Perhaps you will find the Chairman of the World Congress of Russian Jewry more creditable than Gorbachev

Russian Senator Borris Spiegel, Chairman of the World Congress of Russian Jewry, issued a statement "calling for the establishment of a tribunal that would investigate Georgia's "war crimes" during the past week's round of fighting." (Haaretz, August 18, 2008). Spiegel went as far as accusing Georgia of conducting genocide.

And with Israel arming and training the Georgians, I'm sure Mr. Spiegel had every reason to minimise the damage.

A more accurate view might be "conservative"/corporate/private wealth v. "liberal"/public or "the commons." To the extent that Democrats have gone corporate themselves, the Dem v. GOP paradigm has really become anachronistic (with notably few exceptions).

And, yes the scare quotes reflect how malleable conservative and liberal have become when discussing or criticizing media coverage.

Herewith a spontaneous free-association exercise I just conducted-- a very rough, sketchy list of attributes amounting to a caricature of the "old-fashioned" reporter versus the corporate media aristocracy. I well understand that these straw-sketches are over-simplified. With that disclaimer...

Archaeo-journalist: high-school graduate (college OK, not mandatory); underpaid; unimportant; earns "byline" by merit (still underpaid); outsider; skeptic; cynic; aggressive; prefers to remain detached from, and adversarial to the powerful elite (distrusts power)

Neo-journalist: college/j-school graduate; relatively well-paid corporate employee; (self)important; seeks iconic celebrity status; insider; credulous; sycophantic; collusive; mingles with, and aspires to parity with the powerful elite (admires power)

___________________________

It seems to me that there is a class component that accounts for the Fourth Estate's transition from the ostensible friend of the common man to the handmaidens of the powerful. The wealthy and powerful have moved into the Fourth Estate lock, stock, and barrel, and the media are living in the slave quarters out back.

However, the Upstairs/Downstairs duality is semi-permeable, such that the Upstairs servants who do their masters' bidding well enough eventually get to sit at the table and join them as equals, or at least equivalents.

I'm just thinking of icons like I.F. Stone, George Seldes, Ida Tarbell-- Helen Thomas-- and even classic fictional reporters like Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart) in "The Harder They Fall". This group wasn't impressed, thrilled, and awed by the elite and powerful they covered, and they didn't pursue a career track for the sake of becoming fabulously wealthy and owning homes cheek by jowl with the persons they covered. Nor did they cultivate status, like the modern Beltway Insiders, and take obvious pleasure in clubbiness with the movers & shakers they cover.

This isn't true of the reporters, pundits, and journalists with whom Glenn so frequently takes issue. The adversarial ethos has become "quaint", rather like the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the corporatized and hyper-professionalized journalists have gone "upscale"; as this article so vividly demonstrates, they by and large practice a camaraderie with their fellow aristocrats. They're accorded status as experts as a function of the contacts and sources they develop, not because of sheer independent investigatory skill and determination.

They are united by a common aristocratic class, and to a more or less conscious degree scorn or despise the quaint criticism that this impedes and vitiates their capacity to probe into, report on, and challenge controversial, suspicious, or blatantly wrongful actions by persons of power and influence, aka The Establishment.

Glen,

You quote the OP-ED by Gorbachev as if he some sort of legitimate authority on whats going on. Putting aside for the moment he was the head of the former Soviet Empire and didn't just happen into that job but was picked to lead our former enemy because of his loyalty to the state, he is hardly in a position to tell us whats going on being he isn't in the new Russian Government.

If you want actually get a good idea of whats going on, read this report by a journalist WHO ACTUALLY WENT THERE AND DID SOME JOURNALISM: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/georgia-at-war-what-i-saw_b_120076.html

And please, PLEASE stop with this "Blame America First" meme i have seen all over the left blogs with regards to this topic. I am so GD sick and tired of reading how the Georgians deserved it or its somehow our fault or whatever the rationalization of the day is.

Perhaps you will find the Chairman of the World Congress of Russian Jewry more creditable than Gorbachev

Why no, no I don't. Sorry. Is there some reason I should?

Go to www.daylife.com/photos and search for Tskhinvali. Remember some damaged buildings are photographed multiple times.

http://www.daylife.com/photo/05L53eQ3n1b6z/Tskhinvali

with this caption needs to be tied into the McClatchy report.

Quote

"1 week ago: A South Ossetia fighter stands next to coffins at a makeshift morgue in a destroyed hospital, in Tskhinvali, the Georgian breakaway enclave of South Ossetia's capital, on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008. Russia accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in the separatist province of South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died."

---

there's another pic from 11 months ago

Quote

The President of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, watches a military parade during an independence day ceremony in Tskhinvali September 20, 2007. The Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia celebrated on Thursday the 17th anniversary of declaring itself independent from Georgia. The tiny sliver of land fought a short war against the central government in Tbilisi after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its declaration of independence has internationally not been recognized, but Russia gives it moral and financial support - a major irritant in the relations between Tbilisi and Moscow.

11 months ago

So 11 months ago, Georgia was nowhere in control of Tskhinvali.

Gorby: "Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived."

McClatchy:

"The difference between Russian officials' description of Tskhinvali and the facts on the ground are profound."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/48860.html

Granted, the McClatchy piece is not countering Gorby directly. But it does call into question some claims being made by the Russian Govt.