Letters to the Editor
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Cobert Offending the Beltway Press
"They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information."
When Steven Colbert said the same thing a year ago -- something like, "your job is simply to listen to the press secretary, type it out for publication and go home," the WH Press Corpse got offended. But now Wolffe admits Colbert was right.
The reason they were offended, was because he was telling them that he, and by extension the people who watch his show, were on to the games being played by the Beltway media elite.
When Tim Russert admitted that he used White House talking points in interviews, that was tacit admission of Wolffe's point.
When Judith Miller was exposed for the tool she is, it was the smoking gun.
For years, the Beltway media has been telling us that they are the arbiters of what is important to know. We aren't supposed to know about the dinner parties, the backslapping good times they have when the camera, or tape recorder isn't on. They are above reproach. What they say is received wisdom.
That bloggers, and blog readers have seen the men behind the curtain of the masthead, and know them for what they are, they are indignant. "How dare we be challenged by people who are not part of our club". How dare someone from Philadelphia, or Austin, or Chicago, or ... pick your city deign to tell us how to do our jobs".
This is what the public is up against. This is why the Beltway media has failed, and continues to fail.
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Journalists and the Borg Collective
Your point that reporters see themselves as part of the institution they are covering is spot-on accurate. Maybe it is a sub-variety of Stockholm syndrome. I do my best to avoid watching TV news, so that when I am forced I am often shocked and stupefied. The other day I was sitting in the airport and couldn't avoid CNN (something I find very annoying). The Senior Pentagon correspondent come on and was passing on what he had been told about the Grand Strategies of the day. (Something to the effect that the latest chaos was actually part of "our" plan). I had the very strong impression that I was watching a grown-up boy playing Army in his sandbox.
Anyway, thanks for eviscerating Mr. Wolfe, he clearly deserves it for being a complete moron, but with respect to Newsweek, he is a feature not a bug.
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The job of a journalist is...
to "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" (Finley Peter Dunne). It is shameful that journalists seem to be doing neither these days.
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Wonder if Keith will ask Richard the next time on Countdown?
I know that Richard is a regular guest on KO's Countdown. Wonder if Keith will question him on this ridiculous point of view?? I certainly hope so, because he has a lot to answer for here. Also, if this is truly what Mr. Wolf believes, is this someone KO wants to continue to have on his show, parrotting what he hears from the Administration rather than doing his own reporting??
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NICK
While we are rightfully on the warpath these days for the MSM to understand what their calling and role is in our country since the beginning, to hold power accountable, in no way should we be disparaging the role of mainstream media itself and advocating their replacement by bloggers as the true source of news. The press needs to exist and thrive so that all citizens get the truth ... plus, the press sets the tone of how issues are framed - a valuable and essential role.
I don't think anything in what I have written here even implies that bloggers should replace journalists. Quite the contrary, I described the role of bloggers trying to prod journalists to do their jobs.
I do think that bloggers can supplment and, in very isolated cases, even supplant the role performed by the national press (FDL's comprehensive, superior coverage of the Libby trial is a good example). But I have made the point many times that we need the large national press organizations and the resources they have to perform investigative reporting, gather information from around the world, enable lengthy and expensive investigations of the type Dana Priest just undertook at Walter Reed, and squeeze their sources for vital information.
It's possible to simultaneously work to develop alternatives to the press and pressure them to reform. But very few people, if any, argue that bloggers can or should try to replace wholesale the national media institutions. To the contrary, bloggers focus so much on media criticims (a fact Wolffe snottily pronounced "interesting" in light of the other things they should be doing) precisely because it is vital that the press perform its role.
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The personification of a quote
"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."
Voltaire
Considering how stupid and well-mannered Richard Wolffe is, how can you possibly expect him to understand how stupid and vile he is? If he weren't so stupid and well-mannered he couldn't write the things he does, and being that stupid and well-mannered absolutely prevents him from understanding how stupid and vile what he writes is.
He is actually far worse than your low-level bureacrat, whose lowly station actually requires him to get something done at some point. Wolffe actually detracts from the situation he injects himself into.
Trying to gain an understanding of a situation while including the likes of Wolffe in your information gathering process is like trying to do conduct a physics experiment with a staff of two-year-olds. They're inabilities prevent you from actually accomplishing anything.
What I can't figure out is how some low-level bureaucrat of a copy editor allowed something so glaringly wrong as who has the power to declare war onto a printed page. There's not much leeway for opinion on disputation on that.
It's those kind of mistakes that make people believe a guy like Wolffe and the major media organizations aren't just incompetent, but corrupt. It's almost too hard to believe they are that incompetent.
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paradigm shift
I can truthfully say that 30 years ago, European journalists read WAPO and the NYT to get the truth.
Today, they read it to find the position of the US Government.