It's a bad idea to fight anyone, that buys printing ink by the barrel. But hey, common sense never impedes the left's sense of superiority. Keep on, keepin' on. Heh.

on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart was asking reporter Matt Cooper (who had virtually nothing to say for himself, or for anyone else either) why no one ever asked Rove 'if you did nothing wrong outing Plame, why are you hiding behind reporters?' Cooper dissembled, agreed that someone should have thought of that, etc., and an exasperated Stewart finally said 'do you know any reporters?'

And this is why Comedy Central's a better place to learn about current events than most 24-hour news channels. Sad.

it is true that infotainment has taken over msm;

but, i see some light; just as tv changed newspaper journalism, and cable changed network journalism, i think the net, and now the blogs, and youtube, are changing the process again; for the better, imo

You probably caught it already

last word, second graf,

Discrepancy

Halberstam:

So: Never let them intimidate you. Never. If someone tries, do me a favor and work just a little harder on your story. Do two or three more interviews. Make your story a little better.

This is precisely the mindset that one needs to be a real reporter.

After all, the more they try to intimidate you, the more reason there is to find out what they're trying to hide. It's your (and my!) frikken job!

"But hey, common sense never impedes the left's sense of superiority."

Is there such a thing as *post-irony*? Because our resident troll seems to be *swimming* in it.

One of the great "scales falling from my eyes" moments was reading "The Best And The Brightest"--I had found an old copy at my frat house when I was in grad school, so by that time it had been out for almost a decade already. It made it all the harder to stomach when the right-wing thugs continued to spew, all thru the 80s, about how "the media lost Vietnam"--and even harder still to watch the way our pitiful news media, by and large, let them get away with it.

I was talking to a friend who used to be a science reporter for the Daily Telegraph about differences between journalism in the UK and the US. She was quite shocked by the behavior of American journalists at press conferences. They actually *applaud* the speaker. She found it quite bizarre to show this sort of approval and respect for the speaker at a press conference. Proper behavior? To ask a few pointed questions and slink off with some quantity of sneering distain in search opposing views.

You're doing what every journalist should do, pursuing the truth of the facts as both a personal and a public duty.

Halberstam's death brings to mind a timely anecdote involving another true journalist - I.F. Stone. Stone once told Halberstam that the Washington Post was an exciting paper to read because "you never know on what page you would find a page-one story."

As for the comparison of Drudge with Walter Cronkite, it is bogus. Drudge and his ilk urge death and destruction from behind a computer keyboard while carefully avoiding danger themselves. Cronkite covered World War II from the front lines. He went ashore on D-Day, with men being killed all around him, flew bombing missions over Germany, and parachuted with the l0lst Airborne. He was a real and courageous reporter, invited to CBS by Edward R. Murrow, not a cowardly chickenhawk.

...but I'm guessing that these posts are about the best Halberstam obituary published today.

A wise man once said....It's a bad idea to fight anyone, that buys printing ink by the barrel.

That's what has them so rattled by the Glenn Greenwalds & Josh Marshalls & Digbys--- suddenly the "ink" is soooo cheap and plentiful.

But hey, common sense never impedes the left's sense of superiority. Keep on, keepin' on. Heh. -- shooter242

Once, leftists were people who believed in public ownership of the "means of production" and damned near everything else. (Remember those days, you whiskey soured old coot?) Now the term is flung as an insult at people who merely believe the public should have voice in governance. And the verbal bomb-tossers are draft-dodger ex-hippies like Boortz or Wiener. What a change in 35 years!
Shooter242 is of Halberstam's generation. He's old enough to know better than to spend the day listening to these battery-operated dishonorbots.

God forgive me, apparently this comes from PCR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger#Criticism_of_.27mainstream.27_journalism

Criticism of 'mainstream' journalism

Pilger is a strong critic of the institutions and economic forces that structure 'mainstream' journalism. He is particularly scornful of pro-Iraq war commentators on the liberal left, or 'liberal interventionists', such as Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch.

He said in an address at Columbia University on 14 April 2006:

“During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. ‘I have to tell you,’ said their spokesman, ‘that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?’"

Pilger's book Heroes (1968) is another indispensible work on Vietnam.

Some parts are summarized here:

http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Propaganda/Vietnam.asp

http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Propaganda/Vietnam.asp

is that it's hard to do with your notebook in your hand.

There's nothing wrong, in theory, with applauding someone, and then asking them a really tough question immediately thereafter. But the sheer pragmatics of it should be a tip-off that the theory may not quite work so well in practice.

I should know. I've actually done it on some rare occassions. The most notable has to do with the local ports, and the release of their vaunted "Clean Air Action Plan," which actually aims to deliver less clean air in the first five years than the "No Net Increase" plan it replaced.

The good thing about the new plan was that they were actually going forward with it--and that two ports (LA and Long Beach) were both in it together. But the levels of pollution reduction were seriously oversold. So there really was reason to both applaud and criticize. And, of course, it wasn't just my own independent analysis--there were plenty of people to quote outside the ports to that effect.

It was a classic case of the exception that proves (i.e. tests) the rule.