Letters to the Editor
-
Carlson, An Idiot
My biggest question is how you got through a whole Tucker program; that guy is one the oiliest telechatshow host I have ever witnessed.
That being said, McCain tried to retract some boneheaded comment a week or so ago,
"If I may, I'd like to retract 'I'll lose."
That was widely reported and he looked like a dope for doing it. I've heard him use this ploy before on his straight talk express--something he said about gay and lesbian people, and then he asked if he could retract it a little later.
As for Power--there were a dozen ways she could rolled out of that 'monster' comment once she had said it. 'Hillary is a monster..campaigner', or 'Hillary is a monster, oh my god, that sounds so extreme, I mean....' She pretty much guaranteed that it would be the highlight of her commentary once she asked if it could be retracted. So the flies are on her.
-
Cheney set tone during Desert Storm
This article, called "Collective Amnesia" appeared in the Oct. 2000 American Journalism Review. It's about then-Sec. of Defense Dick Cheney's iron-fisted control over the press during Operation Desert Storm and it questions why that same press was fawning over the man as candidate for VP in 2000. Very enlightening now.
http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=788
-
Exactly what is "new" about what Tucker revealed?
So he spoke the Truth about the function of the Big American Media, and he got his head and entrails handed to him by a snippy and uppity girl reporter from overseas who has a different idea of what the Media's function is.
There's nothing at all "new" here. The vapidity, decadence and corruption of the Big American Media has been Topic #1 or #2 on the Internets since there first was an internet decades ago. It remains Topic #1 or #2. The Problem with the Big American Media doesn't get any better with all the breathless Revelations of Truth, either. Arguably it gets worse.
And the contrast between the Court Circular nature of American Big Media and the British press dogging and ragging on politicians has been noted again and again and again. That contrast is as stable as Gibraltar.
And at the same time that cable and network news operations in this country operate entirely by Russert Rules -- which was all Tucker was getting at, after all -- there is a whole other media world that the haute blogmonde is paying a little more attention to, but still not enough -- a vibrant, investigative, truth telling, confrontational media such as is found in Britain and many other places around the world.
Trashing Tucker and the rest of them has almost become an end in itself, and some of the reaction to and dismissal of the blogospheric critics of the Big Media is due to the consistency of the attacks and the unchanging nature of the contest. It's always the same. They are always vapid, decadent and corrupt. Their blogospheric and other critics point that out -- endlessly -- and claim that the Big Media should be operating by different rules. But they don't. They never have. They don't get any better for all the criticism they receive. Arguably, they get worse. And so it goes.
It's hard to take this roundelay as more than entertainment -- after the ten thousanth example.
I realize that media criticism is a fundamental endeavor; it must be done, and it will be done, and the targets of it deserve every bit of the denunciation they receive and then some. And yet...
Alternative weeklies used to love to tweak the Establishment Press back in the day, and soon enough, surprise, surprise, the Establishment Press was raiding the weeklies for staff, and by golly the intrepid weekly reporters would jump at the chance to work for the Big Guys. In a heartbeat. And -- surprise, surprise -- many of them would become just as jaded, corrupt and decadent as the Big Guys they'd been criticizing and denouncing all those years.
The institution of the Big Media is the way it is, and Tucker simply said as much. Others have said it, too. Anyone who has been a part of it, or even close to it, knows as much. Not only is it outwardly decadent and corrupt, it is corrupting.
But is that news?
-
Spot On!
I caught that segment on Tucker's show and I was embarrassed for our country. Here was a real journalist being lectured by a snotty,arrogant,immature symbol of the corruption of our press! Can you imagine the conversation she is having with her collegues today?
However the press has an exception to it's lapdog response to power and that is "the Clinton Rules". I would love to see you examine the reasons for this. I would also love to see a historical point by point rebuttal of many of the lies, smears and myths about the Clintons that have been pushed by the press to the point that many Obama supporters accept them as fact.
It has been a real dissappointment to me that the writers online that I have come to depend on to set the record straight on matters of government and press malfesence have failed to do this.
Another failure of progressive online writers is their unwillingness to address the misogyny that has surfaced in the progrssive left.This has been shocking to me, it is like the 'dirty little secret' on the left this election cycle. It is being addressed on feminist blogs only. I could be wrong about this but I have never read any discussion of this problem other than on Media Matters in relation to the CNBC gang of women haters.
-
I'm not so sure about Gerri Peeve behavior
With all due respect to Glen Greenwald, Ms. Peeve (whose recent gloating article on getting Ms. Power fired is pretty nasty) has not revealed the exact circumstances of the 'interview." I get the strong impression that it was not an interview at all, rather a discussion in a very informal setting over wine, etc. after a lecture of seminar about Ms. Powers book. It may have had something to with Sergio Vieira de Mello the UN hero for which she worked who was murdered in Iraq.
This raises a big question, were the circumstances in which she was speaking such that she did think that she was not giving an interview -- was she encouraged to have a relaxed and opne conversation and mousetrapped. Such conversations are not uncommon in Washington or London, and breaking the rules Despite the somewhat peevish tone of the Scotsman's denials, the circumstances have been left completely undescribed. Heaven forfend that I be seen as agreeing with Tucker Carlson, but circumstances can give rise to an inference that a conversation is private and not for publication. In any event, I suspect that as chief Westminster lobby correspondent for the Scotsman, Gerri Peeve has just engaged in a very career limiting move.
By the way, I know a little about this -- I was approached by a journalist for a publication at one point in a role I had in an informal setting. They asked me about some statements that an entity was making that were, shall we say, not very true, not false, but just a wild exaggeration. I said I could not say anything, they asked some more, begged me to explain what ABC meant, I said that on background I would walk them through the factual information that was public and what it meant. I told my organisation's PR people after -- they had a heart attack. They told me that NO-ONE talks to journalist A or ANYONE working for Publication B because that cannot be trusted. Lo and behold, they headlined my comments as an attack on the other company, and sent it around via wire services. Ouch, but actually, for a supposedly important publication, I have noticed that their coverage sucks, it appears that my entity's PR department was not the only one that refuses to let anyone talk to them and has reduced them to a press-release publisher.
To be blunt, few professions in my experience are as sleazy as journalism -- and a Gerry Peeve's ambition to be promoted form the Scotsman (and its stable of minor regional newspapers) would have meant that she will make a story out of anything. In any even, it will be a long time before she is briefed again by anyone in Westminster.
From the perspective of someone Glenn Greenwald that sort of distrust of the press is bad. A lot of background briefing is not about covering things up, it is about pointing journalists (some of the most ignorant people I have met are journalists) in the right direction to get an important story, or explaining technical issues to them. Most journalists know nada, zip, about the technical aspects of what they report on. Witness Joe Connason making a fool of himself in Salon over Rezko and the Obama house. The real story is not the Obama house and the lot, but the way it is being spun and by whom -- but Connason cannot get an Illinois property lawyer, developer or real estate agent to explain it to him first, so he can make sense of the real story?