Letters to the Editor

AP's Tom Raum confuses his fantasies for fact The longtime AP writer makes up a story line and narrative for an article and then, when pressed, goes on a futile search for facts to support it. Glenn Greenwald [2008-09-12]

• Invite him onto Salon Radio

  Glenn,

  Excellent work on a subject that needs constant attention: the ultimate failure of the media to do their jobs, or worse, their actions as willing sycophants for a disasterously incompetent gov't. A few quick points:

  1) Why not invite Tommy Boy onto Salon Radio for a 15 minute interview about his article? When he refuses or ignores you, make him the first (if he is in fact the first) person on your ongoing list of guests who refuse to come onto your show to talk about legitimate topics of common interest. And then put that list on a sidebar next to your blog posts so we can all watch the litany of stars accumulate as time goes by.

  2) These are EXACTLY the stories that need WIDE circulation into the blogosphere, particularly among liberal groups, media watchdogs, and "fact-check" type organizations. Cross-referencing them as you and others do certainly helps in getting them attention (eventually) in more mainstream media. An exception would be the paid military analysts story, but we know why that turned out the way it did.

  3) As you did in this article, include email addresses and phone numbers to the supervisors of the authors committing these acts of non-journalism so that we, bloggers, can inundate them with complaints. Surely at some point they will grow weary (or angry) of having their inboxes filled and message machines overrun with requests and demands that something be done about their subordinate's deplorable, "against-all-journalism" actions.

  I'm sure there are more steps to consider in changing the media narrative, but is this a good start? Would other Salon readers be willing to do their part?

  As we all (including Dick Cheney) know, controlling the message is the key. We need to mount some real efforts to take back that control, if it only means hounding the media incessantly until they start doing their jobs (a la Joe Klein as of late).

  -- Intercooler
  [Read Intercooler's other letters]
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