If Joe Klein and Time are trapped in Greenwald Gulch, it serves as evidence of some maturing on the Web, in that Mr. Greenwald and Salon appear to be courageous enough to do enterprise reporting.

Thus far, as a reader of various independent news sites, I've found very little of this kind of focused journalism, commentary, and media criticism all in one place.

Keep your eye on the ball: speak truth to power, and, watch the watchers.

If a person commenting at FDL reported accurately, Time not only blocked her from commenting at Swampland, they blocked her access to Time online altogether.

bystander

If this is really true, then perhaps Time Magazine would like an access war. We can write to our congressional representatives, and request that, in light of the misrepresentations given their legislative documents and procedures by writers at Time Magazine, Time's journalists should no longer be given access to officials and their staff. What does no access punditry pay these days?

Of course, a note to major shareholders like, say, Ted Turner, to the effect that the staff at Time is denying online access to responsible people with opposing points of view, thereby injuring the reputation of it's online product offering and decreasing eyeball contact with major advertisements during the holiday season, which could result in decreased shareholder worth, might also be appropriate. Microsoft is the primary advertiser on the site, do you think they should be informed they may need to renegotiate their contract due to the decreased traffic?

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2007/11/garbage_in_journalism_out.html

Garbage In, Journalism Out

Posted by Joe Klein | Comments (28) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This

This is outrageous. Journalists are continually bombarded with rumors, often scurrilous. They are not news. Rumors only become news when they are confirmed, cross-checked and responded to by the target of the attack.

Imagine.....Joe Klein lecturing Bob Novak on journalistic integrity.

The mind reels!

Dear Mr. Stengel,

The standard response which you are sending out today to those who have complained about the propaganda in Joe Klein's column about the "tone-deaf" Democrats falls far short of the actions of a responsible journalist. First, all of Mr. Klein's attempts at explanation on his blog resulted in exacerbating the problem. Further, stating that "TIME will run a correction in his column in this week's issue of the magazine" also falls far short if there is no effort to publish the correction now on the internet and to append the correction to the posting of the original column.

Rather that allowing Mr. Klein to write a column in the next, or any future issue of Time, I would suggest instead that you run the excellent column by Representative Rush Holt, one of the authors of the RESTORE Act, which now can be found on Huffington Post. This would be a much better use of your space.

I have never been a subscriber to Time. I would consider purchasing a subscription, however, should you choose to fire Mr. Klein and Ms. Painton (prior to her planned voluntary exit) and instead publish in that slot a random rotation of columns from authors such as Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Josh Marshall, Christy Hardin Smith or other rising stars of the liberal blogospere. Should you decide to publish these folks, you will find far fewer headaches of the type brought on by Mr. Klein, since they all base their writing on actual research, checking of sources, checking of facts and a real zeal for truth. You might recognize these as the standard operating procedures of something called journalism. I encourage you to try it, as it would be a welcome change from your current propaganda operation. You just might be surprised by how well your magazine would sell if it started to seek out and publish the truth.

Sincerely,

[shotgunfreude, that was a masterful essay.]

-- ondelette

Thanks, ondelette.

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

In an article in Time Magazine last week, Joe Klein wrote a column in which he derided the FISA amendments passed recently by the House, and in which he claimed that you quashed a bill with broad bipartisan support, much more like what the White House was asking for. Representative Rush Holt, an author of the bill that passed, has documented that this is untrue on the Huffington Post web site. In addition, bloggers such as Glenn Greenwald at Salon,and Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake, have been documenting other inaccuracies in the article, and holding Mr. Klein's feet to the fire, in an attempt to stop this kind of journalism, which smacks of a roundabout and deliberate attempt to misinform the American public as to where their interests lie on the FISA issue.

I am asking you to publicly respond to the charge of the quashed bipartisan bill, which Rush Holt says never happened. But more than that, I am asking that the House of Representatives seriously reconsider the access they grant to journalists who do not make the effort to tell the truth. It would be a worthwhile exercise in House Ethics to find out whether or not false information was passed to this journalist, and if so to correct the problem, if not, then maybe House members should be aware that citations of "anonymous" access to their staff are being used to back false stories.

Sincerely,

Dear Mr. Stengel,

The standard response which you are sending out today to those who have complained about the propaganda in Joe Klein's column about the "tone-deaf" Democrats falls far short of the actions of a responsible journalist. First, all of Mr. Klein's attempts at explanation on his blog resulted in exacerbating the problem. Further, stating that "TIME will run a correction in his column in this week's issue of the magazine" also falls far short if there is no effort to publish the correction now on the internet and to append the correction to the posting of the original column.

Rather that allowing Mr. Klein to write a column in the next, or any future issue of Time, I would suggest instead that you run the excellent column by Representative Rush Holt, one of the authors of the RESTORE Act, which now can be found on Huffington Post. This would be a much better use of your space.

I have never been a subscriber to Time. I would consider purchasing a subscription, however, should you choose to fire Mr. Klein and Ms. Painton (prior to her planned voluntary exit) and instead publish in that slot a random rotation of columns from authors such as Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Josh Marshall, Christy Hardin Smith or other rising stars of the liberal blogospere. Should you decide to publish these folks, you will find far fewer headaches of the type brought on by Mr. Klein, since they all base their writing on actual research, checking of sources, checking of facts and a real zeal for truth. You might recognize these as the standard operating procedures of something called journalism. I encourage you to try it, as it would be a welcome change from your current propaganda operation. You just might be surprised by how well your magazine would sell if it started to seek out and publish the truth.

Sincerely,

-- Jim White

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 12:55 PM

Perfect. Thank you.