Letters to the Editor
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Glenn
I just wanted to be clear - I wasn't saying that anyone "here" (and by that I mean you or the commentators on this blog, whose discussion is levels above most in terms of thoughtfulness) was advocating that the MSM should be replaced by bloggers (though some have leaned that way), but a quick perusal of any number of other liberal blogs on most of our reading list will find a substantial contingent of such folks advocating such a thing.
As with any movement, people are involved on many different levels of discourse and for varying reasons, and there is always the radical end pushing more extremist views. I just thought it prudent to mention it so we all don't lose sight of the goal - the press once again holding power accountable, no matter which shade it is. I think some of the more radical "down with the press" calls thrown out there by some bloggers is what the insecure MSM pick up on, and this allows the MSM to easily dismiss the more thoughtful criticism that we are laying out.
Please keep up the probing and excellent posts - I appreciate the more thorough, lawyerly approach you take on these issues.
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I think it is time to replay the Colbert White House talk
Can they make it mandatory?
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I always enjoy the way
you use a person's own words as the most potent weapon against them
I appreciate the more thorough, lawyerly approach you take on these issues.
One of the most important things that the internet brings to the table (other than blogs in general and greater empowerment to "normal" people in particular) is the fact that most of recent histpry is online and searchable.
Of course, as more people realize that the things they say and write can come back to haunt them years later, a little more care might go into putting words out there in the first place. Until that realization hits home however, there will be no shortage of idiocy available for the picking.
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Clickable Links
CHE PASA: And DAMN Salon for its prohibition on clickable links in comments. May they BURN in Hell. Or something.
Or you could use Firefox and add one of several extensions which makes any typed out web address clickable.
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Filthy Assistants!
I second DataShade's nomination of Transmetropolitan as a great work about media, truth in reporting, corporate culture control, and more. The writing is outstanding, the artwork is excellent, and the undercurrent of rage at injustice and speaking truth to power is awesome. It's lewd, full of cuss-words (so those easily offended by such language should seek their media critical screeds elsewhere) graphic, violent, and cuts right to the heart of the problem of manufactured reporting and lies told so often as to be truth. I don't think that, just because Warren Ellis did it, it doesn't need any further attention by anyone else; if anything, further attention is a good thing, to keep people focused on the lousy job of reporting the truth the journalists are doing. Nonetheless, an outstanding work.
Set Bowel Disruptors for Prolapse!
No kings,
Robert
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Correction to my previous post
Sentence should have finished "lies told so often as to replace truth."
No kings,
Robert
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Thank you Mr. Greenwald
Mr. Greenwald,
I have been reading your blog for a couple of years, and am happy that you are now at Salon, which offers you the opportunity to reach more readers.
Your insights and writing just keep getting better and better. If you're not careful, you're going to reach Hendrick Hertzberg heights. Keep it up.
-David Lane
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Glenn...
I don't supppose you'd also have access to these journalists CVs? (...and be willing to post them?)
It could be very interesting if we were to compare their work experiences, and especially their education and when and where they got it. Just curious...
Thanks for everything.
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Glenn as Mencken
Glenn is the intellectual heir of Mencken (who had no professional degree in journalism -- or any degree at all -- but was the model of a proper investigative, skeptical reporter and political pundit), as today's journalists sadly are not; Mr. Wolffe and his ilk would be the anti-Mencken. Thus spake Henry:
"All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else."
Oh, and apropos of nothing, Mencken also wrote:
"A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child."
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jayarbee
Or you could use Firefox and add one of several extensions which makes any typed out web address clickable.
-- jayarbee
Much more fun to denounce Salon for a ridiculous prohibition, one that serves no purpose but to annoy. And they know it.
As for Firefox. Sigh. For whatever reason, it is never stable on my computer and will inevitably crash within five/ten minutes of opening. Have no idea what's wrong, and less time to fuss with it. DAMN Firefox!
So I use Opera.
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Completely Unfair to Judge Journalists By Their Work
It is absolutely unfair, unreasonable, and actually cruel for Glenn Greenwald to judge the quality of journalists' news product quality by what they actually write and publish.
Everyone who is anyone knows that a much more fair, reasonable, and kind way of judging the quality of reporting we citizens receive is to ask the journalists themselves what they intended to do, or what they believed they were doing. And, if need be, to gather those same journalists together and allow them to discuss the quality of their own work.
As a U.S. citizen, I would much prefer having inaccurate and manipulated news handed to me every day about crucial national and international manners than to make even one journalist uncomfortable by asking that they be burdened with low class, undesirable tasks, as if they were mere scientists or schoolchildren forced to doublecheck their work.
It is the role of a journalist to give a news story to his editor and then get that in print or on air or online in such a way that they are unlikely to be sued and their business structure is pleased by the results.
It is the job of a citizen to devote large portions of his or her day outside of his or her own paid job to follow up with any publicly available evidence they may find to correct the huge mistakes, giant vacuous gaps, or confused misdirections he or she receives from all sides.
Yes, our government may dump manufactured information upon us in order to stir up a war frenzy among the citizenry and societal leaders. But it is the job of the professional news media producers to make sure they accurately reproduce and correctly spell that dumped and manufactured information. Everything else falls on our shoulders, because what else would a citizen want to do with his or her free time?
This system has served this country wonderfully for at least the last century. That is why the major news media have been able to help people become convinced of the necessity of each and every single war and attack which the Executive Branch has ever promoted.
Glenn you are just so, so unfair.