Letters to the Editor
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Fighting for seats on the frat-bus is so kool!
Great post, Glenn.
Saint McCain - who is forgetful, sleeps during Bush's eloquent speeches and has regular temper tantrums - is being sanctified. That's the type of guy I'd want with his finger on the nu-q-ler button: napping, or throwing a 72-year-old cranky fit. How many Senate votes has he missed while campaigning? Great haircut, though.
It wouldn't surprise me if the next campaign pictures showed the bobbleheads on the buses in bunny slippers having a pajama party, while taking dictation with Barbie pencils (dot the i's with a heart).
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There's a problem with this criticism
It's not that it isn't true, but that it's very slippery to bring up. The Clintons can't bring it up. They'd be derided as "whiners," or "Muskie in a pantsuit," as the chowderhead on Chief Hitman Russert's show said yesterday. For them to refer to unfair treatment would, and does, make them a target of ridicule from their opponents and from the guilty press corps itself. Even an honest broker such as Glenn is accused of being a "Clinton-lover" by supporters of the current front-runner. Let's say that Obama wins the nomination, and then he goes up against the media fave, McCain. Can't anybody see the story lines that will start to emerge in the general election.
It's a bit like the Electoral College. It's only really clearly a nasty relic when the guy who got the most votes loses, as in 2000. But it is never going to be changed by the "winner." And let's just say that Gore wins in 2012 or something. He has the moral authority to ask for the constitutional amendment to abolish the EC, but I can hear the "Loserman" yelling now.
Aside from putting some real urgency into the divestiture of media companies from any other business -- from Defense to amusement parks to whatever it is that Sumner Redstone does. Bring back the Fin/Syn separation. Anything, to make actual journalism return.
That's the issue, and it's much larger than the trashing of Hillary Clinton or whoever's next in the media hotseat. It all seemed to go to hell after Tonya Harding, didn't it?
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@LWM
I seem to remember during the cold war, horseplay among fighter jets was not that uncommon. I suspect that the story we're getting from the Straits is reasonably accurate (with the notable exception of the radio chatter which I suspect is being made up from whole cloth by the US.)
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Reporters are employees, they are not free agents
They are paid (sometimes handsomely) to do a job. They are doing the job they are paid for. Hammering on them without going after their editors, managing editors, publishers and producers gets nowhere.
Reporters are doing the jobs they are paid for.
Reporters do not make editorial decisions (in most cases.)
Reporters do not decide the "angle" of a story.
Reporters don't write headlines.
If reporters don't like their assignments or don't like the "angle" they've been told to follow or the headlines their work is under they're free to find other work.
I don't like what passes for political reporting in this country either, but I long ago stopped blaming the reporters for it. If they suddenly started reporting the way we want them to, first their work would not get in print or on the teevee in the mainstream. We'd never see it or know about it. Their editors and producers would prevent it. Second, if they insisted on doing the work the way we want them to, they'd be fired. Buh. Bye. Let them go get a blog. They would not have jobs in the major mass media, because the owners and controllers of the major mass media in this country do not want and will not tolerate truly serious political reporting. Period.
That's for the alternative media. Where you'll find lots of it.
The major mass media in this country wants and pays a lot of money for those High School Hijinks pieces that flood every political beat outlet practically every day.
And all those Mean Gurlz and Bad Boiz doing the inconsequential, narcissistic, "analytical" bullshitting in the papers and on the tube and exactly what the editors and publishers want.
Is this hard to understand somehow? Do people really believe that reporters are free to report whatever they want, the way they want, and that reporters who want to report the way we want them to can get hired by or will survive in the major mass media?
Does anybody really believe that?
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Just how strong is the backlash that prevents honest reporting?
Leonard Downie, editor of the Washington Post, purportedly said this a few years ago:
“So if you do tough investigative reporting about Democrats or about issues that are important to the left, you’ll get a strong backlash from the left. Similarly, if you do tough investigative reporting of the Republicans or people on the right, you’ll get a strong backlash from them. And I think this is also having an impact on the media. It’s scaring people.”
This could certainly explain the aggressive behavior by the press when one element is identified as weak. No threats of retaliation or possible loss of present and future access make for an easy kill with little or no consequence to the reporter. That our own institutions are responsible, only reveal how badly broken the system is.
Isn’t this almost like ancient Rome, except that instead of throwing people to the lions we feed them to the media. It's a public display, an orgy of aggression.
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Obama vs McCain
In the Democratic primary, the political media will favor and bandwagon whomever is the weakest, long run, against McCain. Period.
In 2009, John McCain will be president of the United States.
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Why they hate Edwards
Chomsky would say the campaign journalists hate or dismiss or denigrate Edwards' candidacy because:
A. The journalists have internalized the doctrines of the ruling elite (ie, coporations). Indeed, the journalists wouldn't be there if they hadn't.
B. Edwards' campaign is the one most threatening to the coorporations.
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Any comment?
GG: Have you written to Jason Zengerle or Mickey Kaus or Ben Smith or Michael Scherer asking them to explain the journalistic value of their pieces? Or to comment on your critique? Do they offer some kind of defence for their writing, a rationalization for why it is merits the public's attention? I don't mean to ask them why they're not writing on other topics, just why the ones they are writing about are anything but mind-numbing pap or propaganda.