Letters to the Editor
-
Let's not romanticize UK reporters, either
I do my best to listen to BBC World Service, and especially to give me the news that National Public Radio silently ignores or glosses. However, it's important to not think that Jeremy Paxton or Claire Bolderson are typical journalists, that Peev is an everyday journalist. It's true that BBC and British papers will take a more adversarial and interrogative stance with officials than the fawning, utterly worthless, US press will, but it is not "British standard" any more than the Daily Mirror gutter press that Carlson wants to be "normal" is. Furthermore, the US does have journalists, and it does have true interlocutors for people in power. The problem is that, in the US, such persons are sidelined to the "alternative press" or demoted, while the most intelligent and persistent reporters in Britain get, of all things, promoted and become the stars of their services and papers.
You know about Paxton because the BBC is careful to highlight them, and you know of Peev because The Scotsman sent her to a high profile world event. We don't know the names of our own good reporters because, other than a very few (mostly left over from Vietnam reporting), they get shuffled off, silenced, or sidetracked as bad for profits.
-
Pathetic
Carlson is a perfect example of why "journalism" is nearly dead in the United States. He accuses another journalist of being "hurtful" for printing an accurate quote but that doesn't keep him off the frequently scurrilous Laura Ingram radio show. Give me a break! These people are buffoons and Carlson is a big joke.
-
Looks like the "Old World" gets it right, again.
Wonder if our side of the pond will ever catch up.
-
Get at the truth!
Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?
Truth is a rather maleable thing. Here in the USA, apparently truth is what is arrived at after everyone has had a chance to collaberate and get their story straight. Of course in the rest of the world such things would usually be calledself-serving lies but then that would be uncivil.
-
No S**t....
I'm a psychologist, and earlier in my career I didn't buy into the idea of "Freudian slips", the concept that people subconsciously let slip out a statement that reveals their true feelings. Unlike right wing authoritarians, I have leaned that I CAN be wrong. Carlson's comments pretty well prove it. Glenn, I agree completely that "success" in our pseudo-journalistic class is defined as "the ability to be spoon-fed sound bites at the pleaure of the powerful". My only question is how much of this is due to financial incentives, job security, etc. vs. a self-selection process where the perpetual hangers-on wih the cool group in high school rise to the top... as science has demonstrated, s**t floats!
-
Citizen Journalists
Protecting, rather than exposing, the secrets of the powerful is the fuel of American journalism. That's how they maintain their access to and good relations with those in power.
The above gets at it perfectly, Mr. Greenwald. The "free" press in this country is as entrenched an institution as any other. They're insiders and courtiers, committed to their privileges and perks granted them as insiders -- which reduces them to the role of propagandists, able to quickly get information out from the top downward.
Anymore, I think the only way real American journalism is going to occur is through amateur citizen journalists who're more dedicated to holding the powerful to account and finding the truth than to preserving their position of privilege, because they simply won't have any position of privilege, period. The Bush Years should once and for all demonstrates the complicity of the mainstream media in this arrangement, and that they are a spent force.
-
Circular argument
So, basically... this is Carlson's argument:
- Let's withhold the truth from the public when a "powerful person"tells us to do so.
- In withholding the truth, we will gain trust from "powerful people", who will then continue to tell us the truth.
- And the objective of getting "powerful people"to tell us the truth is so that we can withhold it from the public to gain even more trust.
Ermm, what?? How is that even logical?
-
But what is the solution?
Journalists or their editors will have to agree - a huge majority of them - that they will change. Otherwise, those who choose integrity over the illusion of "access" will continue to be marginalized, while the mainstream access-ories continue to print "anonymous" press releases and "leaked" talking points. I think the blogosphere goes a long way, but the mainstream press still enjoys plenty of legitimacy. And the old digital divide people used to talk about is still very, very real for the people who most need "access" to the truth.
-
Off the record Glen,
Hillary is a Monster and Obama should acknowledge that.
-
The failure of our democracy is the failure of our press
I wonder what value there is--for the public--for reporters to have access to the powerful if they refuse to print "the truth" they claim they're trying to obtain. It's obvious what "value" the reporters see in their subservience: their careers are enhanced, they rise in their profession, they make more money, they gain more fame.
As your most apt column illuminates, the failure of our democratic institutions is reflective of the failure of our press. When the media acquiesce to those in power, allow them to spread their lies without challenge, and flatter them with obsequeous, substance-free coverage, the powerful--our purported "public servants"--will treat the press as they deserve to be treated: as lapdogs, to be petted or swatted, as circumstances or caprice compel. Because they live in the houses of the powerful, the press believe they are of equal standing with them, are peers, when in fact they are servants. Of course, as sometimes happens, as servants to the powerful, they imagine themselves superior to we the people.
I wonder, Glenn: did you reply to the well-known journalist who emailed you and inform him that his unilateral "off the record" notice held no standing without your prior agreement? Did you let him know your decision whether or not to publish his comments had strictly to do with your own judgement as to the value of publishing them?