Slashdot Mirror
Are Journalism and Politics Inextricably Joined?
An anonymous reader writes "Retiring figure Bill Moyers makes his case in a recent speech delivered at the Society of Professional Journalists 2004 national convention. 'But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined.' It is a deep argument, made poignant by the recently murdered Francisco Ortiz Franco of Mexico, Manik Saha of India, and Aiyathurai Nadesan of Sri Lanka, among others. It is a broad argument, touching on history from America's first best seller to yesterday's blog. Is it a convincing argument?"
What a long FA......
I'm going to go off a bit (and get modded down), but here we go -
Anywho, does this mean that our quality of democracy is weakened?
Who (who defined loosely as the media) has pushed the envelope or sought more answers against the war on terror, or the Patriot Act? While the megacorps clamp down on individual rights, who goes after them? Who goes after Bush when science is thrown aside in favor of religion? When beauraucracies(sic) withhold information in the name of "protecting from the terror threat", who questions it? I mean, yes, there are a few investigative reports every now and then, but it's rare.......
"This "zeal for secrecy" I am talking about - and I have barely touched the surface - adds up to a victory for the terrorists."
Indeed.....An interesting read with a lot of insight into our current situation......Might be worth RTFA-ing this time around.....
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
That's the whole idea behind the First Amendment isn't it?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Please correct it, Manik Saha has nothing to do with India. He's from Bangladesh and killed there as the link shows.
Seriously though, just because you don't feel a thing doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
English is easier said than done.
The quality of journalism is intertwined with that of democracy? I guess we're pretty screwed then, huh?
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
The reason freedom of the press is so important is that they serve as the town criers for the people. "Making sure the Enquirer can write whatever it wants is the only way I can be sure the New York Times is writing whatever it wants."
The first thing you learn in Social Studies is the concept of bias. Bias is in some ways, unavoidable, and in others desirable, because it allows you to see what viewpoints people are coming from. We know the Washington Post is liberal, we know the Washington Times is conservative, and that there are plenty of people who would disagree with either of those claims. And a newspaper is only so many pages long, and some things get cut. Is it political? Much of the time, yes. But only because 'politics' is a better synonym for beliefs, those oh-so-irrational parts of the human experience that can easily trump the logical parts of us. And if I publish one thing and somebody disagrees, they'll publish another. The press isn't there to tell us what is True and Right, they are there to report on What Is Happening so we can make Our Own Decisions About the World. Whether this means I have to pick up a few papers instead of just one is an exercise for the reader.
As an example, a few months ago when ABC (I think?) decided to read the names of the young men and women who had been killed in Iraq, some stations refused to cover it. Not because they didn't think those people had died, but because it was believed there were motives beyond respect for the dead that had come into play. Whether there were matters less -- so much as the perception of those who decided to air or not to air it because they believed there were other motives. We see the same thing in the climate debate -- we see things reported or not reported about greenhouse gases because they believe the other side is 'junk science'. And in some ways, the bias is desirable; that way I know if I pick up the Post and the Times, I get both sides of the argument and not just what the editors think is right.
The late Martha Gellhorn, who spent half a century reporting on war and politicians - and observing journalists, too -- eventually lost her faith that journalism could, by itself, change the world.
It can't. It requires people to be informed about their situation to do something about it.
And guess what? That's the way it's supposed to work; God Bless America. True journalism is absolutely essential to a democracy; voters must be informed to make informed decisions. And I can't imagine a situation where everybody reported the same stories in the same way being anything but very accurate, or very censored. There is no middle ground.
The FA has some good observations but most of it has been said elsewhere. An excellent book on this subject is Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
It comes down to the fact that freedom of the press is not what most people think. What it really means is that the media is free to make you hear what they want you to hear.
the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined.
Counterexample: slashdot is very democratic.
Find free books.
maybe, but the only real reason anybody believes in free will is because they say they feel it. If there was other evidence for it that wouldn't be the case but all the evidence what people say they feel.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
what the hell?
So when I thought about wether or not to reply to this post was not a choice?
Are you trying to say the very pinpoint in time that I decided was the choice and therefore to fleeting to know how I felt?
or are you just saying a whole lot of gibberish nonsense?
Its not how you feel makeing a choice, its how you feeling having the freedom to make a choice.
I can choose to reply again or not. And that feels kinda good cause I may want to. How will I feel actually making the choice is irrelevent airy fairy rubbish.
When someone says Journalism what they are really describing is the quality of the information that people are receiving about their world. Often the only information people will have about a topic will come from one news outlet or another. The decisions made based on the information then has great real world impact.
There are many easy examples that do not involve the political arena. If you have been following the SCO case and made a decision to invest based on the mainstream reportage you would have been badly hurt. If you acted on the reporting and information present on Groklaw you would be laughing now.
SCO is an example where the presence of alternative sources of information has served to minimize the damage that would have been done. Most aren't so fortunate. In the 80's there was a scam that went by the name ZZZZ Best. It was a stock pump scam that managed to persist for quite awhile untill it was exposed by the then editor of Barons Alan Abelson.
There are also the clasic examples in the legal arena. Lawyers seem to be very fond of drumming up cases based on bad reportage. Examples include 20/20 rigging trucks to explode to prove mismanufacture, 60 minutes reporting volvo;s have an unexplained sudden acceleration. The perpetuation of junk science seems particularly popular witness the near miss that the cell phone companies took over brain tumors, or that cook thats continuing suing video game companies over violent behavior in children.
Its not that the democratic process that requires good reporting its that of governmental systems it makes unbiased reporting possible. It needs to go much further. We all lose when the news is manipulated.
But everyone has a different "reality". The guy who lives in a ghetto probably sees very differnt things than the guy in suburbia with the gated communities. But in reality, nothing is differnt than perception. I think the problem is the people in the gated communities have such blinders on they don't understand the rest of the world. They are like the monday morning quaterback who says "if only they would get a job.... blah blah blah". Then they realize the person is working overtime and they say "if only they would get a better job blah blah blah". A good journalist shows it how it really is, without any value statements.
But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined
I would agree with that statement. Ever since new stations hire people like Fox does, their reputation goes into the toilet. For example, people like Orielly are nothing but paparazzi in disguise. Didn't he work for inside edition or some equally worthless tabloid? And now he is a news reporter? Wouldn't that be about the same if Jerry Springer decided to anchor the news?
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
To the extent that jounalism provides useful and accurage information, it's helpful. If it provides a way for leaders to share their considered opinions about matters of state, even better. When it's a tool of the government, then of course it sucks. In the long run I think that bad journalism is worse for democracies than good journalism is good...
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
If you really want to understand free will within yourself and be convinced of both its reality and lack of one, I would recommend you study buddhism, taoism, or even just plain meditating for silence of mind.
The only real reason anybody believes in anything at all, is because of their personal experiences. Either experience being taught it was true, or witnessing something which tends o indicate something is true. I mean, you can take this to a multitude of levels. The truth of it is, there are many ways to look at things, including free will. It's one of those things you have to make up your own damn mind about.
And I ask again. Are you talking about the very pinpoint in time?
I can choose to stop thinking about weither or not I have a choice and go back to doing work.... so how is that not a choice.
I can think about wether or not I want to reply again. I chose to. so I have. So how is choice an illusion? post reply or not post reply? thats the choice I made. I actually thought about wether or not to reply and decided to. But somehow you think I had no "choice" in it? so what was it then. The decision was predefined somehow?
So if I made the choice not to make another reply it's somehow not a choice I made? what is it then?
People talk about free will a lot and how it feels like they can make their own decisions and how can that be with what we know about physics. I think the first premise is wrong. It doesn't feel like we can make our own decisions. Its easy to tell this, just try to think of what it feels like to make a choice. You don't know do you? You can't even figure out when the choice is being made. After it happens you think you made a choice but at the time its just what you did. This is much closer to reality then the myth that we feel like we can make choices.
The points made by the parent, while offtopic, are still both interesting and fairly valid. While I do believe that a person has free will to a point, I think that the majority of actions a person takes are dictated by forces outside of their control and thus the person is not really free to choose one way or another.
We have the illusion of freedom, I sit here and say to myself, if i wanted to, I could get up and murder my roommate while he is sleeping. But do I really have that option? Besides what the law mandates, as a person, the experiences and the values I have been raised with take that option in reality out of my range of choices. If I were to attempt to murder my roommate, I would find myself (as most of the readers on slashdot would) unable to do so.
The same holds true with getting up and flashing an entire stadium of people your twig and berries. You may sit there and think to yourself "Yeah, i don't do that because I choose not to." But in reality, do you really have that choice? All of our choices are a product of who we are as a person. As that is a result of both the enviorment in which we were raised and genetics, neither of which we really had a choice in. While one could argue that it results in a limited version fo free will, its still not even that because the full range of choices which would be availale in any given situation are not an option for you.
Our choices are driven by our upbringing and after that what we do is very much a cause and effect situation. You may sit there after reading this and say to myself "He's full of shit, watch, I'll do this and it'll be random" But remember, it will be neither random, nor your choice because you are doing this merely in reaction to what you have read and your values have instilled in you the desire to protect your freedom of will.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
For those with seconds to digest the point.
Journalists in the US aren't murdered, they have it too easy, and as a result, they're soft - soft on the truth - and letting the government tell them what they can and cannot know.
In other countries people are dying for it - but getting to the truth.
Corporate "homeland Security State" is the threat. Corporate interests can and do manipulate news. They have before (long example re:pesticide v monsanto).
So buck up - get the real story - the one that would get you killed if you were in Sri Lanka and skip the gossip.
- I think that about does it.
AIK
If journalists choose to cover unimportant issues such as Howard Deans debacle, Zel Millers flaming, Bill Clintons sex scandal etc, then people aren't going to be well informed, hence they won't make smart decisions. People vote based on what the media tells them. What else do people have to go on ?(except inherited family/geographic leanings and here-say from other people)
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Look in the upper left corner. Slashdot: Politics for Nerds. Your vote matters.
And what is today's Slashdot poll? What color is your stapler?
Your vote matters!
We may have high quality journalism by one side's interpretation of it, but the massive obvious bias of the Liberal media shows that there are more important things to worry about.
Singers:
shut up and sing!
Journalists:
Shut up and just REPORT the damn news!
We IMPLORE you!
FYI:
Bill Moyers is not a journalist, he is a political activist.
That was a close one; I almost had to read the article.
If Moyers really believes what he writes, then shouldn't he be calling for Dan Rather's head on a platter? It seems to me that trying to influence a presidential election with forged documents is not exactly quality journalism.
Honestly, I'm not trolling or flamebaiting, just saying that Moyers isn't really Mr. Objectivity when it comes to journalism and politics. I found his laudatory reference to I.F. Stone a bit much, considering that we now know Stone was in the pay of the KGB. And Moyers, for those of you who don't know, produced LBJ's infamous "Daisy" TV ad of 1964, certainly a landmark of American political campaigning, but hardly a positive one.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Manik Saha was killed in Bangladesh.
Indian Media has repeatedly showed a propensity for tameness. A prominent recent counterexample is the sensationalist tehelka who had to reinvent themselves after a brutual clampdown by the NDA government, in reaction to a defense exposé. More on the tehelka controversy by a prominent Indian journalist, Vir Sanghvi.
This was the govt. led by a prominent leader who complained about the press' complaisance during the 1975-77 emergency of Indira Gandhi - the immortal remark - "When they were asked to bend, they crawled!" So true of the press in relation even to the NDA govt.
Hello! Are Journalism and Politics inextricably mixed? Why don't you ask the obviously analogous question: Are senses and perception inextricably mixed? You need the whole article title to even say anything intelligent on the subject.
As for the quality of journalism, I'm not so sure. The question becomes, "Are people more likely to make a good desicion if they have access to better facts." I don't think I've ever seen anything that would prove that. People have access to some pretty damn good facts, and rarely if ever bother to avail themselves of them. On the contrary, people go out of their way to find facts that back up their preconceived notions. I even do it myself on occassion.
What would really happen is what's happening now: political candidates are judged minutely on everything they've ever done in their whole lives. I don't like Bush, but does it really matter that he did coke, skipped out on the national guard, or had a DUI? Does it make that much of a difference? But it's a much larger issue than his foreign policy blunders and blatant cronyism.
No, it's all reduced to soundbites, and all the issues are reduced to shady poll numbers and the pundits dissect every tiny piece of information into meaningless atoms, before producing unfounded tripe to throw at both sides. We're obsessed with things that could not matter less, and the things that people SHOULD be caring about, no one even TALKS about. What's Kerry's voting record REALLY like? How many times has Bush vetoed things that are popular to the American people? Who knows? You'd have to read fringe papers and the goddamn Congressional Report to figure these things out.
So yea, I think we need "better" journalism, but it's not the same "better" that everyone thinks of. It's not better scandal mongering, or even more psychotically in-depth coverage of shit that doesn't MATTER in people's personal lives, but instead real coverage of the issues, and real coverage of what the candidates have actually DONE in office (we're not talking interns here)!
The complete lack of substance in the political debate is utterly fed by the media. They need to stop playing the game, and stop pandering to the lowest common denominator and start covering shit with substance. I don't see it ever happening, but that's what needs to happen.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of what journalism could be doing. Being a voice of reason, and trying to stick unemotionally to the facts even when no one wants to hear them. There are a lot of people I'd like to be able to sit down and argue solid facts with for a day or so.
Television journalism makes me sick; I'm not sure whether they're the "Guy who wants to go to the Ballgame" or "The Sales Representative." I can't really see them as one of the other 12.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The journalists that go into war zones will get left in the cold if they don't say the right things. This makes them part of the political system. In theory, the journalists are independent observers, but they are not. No wonder the Iraqi forces etc treat them as "enemy".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Odd that Moyers chose to complain of "raging idealogies" in his little screed. He should have turned his gaze inwards, I think.
Which is exactly why no politician will vote to overturn the DMCA. It is why the DMCA passed by unanimous voice vote. It is why the Copyright Term Extension Act (retroactively added 20 years to the length of copyrights) passed by voice vote a couple weeks before the election. And it is why the INDUCE act will almost certainly pass as well.
The media act as a set of filters that propagate a particular set of ideas to the citizens. This set of ideas is just happens to be about the same as what the rich and the powerful believe and think. More about this here
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Just a little commont on some history -- Thomas Paine was severely criticized because his writing style was all venom - he was the ultimate muckraker. He was great at tearing things down (deprecating the monarchy and royalty), but his invectives were ineffective at 'building up' the idea of democracy, and his contemporaries were well aware of this (there's a famous quote about him that elludes me at the moment).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I urge you to read documents that have now been released relating to Nicaragua (US displaced popular govt), Iran (US displaced democratic govt), Indonesia (US assisted displacement of democratic govt, replaced with tyrant who, by own admission, quickly killed over 500K people), Laos, Cambodia... The list goes on.
None of this is reported. WHY!
Noam Chomsky provides some good insight into this, ideas that are parallel, but deeper, that this article.
Isn't that an obvious truth? For democracy to work, people have to be informed. They get their information mainly from the mass media. Hence, without quality journalism no quality democracy.
The sad state of journalism in America might well be the principal reason for the sad state of American democracy.
Another reason is that people aren't taught the necessary critical-thinking skills. How can you learn critical thinking in an educational system that revolves around standardized tests?
You are absolutely correct. However I would say that 'freedom of choice' is the illusion.
These quotes pretty much sums up who runs the media nowadays. Make people believe they actually have a choice.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone
of any significance in the major media."
- William Colby, former director of the CIA
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity
and obedience of the media"
- Noam Chomsky
"Truth is the greatest of all national possessions.
A state, a people, a system which suppresses the truth
or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse."
- Kurt Eisner
"Whoever controls the media--the images--controls the culture."
- Allen Ginsberg
"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things
the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't.
I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take
legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press
can decide whether to print what it knows."
- Katherine Graham, late owner of the Washington Post,
in a speech to CIA recruits in 1988.
Every American should have to read Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_ . You can find excerpts of it here and here
Much of his work and speeches can be found here
When I finally went right to the source, and actuully read chomsky , it helped me make sense of what I had seen and read on the news after 9-11 and during the run-up to the Iraq war.
Edward Herman also has a lot of excellent and insightful material on the media and politics.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
For years we have top quality journalism in Soviet Union: Izvestia and Pravda. See how for years Russian people flock to polls to vote 99% to return Communist Party to the helm of our glorious mother Russia. Is proof: your journalists are corrupt, scandal-seeking, sensationalists, traitors to the revolutionary ideals of your forefathers and sow the discontent that leads to many political parties expending precious resources of the working people for election campaigns. With better journalists you then would finally reject this chaos acheive true unity and Socialist peace under the banner of a one-party rule of the People.
Long live Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly! True champions of the people and glorious vanguards of the unified socialist rule that is the inevitable destiny of every industrialised country!
It is a simple concept. Whatever issues that Journalist feel strongly about or they think that other people will feel strongly about will be covered while other issues that although may be more important but doesn't cause ones blood to boil will not be covered. American Journalism is a commercial activity and covering information that will make the most money will be showed. Unfortunately if the Journalism is truly controlled by the government then you get the issue of the government only telling the people what the government wants the people to hear. Truth is somewhere in the middle of both types of journalism, the problem with journalism and government is that they are both controlled by people, and there people who are concerned with keeping their reputation, their jobs, and their lifestyle.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I totally agree. In my estimation there are no 'professional' journalists in the mass market. [footnote 1]
The 'mainstream' news media is driven by sensationalism and corporate greed. Any one who has half a brain and is willing to use it, need only experience a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh or Heraldo Rivera and their like to know that the media have been teetering on the precipice for a long time.
Lets face it. We live in an Orwellian time. What you see on TV may be true... and it might not be true. Remember when Gore made the statement that he played a role in the creation of the InterNet... and the media jumped on it, 'quoting' him as saying 'I created the Internet'.
That's called 'spin'. Republicans do it. Democrats do it. Naders and Perots do it.
Sigh... all this spin has my head spinning... I think I will cast a write in vote for Jesus Christ come November... oh wait, I can't! This ^&*(% Diebold machine keeps changing it to Ralph Nader! Arghhh!
[Footnote 1} Actually, there are MANY serious, professional journalists with integrity... but you will never hear from them because their reports will be edited and twisted to fit the corporate line.
Troll?
Dan Rather(of CBS news once the most respected electronic journalism outlet Home of Edward R Murrow) participating in partisan political fraud as an example of the Death of Professional Journalism is Troll?
Mods on Crack
in the us, in the era of newt gingrich, a day wouldn't pass without the right screaming about how the media had a liberal bias.
now, in the '00s, in the days of fox news broadcasting, it's the left screaming about the media covering things up and placating the masses and a right wing bias in things.
all i know is, the pendulum swings left, the pendulum swings right, and complaining about the media seems to just be a scape goat for the right or the left, depending upon the era.
the truth i think is this: the media is the media is the media. it does not exist in a vacuum, it is a reflectin of what it's audience wants to hear, for better or for worse, way more than it is under the control of some left or right wing back room conspiracy.
it scares the left that what the right says might actually find resonance in the general public. just like it scares the right that what the left says might find resonance as well. so what the right or left does when the pendulum swings against them is blame the media, because it's easier for the right or the left to think the media is some sort of negative influence than it is for them to believe that what the other side says might actually be compelling.
sorry, but complaing about the bias of the media is like complaining about violence in movies. the movies are violent becasue people pay to see that, that's all. hollywood is not some sort of shill for satan or some such bs, out to seduce people. people are already interested in seeing what they want to see, and hollywood simply wants to make money. so they make what is appealing. the audience is the issue, not hollywood.
same with news media. don't like the media or see a bias in it? don't look at the media, look at the audience. if people don't like what they see, they don't tune in. your problem is with the gneeral public if you don't like what you see in mass media, not mass media.
focus on the issues, don't attack the conduit for information.
in other words, blaming the media is like shooting the messenger: you don't like what you hear, but it's not the guy who's telling you things that is to blame, it's a deeper problem you should be looking at: the general public. they swing right and left. so focus on the issues and sway them thataways: directly. don't attack the media, that's a waste of your time and resources if you are actually interested in influencing people. just go and make your case to them directly.
this lesson applies to the right in the 1990s, and it applies to the left in the 2000s.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Coupled with that is the new focus on controlling interaction with the media and the neocon culture of retaliation. If the White House doesn't like what you write, you might find your access restricted, or your CIA agent wife named in the right wing media (hey, there's a switch). Expect payback. And if that level of pressure is applied to media companies and the same retalitory practices on the macro level, the overall chilling effect could be huge. Start peppering Bush with tough questions and you might not only be excluded from inside acess but might be out of a job or reporting on the rug weavers of western Pakistan.
And before some neocon drone steps up and tries to justify their behavior by saying the Democrats did the same thing when they were in power, the previous administrations were not nearly as draconian about trying to control access and what the media reported as this bunch. Stop justifying the horrendous tactics and amoral behavior of this administration by pointing back to the excesses of other political entities. This one claims the religious and moral high ground, then employs the tactics of evil and acts despicably.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
...but I find it ironic that he uses examples where the "evil government" (tm) represses journalist yet fails to mention a very recent incident revealing bias in jounalism regarding Mr. Rather and certain memoes that not even the slavering left will concede are real anymore.
It's not always about the repression of journalists. What about the control the fourth estate bears over our public discourse?
-Styopa
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=10100 12
Politics and EVERYTHING humans do are inextricably joined. Everything that matters to someone, who exists in a group of two or more people, has some political meaning..
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
That should be Dateline NBC for the trucks and Audi, not Volvo for the cars. A much more recent and politically linked example is the current Rathergate with the forged documents and a steadfast refusal by Rather and company to admit that they are wrong.
In the Rather case, he has been personally invested in the Texas Democratic Party for several years. Because of his politics, he blatantly manufactured news with a few of his daughter's cronies. In this case it is the journalistic equivalent of throwing a previously shot cat into Shroedinger's box, and then accusing Shroedinger of being cruel to animals.
The real world impact that was hoped for in this case vanished when the sham was unraveled. First the forged documents and the strings of experts. Then the star interview of Barnes was found to be both not in power at the time, and discredited by his own prior statements and his own daughter. The most recent national polls are probably reflecting a backlash to the "dirty tricks" aspect of this little episode, more than Bush or Kerry's own campaigning. This kind of journalism in action is fair to neither Kerry or Bush, and shouldn't be practiced by any of the press.
Now CBS is still feeling the pain and can't escape from it until they perform a major mea culpa or have a major purge of their perceived bias (Mr. Rather). In this case they lost right leaning viewers because of perceived left slant, and principled left leaning viewers because of tainted credibility. Now their ratings rely on rubberneckers waiting to see what the next act is in this train-wreck. Witness the strings of press releases announcing that they will be announcing something. Pathetic.
-- Len
In the UK the news media is vastly different to yours. Reading the coverage on CNN and other US news sources, it's hard to see any real analysis of issues that matter. Week in, week out, all I've seen is pointless tripe about various candidates' vietnam war records, and what the dems and republicans are saying about each other. What about questioning one particular candidate's very recent war record? What about questioning whether the US (and the world) really is a safer place after Bush attacked a foreign country without justification in a war which most (including the UN) say is illegal. How Bush came out of this relatively unscathed is beyond me. The UK democratic system is far from perfect, but the media do a pretty good job of getting to the issues. As a result, Blair is suffering at the polls. For a country with probably the most liberal libel laws in the world, your media do a poor job of questioning the government on anything.
Since FOX news started up, actual journalism died for good. Now, it's all pundits proclaiming the sweet and marvelous victory of America by proclaiming George aWol Bush the president of the united states.
What I found interesting is that this speech was given by one of the most blatent liberal journalists there is, who has a long history of using his power as a "journalist" and his access to the media to further his leftest ideas
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
.
The United States doesn't have an independent state-funded broadcaster like the BBC or the ABC. Consequently, journalism, journalists and what you see on the TV at 6pm (and 7.30pm when the current affairs shows air outside of the US) is vastly different to Britain or Australia.
It's a big difference! But one that is difficult to explain to Americans.
Y9ou guys are worried about the patriot act/fox news, and here we have a case of a major news outlet faking a story to get another guy elected.
Nobody here in the U.S gets killed because they exposed some powerfully rich pecadillos. Instead they get character assinated and overwhelmed with high priced lawyers. This of course is more controversy and the news media plays both sides and fuels the story so that we can get our dose of Shadenfrauden.
When I think of the U.S news media and politics, I distinctly remember two incidences that sum it up.
Number one, when Clinton was first running for office, he came in 4th in some primary, and I was writing him off as an also ran. The very next primary, some 2 weeks later, Clinton came in 3rd and was annointed the "Comeback Kid" with all the news media worshipping him.
Number two, when Clinton got caught with his cigar in the cookie jar -- I mean caught dead to rights complete with smoking cigar -- the news media was all agog and in awe of his "genius" in the syntax of his denials. Even admitting that on the surface they appeared to be lies, but where actualy very subtle and genius denials that technicaly were correct. Culminating in "Depends upon what the meaning of is is".
These point to one of the big shortcommings in U.S news today. They are Lazy. Any well funded and controversial organization can simply make up the news and make up the story and the networks buy it up wholesale and then dress it up and retail it to us.
I had heard something extremely similar from Moyers last week on some dude's homepage. Found it again because it really blew me away. This was his keynote speech at the Media reform conference and is a bit more left-wing (warning Faux News viewers - your heads may explode).
Part 1
Part 2
if people don't like what they see, they turn off the tv, they don't buy the paper.
if the right controls the media through billion dollar corporations, then they can saturate the airwaves with their message. but if people hunger for another pov that jives with what they are thinking, boy oh boy, you would see the rise of small scale left-leaning publications like crazy.
people are not chained to their chairs in front of their televisions, eyes peeled open a la clock work orange. people are smart, not dumb. don't think of them as sheep or treat them like sheep.
the truth is simply that fox news is successful because it's right wing message actually finds appeal and resonance in people. yeah that's scary. but apparently it scares you to the point of inaction, so fox news defeats you through your own ineffectual rationalizations as well as influences them. a nice double whammy, with your help.
so you go ahead and keep blaming rupert murdoch for the problems in the world.
but when you actually want to influence people about your pov, then get ot talking to them. if you just want to placate your conscience and convince yourself why there is no need to fight for what you believe in, then you keep with your back room conspiracy bs.
i don't know about you, but people are not the dumb automatons and sheep you make them out to be, and talking to them like zombies only turns them off even further to what you think, and those of us like me who are there actually out there talking to them, are hurt by your efforts at scapegoating, even though we're essentially on the same side.
my positive outreach and activism beats your cynical laziness any day, in spades.
you use your rationality to make up excuses to do nothing and blame some bogey man. i wish you would use your rationality to convince yourself to action instead, as action always trumps inaction. action is the only thing that ever made any difference in this world.
cynicism and paranoid conspiracy theory never did.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And to quote a Boston Globe reporter on journalistic honesty is almost as funny. Next on to Rather and CBS, the Boston Globe was the most aggressive at defending those forged memos with bogus claims they could have been churned out on an early 70s typewriter.
The day after this now discredited CBS expose, Google news listed over 1000 stories in papers around the world. In none that I read did the reporter make even a cursory examination of those memos. They simply repeated CBS's doctored tale like parrots.
Into the breach stepped a handful of blogs, notably Powerline and Little Green Footballs. In less than a day and using the expertise of their readers much like open source and Groklaw, they demonstrated that the memos were clumsy forgeries done with a recent version of Microsoft Word. Five years ago, perhaps even two years ago, that would have been impossible.
It was easily the biggest Internet story of the year. A handful of blogs take on a powerful TV network, charge it with using forged documents, and win. It demonstrates perfectly the democratic, leveling influence of the Internet.
But those depending on Slashdot for their window on the world would have heard almost nothing about this amazing development. A story that should have been shouted from Slashdot's main page and updated several times a day, was buried on the politics page.
The select few that determine what stories Slashdot displays are free to vote for whoever they want in the November election. But they're not free to caption their pages with "Politics for Nerds. Your vote matters" and expect us to trust them. If they want to champion Kerry by burying contrary stories, they should change that slogan to "Partisan Politics for Nerds. Vote for Kerry."
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
... in a book called Test Card F, author unknown. His/her main beef was television, but you can see the same points about the toxicity of joint government/corporate dominance of information culture.
The reason I don't like Fox News and other propaganda is because they distort the facts, often outright lie, and don't give equal coverage to viewpoints they disagree with. And of course they have a collective personality that makes you want to drown them all in a sack.
-- thinkyhead software and media
- Journalist
Several thousand words to explain what is wrong with our government and why the current administration scares the heck out of me.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Why do established journalists always wait until they retire to say this? Does that mean we should think he has more of a backbone that those that ignore the problem now?
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Actually, the GOP issues with the healthcare task force centered around public policy being determined by an unelected official, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
When did we get to vote on Ken Lay and Lee Raymond?
Oh, that's right, we didn't. They're unelected officials who were advising the Bush administration on public energy policy. It's exactly the same thing that got the Clintons into hot water with congressional republicans.
American journalism went down the toilet.
Otherwise, things like Fox News couldnt exist.
Journalism and media clearly impacts freedom and democracy. The vast majority of the population relies on the media for their information. You can easily manipulate the population by simply messing with the information. Good media will keey an eye on these things. Unfortunately, there has never been any good journalism. Journalism generally degenerates into nationalism during tough times.
Propaganda is the most powerful tool to control adult humans. You can easily get someone to kill another by using propaganda--try doing that with some other means!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
The "left wing media" meme has been trotted out for the past decade and a half by the right wing as a pre-emptive measure to embed that idea in the mainstream memosphere. Currently they are pushing the meme of "feminization of culture" in order to push people towards a more rigid and kneejerk form of "decisive, masculine" thinking and get them behind whoever acts toughest.
Everything the right-wing pushes out these days is designed to undermine our liberal democracy and to keep power entrenched and centralized under the corporate machine.
Centralized corporate power has a name: Fascism.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Counterexample: slashdot is very democratic.
/. is more like a constitutional monarchy. There are rules that govern who can do what, and for the most part it's not a repressive regime. However an unelected leader still wields near-absolute power.
No it's not. Users may submit stories, but final authority lies in an unelected exectutive that decides whether or not they go on the front page. (and how many times they go on the front page) Crapflooders, trolls, and people who abuse moderation can be banned or denied mod points by the executive without any input from the people (like a jury trial).
I think
0 1 - just my two bits
I entirely agree.
Try the Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Service" and see how many hits you get then.
I apologize for the Bangladesh/India mixup.
I tried submitting a couple of times, profuse linkage and tame text got it past the PTB.
I found the quick, long, highly rated posts curious.
I found the left/right polarization predictable.
I'm interested in why people ignore the Bush As False Rapturist phenomena mentioned in the speech, it is the most dangerous elephant in the room.
Liberal has only recently become an insult, as the connotation of that word has been formed by the populace's reaction to the antics of those who are so labeled. If so many of those who call themselves or are called liberals weren't so venomous and vitriolic, then it probably wouldn't be seen as an insult.
Contrary to your beliefs, both recent and long-running studies have shown that ~80% of journalists see themselves as liberal or left leaning, while only ~10% identify themselves as right leaning or conservative. Of course the boards of those companies that you mention may be more conservative than their employees, but those who wield the pen overwhelmingly lean left. Unfortunately, most journalists tend not to cleanse themselves or their work of their own biases.
I used to brand myself a liberal, and wore the title proudly with all of the positive values that one reads in a dictionary definition. Unfortunately I found myself a classical liberal, rather than modern liberal. Most of the people I found that identified themselves liberals had personalities and convictions that I found incompatible with my own, and quite incompatible with the definition of a classic liberal.
Eventually, I came to view the label of liberal by the common negative connotation. The most striking thing I noticed is that the one thing that lead me originally to believe that I was a liberal was the one thing that I could never find in all of my modern liberal associates; I wasn't a bigot, and I believed in freedom and equality.
If the modern liberals would return to the original definition and relax their poisonous rhetoric, then maybe it wouldn't be an insult anymore.
-- Len
no argument with me here, that was well said
However, one has to have a good idea of what one thinks needs to be done before a cohesive plan of action can be devised.
the only thing is, i think some people spend their entire lives looking for a perfect action plan about a problem where no such perfect action plan exists.
in other words, on some problems in life, all possible choices are risky and carry some chance of utter failure. yet, irregardless, action is still prudent, necessary, and inescapable. so if you hold the bar to high on the action plan you will choose when it presents itself, you will wind up never acting and always waiting.
some people then become locked in this ivory tower of inaction because of idealistic standards.
and i'm not accusing you of this, i'm just riffing on your observations.
we are both familiar with the concept that action without thought is dangerous and ultimately self-defeating.
my assertion is that thought without action is equal to that in self-defeat and danger.
and i see just as many people frozen in idealistic inaction about nasty problems in this world as those who are ready to shoot first ask questions later.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you've also neatly described how autocratic societies like china and iran function, btw.
and even in places where an absolute pov is held in rigid control, underground sources of info stil hold influence and trust and activists in those spheres are held in awe.
just pointing that out, riffing on your pov.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He's never been able to extract his politics from his reporting throughout his career. Then again, this is the man who invented modern political mudslinging while working for Lyndon Johnson.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
again, i think the media is just a reflection of its market- and i think that observation holds sway above all other observations that can be said about media. media is just a pipe, a conduit for thought, it doesn't create it or influence it or sway it itself. people buy what they want to hear. they are not immobilizaed and forced to listen to media they don't want to. they actively gravitate towards that which they want to hear. so when people blame media for this that or the other pov, they are missing the real point entirely: what the general public actually thinks, and are just scapegoating. don't be lazy, i say to them: stick with the subject matter, stop wasting your time blaming the media for this or that.
so i'm not thinking of your observations in terms of their commentary on media itself, but i'm thinking of your observations as they pertain to the general public.
in which case, i think your observations actually have interesting implications about human psychology.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First, even Bill Moyers admits that there are biases, but that reporting must be aimed towards finding truths even if they happen to be uncomfortable or happen to conflict with a certain ammendment. The search for truth is one of the most important tenants of a democracy, so is the extension of this knowledge to the voting public. Journalists naturally are liberal, in fact I would argue that they should inherently exist to be liberal in so as to balance the forces of conservatism that also naturally form in government. Afterall, conservatism's inherent tendancy is to keep the situation stable to converse that current power. Liberal journalists are there to kick the legs out of the system when it needs it in order to retain a great balance of power. When the government moves to the left, the press can move to the right, or vice versa, except that never happens. Social and fiscal convertives are interested in the current situation only, even if that runs against the greater good. In the instance of slavery, the conservative viewpoint was the retain the econonimc model no matter how detrimental it might be, liberalism then was about revolution or change. Lincoln, while a Republican, was liberal in his acceptance that protecting the Union ultimately meant the death of this economic model. The RIAA and the MPAA, even Microsoft, are examples of conservative models protecting their interests against newly forming liberal models. Your acceptance of liberal=communism, or anti-gun nut, just shows how shallowly your thought process goes.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
Sadly, I agree. I know a LOT of people who consider Clinton to be an utter, complete, flaming liberal, which is laughable to anyone who actually looks at his record. I've also heard people refer to Bush as a moderate, which is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Still, the rest of the world isn't a whole hell of a lot better. Think we're conservative? Check the Middle East bub. At least our religious whackos haven't taken over yet.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This is the situation whether we're talking about WMD's the Iran Hostage 'crisis' (my first media beef), health care or whether Kerry's medals are more important than Bush's lies about Iraq.
When the press is more interested in Janet Jackson's nipples than world affairs and local politics, that's rather like me watching the butt of the girl that just passed me and walking into a light pole (or traffic).
It's the same thing for intelligence services... It's the reason why the US Military was so interested in satellite-killer technology; stealth aircraft and GPS selective-service. It's also why, when they went into Iraq in 1991 radar installations were pretty much the first things to be taken out followed by missile sites and air bases.... If the enemy can't see you, they can't defend against you.
Similarly: When Bush and Blair got so pedantic about wanting 'proof' of WMD's that their respective intelligence services started ignoring their own rules of intelligence triage, they put their own countries into a delusional state and left the rest of the world seeing double.
It's why The US put so much money into VOA during the cold war and why propaganda is considered a tool of war. The truth is nowhere as important as what you can get your enemy to believe.
As our media sources get distracted by the hunt for money, our societal eyesight gets fuzzy. If you want a healthy society, you need a healthy and independent media. A democracy making decisions based on bad media is like a blind man driving in traffic: If traffic is light or you're driving a tank, you'll be OK until you find a cliff. I think that the US has been like this... The country is essentially a tank. The countries that have gotten run over so far have been felt like bumps. Iraq may be the first sign that there's a cliff up ahead, or a deep lake.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
You might as well be using the Bible Code to prove The Bible's authenticity.
Having MORE articles regarding the Swift Boat Vets for Truth doesn't mean the press looked into their records. Having LESS articles that match your keywords doesn't mean the Bush didn't go after Bush any less. (How about Bush DUI, Bush AWOL, Bush executions, Bush James Brady?) For all you know those articles could be negative towards the Swift-Boat Vets for Truth proclaiming them as political attacks controlled by Karl Rove or out and out lies.
If you think Truth = Fox News then yes, actually, I'm right and everyone who thinks Fox News is 100% true is completely wrong. Stupid too. Anyone who thinks any one news channel or outlet is 100% correct is a fool.
When you sandwich a "Talk Show Host" between two news programs on a 24 hour news channel, and he spends his entire show talking about the news, you can't claim that he doesn't count, though many Fox people do, in an attempt to pretend that they aren't utterly biased.
I have a similar contempt for liberal pundits (Michael Moore leaps to mind) and if Moore was on a news channel with Franken and Mahr and some feckless moderate passed off as "conservative" I'd hold that channel in the same sort of towering contempt I have for Fox News. As there doesn't seem to be such a station yet, I get to focus on Fox. Unfair, and Unbalanced. I wouldn't let my dog watch that station.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Bush National Guard Vietnam -- 9870 articles
Bush National Guard Service -- 12400 articles
Swift Boat Vets Truth Kerry Vietnam -- 1350 articles
Swift Boat Vets Truth Kerry Service -- 881 articles
Well not so much the article, as the posts... Journalism is about information, without information, delivered timely, and to The People democracy becomes the oligarchy of the popular(this isn't a direct quote, but matches early greek thinkers like Socrates). That the readers of the different journals ceased to remind journals of what kind of information they demand doesn't make it less true. What sells the most right now(in western media, I won't claim I know what sells elsewhere) isn't information that the journalists acquire at personal/political risk to themselves, so why blame them for not risking their necks for something less people will read? Just take your plebeian pablum like the rest of us.
Big Media hates people like Matt Drudge and the "bloggers in their pajamas". Granted, they don't have the investigative resources that the big news organizations have, but they have the power to raise questions about the direction of the news.
I have to disagree on that assessment. On the blog run by conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, he calls bloggers Open Source reporting, where information is shared openly and reviewed by other people on a very large scale to ensure accuracy, just like Linux with its publicly-reviewable source code of the operating system and its components.
Journalism and the "truth" are all a matter of perspective. Moyers has been one of the best "truth tellers" of the last couple of decades.o om=yes #zoom
As for the perspective issue.. to wit:
http://www.cafepress.com/ndnpress.5358989?z
I've never considered Fox News to actually be news, any more than I get my news from the Daily Show.
I think it is easy enough to see the difference between Fox News and any other major news outlet, just by the pundits they employ. No other news outlet has so many pundits who are unabashedly conservative. No other news outlet has as many LIBERAL pundits as Fox has conservative ones.
Several former Fox insiders have resigned, and written books outlining blatant bias being openly spun in the staff meetings. I don't think it's ever really been in question that they have a bias. Many people consider all other news to be biased, but if you think that all other news is biased....Well, there's not much I can say to that. I don't trust the regular news all that much, but I've never found it to be as biased as Fox.
As for the two examples you mentioned, I think that's a classic example. Systematic prisoner abuse in violation of international treaties that used to protect our soldiers being instigated by civillian contractors and nodded at to the very highest levels? Hard to see how you can blow that out of proportion. It goes completely counter to our mission in Iraq, and our image of ourselves as liberators. Verses a guy getting beheaded, which played luridly on Fox for the same number of days that a prominent Senator getting beheaded would have netted on a "biased" channel.
You really don't see an agenda there? One is a stain on our national honor...Fox doesn't really care about that. Only people who would care are probably French, right? One is the televised execution of a civillian, which happened to be available on seriously gory video. That THAT got tremendous airplay? Why? Sure it's interesting but a lot of interesting things seem not to make the news on either side, and I doubt Fox ever covered the weirder bits. It just wasn't that big a story, if you weren't glorying in the lurid video.
I think you should reconsider your news source. Sure, if you like it, watch it. But don't believe everything they tell you.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I did say yet...
Ugly scene. What's wrong with us?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Republican or democrat, the bias is against the outsiders. It's against anyone who hasn't been part of the established structure of things.
Take skull and bones, I don't think that there is a conspiracy to place skullsmen into the white house or other places of power; it's just that when you're part of that establishment you're far more likely to belong to that particular frat or club or whatever it is. It's all about being in the club regardless of which side of the aisle you vote on. If you want to talk about political bias, in the last presidential election both major candidate came from power families, both were second generation politicians, both were insanely "connected." Look at the Bush's and Kennedy's, how many members of each of those family has held some office? the Kennedy's span both parties if you count Maria and Arnold. My local congressman, Mark Udall is, if I'm not mistaken, a 3rd generation politican, he's definitely a 2nd generation congressman.
If this is supposed to be a government of the people, it looks to me like you need to either be a second generation or better politican or a very rich person to be a presidential contender, or both. Clinton was kind of an outsider and the democrats will never let that happen again; look at Dean, not just did they push him out but they tried to label him as crazy. Who was the last outsider? Jackson? It goes on both sides, Pat Buchannan is a "whacko" and yet somehow he's lucid enough to be a regular on CNN and several other major political shows; I don't get that, is the guy the nazi that many people paint him as or is that media spin because he's not a card carrying member of the establishment? I mean he's knifed by his own people in addition to parts of the media but somehow he's sane enough to talk politics on a major network and he's actually kind of good at it, I don't always agree with him but he's articulate and tries to justify his opinions and I never would have thought that 10 years ago. Just like Nader, Nader has changed our world, I don't know if I've ever heard of him self-promoting and pundits suggest that he's running because of his ego!? He's an outsider, clear and simple, therefore he has no chance.
Bias? yes but it's not left or right, it's more inside or outside the clique..
Since that time Moyers has demonstrated, through his PBS work specifically, a desire to see more clearly and chart more honestly the nature and exercise of American power. And he has come to understand, better than he did as a willing flunkie in his youth, what costs are paid when our journalism is left in the care of corporations.
He laments the backlash in our present reactionary period. "Journalists who try to tell these (critical) stories, connect these dots, and examine these links are demeaned, disparaged, and dismissed," he writes. True, however it's hardly a new phenomenon. Things have not simply gone sour since 9/11 or since Rupert Murdoch's ascension. Reading corporate US journalism from the 1960s is little different to reading the current product today: both are bland, dependent on elites for their least utterance, concerned foremost with selling a product, careful not to offend, sure to look the other way when their masters might be embarrassed. (The 60s and 70s also saw a burst in critical journalism that sometimes--as in the My Lai massacre, the Pentagon Papers or Watergate--reached the mainstream, but what survives of that vigor is now mainly to be found in the alternative press. Blogging is a hopeful sign, little more.)
Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American life; well, Moyers has had one. He quit the browbeating game and went on to become critical, passionate, and curious about our world. Today the dire shape of the Republic may well be as due to malfeasors in office as to yes-men and yes-women in journalism, but we cannot say that people like Moyers haven't been there to show us how to do it all better.
Who's more interested in free speech and freedom of the press? Liberals.
Who's less into big business? Liberals.
Who's more likely to empathise with the plight of their fellow man? Liberals.
Who's more likely to object to Gov't/coporate control of the media? Liberals.
On the other hand:
Who's more likely to be in favor of censorship?
Conservatives.
Who's more likely to be in favor of ignoring the excess of big business? Conservatives.
Who's more likely to social programs in favor of lower taxes? Conservatives.
Who's most famous media outlet is owned by the largest media monopoly in the world? Conservatives.
Be thankful that reporters are more liberal. Liberal means a lot of things, one of which is a healthy disrespect for authority.
As for venom, and vitriol, are you saying that conservatives are less venemous? Less vitrolic? I consider myself a moderate. I'd be happy if the whackos on both sides keeled over dead.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Are Journalism and Politics Inextricably Joined?"
Don't lessen the importance of what the man was trying to say by substituting your words for his-- "the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined." Perhapse it's just me, but that entire story (or novel) was more than just concern for something as pale as 'politics'. His article tried to go several levels higher than a concern on mere political saber rattling. We're talking about democracy, the will and freedom of the people and their lives, not simply who will be elected in 2004 or the party platform. Nor was his article merely covering the topic of 'politics'. Most of it had to do with the welfare of the people and how the quality of journalism was a direct representative of that.
I may disagree with his 'half-empty' focus on the state of affairs, and even some of his conclusions; But don't dilute his thoughts and exact words with such an inadequate replacement just to fit into an easily noticed Slashdot shoebox topic when he obviously meant so much more.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
My gut instinct is that you are just trolling, but the fact that you replied to yourself twice leads me to believe that you may just be unstable/unhinged.
I'm quite familiar with the scientific method, and have been using it for the last seventeen years. I'm guessing that you just discovered it, and are attempting to misapply it in an effort to appear more intelligent to the Jr. high crowd that sometimes frequents here.
If you haven't noticed, my post was about the subject of the article; journalists and politics. I wasn't looking at the accusations of Rather's piece, because, well there isn't any reason to. Sources and your "evidence" thoroughly and completely discredited mean that there is nothing to see here.
Evidence that is fraudulent or manufactured to fit a theory is not evidence. In this case, the fraud is much more important than what he was trying to prove, because it addresses the objectivity, ethics, and credibility of Mr. Rather. In this particular case, Mr. Rather's ego and personal politics have become the story and have greatly extended the length of time that this event is spending in the public eye.
As I said, this isn't fair to Kerry or to Bush, who both should be focussing on policy debate. Instead, this pathetic attempt to injure the president (possibly to get back for the Swift Boat Vets,) and it's continued mismanagement of damage control has cost Kerry, Rather and CBS, when the same story done with real evidence and proper objectivity may have helped all three.
-- Len
What Moyers said was:
/. article, which asks whether politics and journalism are inextricably linked. It's important to note that politics and democracy are not the same thing... all groups have politics, but not all groups have democracy. Indeed, it seems to me that politics is often the largest single impediment to democracy.
the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined
That's different from the headline of this
First off, great article. Secondly, I for one will miss his show.
I can only hope it will be succeeded by someone who has the guts to take on Big Business and general nonaccountability like he does. He really went after everyone, regardless of political affiliation. I'm not so sure his co-host David Brancaccio can handle things without him.
Unfortunately, PBS is beginning to show nothing but signs of what Bill himself has coined "INFOTAINMENT". Tucker Carlson anyone? Bah..
The press does get controlled by governments. In the US, journalists that don't "play ball" get bumped down. Instead of getting immediate responses they will get put on hold and generally shunted around. This does not make for free press. The journalists that go into war zones will get left in the cold if they don't say the right things. This makes them part of the political system. In theory, the journalists are independent observers, but they are not. No wonder the Iraqi forces etc treat them as "enemy".
http://www.senderberl.com/hthomas.htm
Call me crazy, but I was always under the impression that the news was supposed to be impartial and it was their jobs to report the facts as they are (not steeped in political bullshit as things are today). As it is we've got news outlets in the US these days that are so biased, not to mention blatant about it, that I cannot even look at popular news agencies (Fox, LA times, NY times, Washington times, etc) without disbelief and contempt. Its truly sad that its come to this.
Of course I'm probably just being a cynical centralist.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
A single event can happen and hundreds of people can present it as support for their beliefs based on the narration of the re-telling of the event and what they choose to include and omit from the re-telling.
Have you noticed that most of the stories about the presidential campaign are about exactly that? The CAMPAIGN.
Almost EVERY mass-media story on the election isn't about anything except the ELECTION PROCESS. Dicussion of actual political issues, and the candidates views on said issues, are rarely attempted.
Let's face a few simple facts...
The vast majority of people in this country get their ideas handed to them by the warm glowing box in their living rooms. Yes, I know there're a growing number of younger folks who don't allow that banal appliance, to limit or control the content of their minds or their imaginations, but the polls would at least suggest that >50% of the American public get's their quasi-truth predigested and sanitized for their convenience, through video.
The American media is owned by an ever shrinking handful of multinational conglomerates who would be just as happy if there was only one super-duper-hyper-megacorp that owned and controled every sound, image, thought, and the means by which to transmit, communicate, store, and deliver said IP.
Once in America, there was a plethora of privately owned publications, with different views, opinions, perspectives, and takes on the truth. This didn't seem to alter the fact that as a whole Americans have pretty much done as they bloody well felt like doing and damn the hindmost, but at least you couldn't say you went to hell blind and stupid. Today it's almost impossible to find a fact that hasn't been so thoroughly masticated by people who have one agenda or another to foist upon their readers, that truth has become kind of Orwellian double-speak for propagandist excrement.
The internet has indeed been at some level relief to the nauseating trend of politicizing and comercializing the truth as though it were some informational of comodity. The problem with the internet is that it's the gourmand to finer journalisms gourmet. The internet is an open pipe that mixes (without consideration) the finest delacacies with equal parts raw untreated sewage, and if "Caveat Emptor" is the rule for the open market, it's a bloody sacrament on the internet. That, and as a few have already pointed out, one can justify any point of view with the right filter or Google search. A greater mass doesn't make feces any finer a thing, nor BS any closer to the truth.
This was the whole point of a forth estate. After disasters caused by yellow journalism, people demanded men who they could trust without question. The kind of journalists so committed to truth, justice, and the American way, you could gladly bet your ass they were more dedicated to delivering the goods, then you were dedicated to breathing tomorrow. The last century saw giants, men who you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt had no capacity to lie, who would stand before the nation bare-assed naked if need be, to deliver the unadulterated truth. Edward R. Morrow, Huntley and Brinkley, Walter Kronkite, and a handful of others came into people's home, and you could bet you last dollar, they would tell you precisely how it was, straight up, no spin, no doctoring.
Somewhere between then and now, we went from news to infotainment. Then added the kind of mud sucking pandering to lowest common denominator mouthbreathers that could only be provided by the British then U.S. tabloids (any sense of dignity went flying straigt down the toilet.) Now in the beginning of the third millinium, we have government crossbreeding with what's left of journalism, and their bastard child half politician, half wallstreet marketing spin doctor, has replaced all but the holiest journalistic bastions (can you say PBS.) I can totally understand why Bill Moyers is retiring, hell, I'd be putting on asbestos underware and looking for a good bomb shelter. People, we've let the criminally stupid, and morally corrupt steal our society away from under us.
I don't know if this is to paraphrase Jefferson "A time refresh the tree of liberty with either the blood of patriots and/or tyrants...", but it's getting pretty dang certain that good men of conscience can ill tolerate what's passing for truth and justice these days.
Genda
What the US press needs is Spider Jerusalem.e .html -- for those not 'in the know.'
http://www.transmetropolitan.com/gimm
..depending on what sources you read, for instance CNN/FOX vs BBC/SBS. What I find depresing is that so few stories have links to the actual source for things like speeches, serveys, reports, blah, blah. What needs to be asked of Bush by a political "SOMEBODY" is twofold "Now that Iraq is the main front on the "war on terror" does that mean a few well organized terroists responsible for 9/11 caused the US to occupy Iraq? And, who do you think is responsible for the (percieved) sharp increase in terror attacks worldwide since the Iraq war "ended".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
After all, despite checking both Politics topics boxes on the "exclude these from the front page" preferences and saving my preferences, I'm still getting politics stories on the front page....
It's official. Most of you are morons.
So the quick sucession of Charlie, Frances and Ivan were a message from God to Governer Bush not to fubar the 2004 elections, or perhaps from Mother Nature to President Bush that the climate is going South with a vengence.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Looking at the theme for politics.slashdot.org, they are. While US may pride itself the most democratic democracy of all, could the theme be a litle less stars-and-stripy?
/., can it be a bit more globally tuned than the one on Fox?
I realize that US is having a big election thing soon, but if politics section is to be on
--AP
If you've ever watched his show on PBS, its clear that believes so. If his show is journalism, then I can comfortably say that there IS no difference between Journalism and the previling brand of politics here in Cambridge, MA.
Is the fact that as questions began to be raised, most lefties started backing away from Rathers.
If this had been raised by right-wing media against Clinton, as questions were raised the wingnuts would have claimed it as proof that the media is leftie biased and they were trying to hide the truth.
why look, even PapayaSF follows the same pattern in his message.
The facts are...
Chevy trucks did explode on side impacts.
GW Bush didn't serve honorably in the Guard.
Notice how in both cases, we've gotten off the real subject and focused on some side issue?
Exactly where is the bias? I think the point here is that Journalists should be extremely careful and report in such a way that they can't be nitpicked to death on side issues.
I'm going to hell for this, but...
This Just In. Journallisimo Francisco Franco still dead!
What I really want to know is -- if this guy's old-school enough to use a lowercase "l" in place of the digit "1", because the two characters were indistinguishable on 99% of the typewriters of the era and there's less finger-travel involved in "l" versus "1". (Reading through the article, he does it even more often than Jon Katz did - almost 3/4 of the time). Anyways... given that he grew up on the typing technology of the 70s, I'd love to hear his opinion on the Dan Rathergate forged memo scandal?
Particularly because we're talking about journalism and politics, does he have the integrity to speak up (once upon a time, he was willing to call shenanigans on Democrats as well as Republicans) or will he continue to remain completely and utterly silent on it?
Prove this wrong what kind of logic is that? Journalists have to prove their case, not just present something and say "we all know its true, prove me wrong". No you prove its right. Otherwise its just a call to ignorance
Kerry Swift Boat Veterans Truth -- 9,680
Switft Boat Veterans Truth -- 9,770
Kerry Medals -- 6,580
Bush National Guard Vietnam -- 9,870
Bush Texas National Guard -- 9,280
Bush Military Service - 15,800
Bush National Guard -- 19,700
I'm sorry it's not up to your standards, but not all of us are rich enough to have a Lexis-Nexis subscription to check your facts. I have to stick with what open source gives me.
But your main thesis STILL doesn't hold up. Because the context of those Swift Boat Vets for Truth articles WAS NEGATIVE! And your prized Lexis-Nexis search doesn't check for that. You even say that yourself! "...SBVT, who have been discredited by all major news sources."
It would've certainly been possible 5 years ago. There's nothing special about the "blog" medium, it's been around for decades in the form of Usenet and independent of the Internet in BBS message bases.
It deals with the uncertainty of quantum mechanics and the problem that observing quantum states without affecting quantum states. It is rhetorical and posed this way:
Say you have an opaque, bulletproof, and soundproof box that you put a cat inside. In addition, you put a loaded revolver in this box, with a cord tied around cat and around the trigger. Is the cat dead or alive?
To find out, you have to open the box. You don't know until you open the box, and the act of opening the box may scare the cat into triggering the gun. To observe if the cat is dead or alive, you have to interfere.
This is also a good analogy for journalism and politics, as the act of observing and reporting on politics has an effect on what political information is given and acted upon. Politicians and their surrogates tend to be the cats holding the guns.
-- Len
First Purple Heart - Kerry's campaign has admitted that the wound may in fact have been self-inflicted. Point for the swift vets.
a r-after-action-report-found.html
Doug Brinkley's book mentions that Kerry and crew of PCF 44 were feeling the confidence of people who have never been shot at before. (This was after the Purple Heart incident.)
Christmas in Cambodia - Retracted by the Kerry campaign. Point for the swift vets.
Silver Star - The contention is that the commander who recommended Kerry was given innaccurate information by Kerry. Supporting documentation recently revealed (if authentic) shows that in fact Kerry shot a single, wounded fleeing VC. http://itznewstome.blogspot.com/2004/09/silver-st
Third Purple Heart - Information from Doug Brinkley's book states that Kerry was wounded while blowing up rice with Rassman and not during the river action.
Bronze Star - Eyewitness contention between Kerry and other commanders present at the time. Large conflicts between Kerry's story and Rassman's as well (the man he rescued). Kerry's story includes driving through over 3 miles of enemy fire without receiving damage to his boat. (Rassman's account has differred as to which boat he was on, one of Kerry's accounts has him going overboard due to a high-speed turn.)
The main point remains that Kerry has failed to execute a Standard Form 180 that would release all of his military records for independent review.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I don't see how you can say ANYTHING got less coverage than that. If we have 3 year retrospectives over the prison abuses, I may reconsider.
I don't see how it's "Defeat Bush at any cost" to point out actual facts regarding torture and abuse perpetrated against helpless prisoners by our troops. It's not a liberal bias to report facts, and my opinions on the prison scandal are based on facts. 1) It happened. 2) The general supposedly in charge was aware. 3) Independant human rights groups were aware. 4) The acts were directly in conflict with the Geneva convention on multiple levels. 5) Memos were received by Rumsfeld who took no action until after the press broke the story.
To me that is a huge story. It's the first time we've ever been handed hard proof that our troops were abusing prisoners of war, and no, I don't think systematic is too strong a word. To have it met with near indifference from the government is appalling. If those things were happening to our POWs, then we would be decrying the offenders in the strongest terms. But, hey, we're still better than Saddam, sort of.
I don't think you can seperate the world in to Fox News and Michael Moore. First of all, its disingenous, because Moore is one guy, not a tv network. Second, because I agree with you in regards to Moore. He's a whacko. He's occasionally amusing, but he's so biased it's hard to take anything he says seriously.
But Fox is no better. You may consider all mainstream media to have a liberal bias, but then you turn around and defend Fox, just because you like their bias. They both suck. But I consider the mainstream to be a middle ground. Sure it's biased. But it is not as biased as Fox. The fact that most of the world isn't made up of right wingers or left wingers pretty much guarantees that to be the case.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Does anyone else find it distasteful when a draft dodger calls into question the medals of a war hero?
But it's okay when Clinton does it to Bush, Sr, and then Dole, because he was "cool" while they were "boring."
Yes, politics and journalism are inextricably linked.
The reporters personal political beliefs will inevitably influence their interpretation of the facts.
There are very few facts out there that somebody won't contest in some manor.
Even optimists and pessimists interpret facts differently.
Is that better or worse than non-rabid anti-Americanism? And what about The Eevil Chomsky's rabid anti-Britishism? His anti-Italianism? Don't we deserve protection from this monster?
Funny thing, I've read a lot of Chomsky's work and I've never seen him label something as evil, or present nations as entities that could have the attributes "good" or "evil".
Perhaps you could point me to the book or speech where Chomsky expresses these views?
And the book or speech where he calls the PA "innocents"?
Or maybe I only get to read the juicy stuff when I ascend to the inner circle by eating an American baby or three?