist, it prevents anyone from being accountable for a statement like this.
When writing about the Libby/Plame affair, a New Yorker article noted that most of the people who received the story from Libby or Rove didn't write the story. They recognized it as a smear, they said. Cooper said that he gets false stories anonymously all the time, and only runs those he thinks are true.
This is a profoundly broken news gathering model, especially when applied to sources who are government officials. It is very hard for me to think up a justification for anonymity when the material being used supports the administration's message.
Moreover, does Schneider not understand that by putting ABC's brand on the story, rather than the source's, that the source is diluting the trust level associated with the corporation. These sources are shameless exploiting the reputation that Schneider values, and says we must value.
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Orbitboy: It's worse than that
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But with a situation like the story Glenn is citing, with an entire story's reliability being placed on one or a few anonymous sources, I have to take it with a huge grain of salt.
What the administration is doing, and ABC is complicit in, is changing the source from Richard Perle or Dick Cheny to ABC News. ABC News IS a more trusted source than pretty much any administration official at this point. By permitting anonymity ( and note this seems to be one source) they endorse a story that the public might not otherwise credit if we knew the source. In this regard, Scheider is right--the public probably does trust ABC more than the source.
But that's a bad thing. ABC is letting itself be used to enhance the credibility of this story.