Letters to the Editor
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Here's Your Answer
Would the MSM generally agree with Kamiya's criticims? I highly doubt it. There is a reluctance - nay, pathological refusal - to level against themselves anything more than the most trivial criticisms. Here's Peter Baker - a good reporter for the Washington Post - in this morning's Post live chat>
New York: You seem to have a rather agnostic view of Fox News. Do you, as a journalist, consider Fox News to be a legitimate journalistic enterprise? Are they just like The Washington Post in that regard?
Peter Baker: And yes, we've pretty well exhausted this topic, but yes, of course I view Fox News as a legitimate journalistic enterprise. Again, I'm not talking about talk shows. That's a different beast on Fox and everywhere else for that matter. I wish we'd cut back on the talk shows and have more news on all the channels.
"...yes of course I view Fox News as a legitimate journalistic enterprise." Stunning. His attempt to differentiate Fox News from the O'Reilly type "talk show" is absurd, of course. Is Brit Hume like Brian Williams? Are the notorious Fox Newx chyrons the work of a genuine journalistic enterprise?
The press can't seem to come to grips with critical issues confronting the media. They deem themselves nothing more than conduits for those with political agendas, whose job involves nothing more than providing equal time to each side. Their approach is, in a very real sense, a repudiation of the very essence of journalism.
If guys like Baker can't bring themselves to concede that Fox News is outside the bounds of legitimate journalism, there is very little hope that comments like Kamiya's will be viewed by the MSM with anything other than defensiveness and dismissiveness.
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Thanks
Glenn, I just want to say thank-you so much for what you do....you are living evidence that a person CAN act from a place of integrity and compassion and a singular piercing insight into what is driving the institutional and aberant human behavior we are now up against. I honestly cannot overstate how grateful I am to find you. You are like water in a boundless desert.
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Journalists?
Just a few thoughts:
I think it's important to remember that pre-Katrina, most folks didn't appreciate what an incompetent boob Bush was (and is). We had our doubts about his intellect, but I'm pretty sure that most people, including journalists, were willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. Add in the patriotic fervor in America post 9-11, and it becomes a little more understandable as to why Bush was able to feed us s**t, while convincing us it was steak.
At the time, who could believe that a U.S. President would be willing to lie us into war, just to satisfy his neocon cronies, big business, and his oversized ego? I always viewed Bush as "intellectually challenged," but took (misplaced) comfort in that he seemed to surround himself with experienced, knowledgeable men such as Colin Powell, Dick Cheney (in his pre-"Darth" days), and Rumsfield.
I wish the press had done a much better job, but they didn't. Some have copped to their "sins" and some (most) continue to excuse, prevaricate, and ignore their culpability. They come across as members of an exclusive "club" for "members only." That is precisely why I take EVERYTHING they say with a HUGE grain of salt and seek my information from other sources - like Glenn Greenwald and Salon - and even then, I keep the "salt shaker" handy!
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But Gary's critcisms are just a rhetorical tool
From which to launch his attacks on Israel. So whatever does it matter how the MSM decodes that? Soon there will a Gary Kamiya middle eastern cookbook of recipes rescued from the rapacious evil Jews intent on destroying Palestinian culinary culture. It might be a good cookbook even, but it helps to understand what it really is. Will the MSM decode that too?
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A weird sense of objectivity
The problem here may be the odd definition of objectivity that these journalists stick to like survivors of a sinking ship stick to anything that will float. They seem to think that if they write down correctly the words that some important person utters, then run over to another person of similar social standing and scribble down their words, then put them both in the story verbatim, they have acted "objectively' and therefore have no other obligations. Finding out the truth would mean calling one of these pillars of the community a liar, and that would be just nasty, brutish, bad behaviour. Nobody can get mad at you, not your local politicos, not your editor, nobody, if you just transcribe the words of the powerful and leave it at that. Since, to these postmodern reporters, all utterances are simply plays for power and money, and everyone will by definition lie to get what they want (and it's all about getting what you want, isn't it?) why bother to worry about how well statements conform to reality (whatever that is). To dig for the truth is either futile or it will get you into trouble, for the truth may force you to say that X is lying while Y is telling the truth, thereby breeching your sacrosanct "objectivity" and coming down on one side or another. If that side is mom, apple pie, and America's right to push around lesser peoples and kill them if they fail to "do the right thing", they will come down that way, if not, they would rather just shut up and keep transcibing.
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Of course they don't agree
as evidence by the fact that most of them have not changed a lick, per your Ross/ABC post.
It's just too much work to actually do idependent research and make decisions about where the truth lies. I don't think many of them know what such a story would look like. They think such judgments must be relegated to the editorial page. Choosing a "truth" is editorializing ... even on empirically provable facts it seems.
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Worthless corporate media
By 9/11,I'd pretty much given up on our esteemed corporate media,thanks largely to the non-coverage of the 2000 election theft.Instead,I relied on so-called alternative sources such as DemocracyNow, Counterpunch,Consortium,and of course Salon,as well as individuals like Greg Palast and Robert Fisk.
What real journalism looks like.