...is completely unreliable and 100% geared towards ratings, which is as we know drives the prices for advertiser access to us viewers.

Without the internet we 'd be screwed in terms of having access to information.

Abramowitz's attitude and answers in particular. Notice how he elided the big question -the WMD - and focused on the easier ones, saying you can't always get the whole story the first time around. Duh. Or the second either, Abramowitz? And how about the years and years your paper beat the drums on the WMD, and even when it finally conceded there were none (you have conceded that, right?), you kept the war drums going full volume despite the most urgent rationale for the war having been proven to be a lie of the worst kind.

Why not get a job as a government shill, Abramowitz? Then you don't even have to get the story right ever!

You and your kind are truly dishonest, delusional and severely dangerous to democracy.

And I'd really like to know what the journalism schools are teaching these nitwits. You'd think these faux journalists are getting their degrees online from schools whose pop-up ads they clicked on. I'd like to see a full investigation of the state of journalism schools.

Television coverage of the White House media events gives reporters the opportunity to get their faces shown nationally. The rise of cable "news" networks has exacerbated this - it's an easy way for them to fill up time.

Honest, adversarial media would just boycott things like the WH press briefings - the information content is negligible.

I can't believe Abramowitz gave the media responsibility for revealing the truth behind the Lynch and Tillman fake-news stories.

The average reader was rolling his eyes in disbelief as these manufactured heroism stories were plastered daily in all newspapers. The point was obvious to all: to defend the war effort and politicians. Too bad the stories were like something written by an adolescent conservative stoner.

Gulls like Abramowitz and Judith Miller were foisting them on the public as facts.

If there truly exists a profession called 'Journalism' -- then certain folks should be expelled from it for violating its most basic standards.

...although I'd forgotten about that particular article.

This?

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010808Klausutis.html

OMG!

During the summer of 2001, when the speculative media frenzy was raging about Democratic Representative Gary Condit and the disappearance of Chandra Levy, the dead body of a young female aide, Lori Klausutis, was found in Republican Representative Joe Scarborough's northwest Florida office.

Outside of coverage in the local paper (Northwest Florida Daily News), there was a virtual nationwide media blackout on the subject.

How does this fit into your discussion of the media?

But, it isn't the fault of the jesters that we, the people, have granted such enormous power to the professional manipulators, tellers of tall tales and flippant promises that we called politicians.

Yes, I can agree.

But, I would go a tad further and say that it is the fault of the people that they have vested such vast powers in those autocrats who can make big news by causing some global threat or imminent disaster.

If you give unlimited power to any government, what would you expect to happen? Flowers and sweets for all?

... whether the media's stenographic subservience to Government now inheres in what they do ...

It's really very simple. The cheapest, easiest, and least demanding way to get big news is to cozy up to the courtiers of those autocrats who can make big news with the stroke of a pen or an offhanded remark that implies some global threat or imminent disaster. It's also very profitable to be a court jester, the suppplicant oracles of our annointed kings and queens.

But, it isn't the fault of the jesters that we, the people, have granted such enormous power to the professional manipulators, tellers of tall tales and flippant promises that we called politians.

We have met the enemy ... but it's not funny.

After barring Ron Paul from their convention, the Republian fascists will give the main convention speaking slots to the sanctimonious neocon Lieberman, the crooked neocon Giuliani, and the neocon war criminals Cheney and Bush. But not that "lets follow the constitution" nut Ron Paul. I mean, follow the constitution? What's up with that?

At a McCain town meeting a questioner said the State needed a military draft to be able to kill enough foreigners, and McCain said he didn't disagree with anything she said. Let us have perpetual war for perpetual profits. (but profits only for the few)

Glenn, on the other hand, is a prophet for the many. :-)

Washington Post reporter Michael Abramowitz certainly enjoys the White House beat, doesn't he? Plenty of good fellowship, fun and frolic. Abramowitz does admit that officials like Joel Kaplan and Jim Jeffrey aren't especially forthright or revealing, but hey, they're just being "discreet." That's right, Mr. Abramowitz, they're being discreet in order to spin dunces like you. (Say, that gives me an idea. Why don't you go to your buddy Kaplan tomorrow and ask him why his boss lied the country into war. Tell us what his answer is.)

Lewis Lapham's article in Harper's--"Elegy for a Rubber Stamp"--is just what MSM types like Tim Russert deserve. Russert was in solid with the D.C. Establishment, a guy who munched hors d'oeuvres and sipped cocktails with the movers and shakers at Georgetown cocktail parties. And he wouldn't do anything to harm his status--like telling the truth about 'em.

The late David Halberstam had it right: The more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are. That's because you've sold out to the Establishment.

I posted this on the radio program thread today, but might be worth repeating it here (at the risk of being labelled a blog whore of course).

UK journalist David Rose, who co-authored the first Observer story linking Saddam to the 2001 anthrax attacks, admitted in September 2007 that he was "tapped" by the UK government to be a recipient of secret information from MI6 and other top-level insider sources.

Our conversations would not merely be off-the-record, and hence attributable in print to an unnamed MI6 official. In public I would have to pretend they had never happened, and if I wanted to quote or paraphrase anything Bourgeois said, I would have to use a circumlocution so vague as to make it impossible for any reader to realise that I had spoken to someone from the Office at all. Should I breach these conditions, Bourgeois made clear, I could expect instant outer darkness: the refusal of all future access. MI6, in other words, would maintain a priceless advantage, a quality regarded as essential in intelligence operations of many kinds - what spies call "plausible deniability". And if, heaven forfend, the service told me something that turned out to be mistaken, or even tried to plant sheer disinformation for who knows what purpose, there would be no comeback, no accountability. I could put up, or shut up.

At the time, I pushed my misgivings to the back of my mind, accepting Bourgeois's assurance that eventually MI6 would like to have an ordinary public press office like the Home Office or Department of Health. After all, as he pointed out, "the friends" across the Atlantic, the US Central Intelligence Agency, had long had such a bureau - an entire public affairs division - without apparent harm.

Rose was one of two Observer reporters who first linked Iraq to the 2001 anthrax attacks. The other, Ed Vulliamy, wrote another Observer story linking the anthrax attacks to neo-nazi skinheads before he left the USA in disgust in 2003.

More at the link on my sig.