Letters to the Editor
Presumptuous Insect
Published Letters: 162 Editor's Choice: 5
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Cozying up and co-opting
[Read the article: Richard Cohen's brilliant (and unintentional) exposé of our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"A deadly dart from Paul's glorious mighty bow,
Will lay the fake-warrior's neurons real low."
I dig Paul Rosenberg, too, bebop-o.
Glenn writes: "The relationship between official Washington and the permanent Beltway media class has become infinitely closer and more cooperative than ever before. Rather than acting as adversarial to one another, the most powerful political officials in Washington and the most influential media stars are part of the same system and nearly all are abundant beneficiaries of it. Many elite national journalists are incentivized to protect and defend powerful political leaders with whom they so frequently interact and on whom they depend for their access and their 'scoops.'"
This is the thing. And so these "journalists" must become adept at glib lying and obfuscation and drawing emphasis away from things that should be minutely examined. Last night was one of the rare nights that I took a look at a network news program. What did I see? A report on how some American soldiers had "saved" a group of mistreated and starving Iraqi orphans. Of course, if these orphans ended up in a better situation, I am not complaining about it. But this report only serves the interests of the warmongers and in no way represents the larger truths of this war and our crimes against Iraq. For example, speaking of children, our embargo on Iraq for many years before the war, which denied the Iraqis chlorine to make their water safe, killed half a million children. And the larger truth of the current occupation is that uncounted numbers of children have died and continue to die every day; moreover, polls taken among U.S. troops show that only 47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, a third reported insulting or cursing at civilians in their presence, and 10 percent reported mistreating civilians or damaging property even though they believed it was not necessary. Only about half would report a member of their unit for killing an innocent civilian.
But what we see is troops saving grateful orphans.
I have to wonder what college students with journalism majors are being taught these days. Are professors still working from the premise that the press should have an adversarial relationship with those in power? If so, I wonder how they deal with the gross discrepancies between what they teach and what their students see every day. Students who long for an alternative to this reality watch The Daily Show for its satire, but even there we see Brian Williams's "giant head" in the background--the MSM has co-opted this show. The MSM is "in" on the joke and has even drained TDS's mild satire of its bite.
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Fraud Guy
[Read the article: Richard Cohen's brilliant (and unintentional) exposé of our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It sounds like training for young journalists these days has an emphasis on simple mechanics and a de-emphasis of both the need to understand the broader contexts of a story and any examination of the theoretical underpinnings of the job.
So among other things, it sounds like this has made the job a lot easier to do.
Unlike Glenn, your journalists do not have to read through source after source to get to the truth of things. They do not have to attend to history or have a good cross-disciplinary understanding of economics, law, international relations, etc. They do not have to set themselves against anyone with the power to harm them or threaten their jobs. They merely have to accept an official version and make a half-assed attempt to show that there might be opposing (but by definition wrong) views on the subject.
If this is the case, it seems that the profession will draw less talented, inspired, or intelligent people.
Oh, wait...