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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 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.
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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?
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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.
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)
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And what is today's Slashdot poll? What color is your stapler?
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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
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
Try the Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Service" and see how many hits you get then.
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
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".
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.
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.
"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.
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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
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
I think that's a poor analogy, as the interpretation of current events (like that of history) can be quite subjective. It would seem reasonable to me that most people who frequent political blogs are already aligned with the particular political view of the blogger (left, right or center) and aren't likely to challange the validity of any story that supports their own viewpoint.
To use conservatives as an example (since that was your reference), a bunch of bloggers across the country who support Bush all "sharing openly and reviewing" a story that supports Bush aren't really the same as a bunch of hackers poring over code. A null pointer is a null pointer no matter who you want to vote for, it's an objective fact. No matter how many conservative bloggers look at a story that casts their man in a positive light ("Those liberal media elites used forged documents to attack our saintly President!"), they're all going to be less inclined to question it.
Not to mention that the way they all feed off each other makes it easy for a story (true or not) to reach a "tipping point" so quickly that there's really no time to check facts, and far to easy for one phone call from Karl Rove to start an avalanche of doubt on a subject that might just hurt his candidate.
Reviewing code for an obvious, factual error and reviewing a politically charged news story composed of (currently) precious few facts, are not analagous.
"Trust in haste. Repent at leisure"
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.
But that WASN'T what happened. What you described is what the news organizations like the New York Times wanted it to be. There's no evidence to suggest that it was either systematic or at "very high levels" of either the Military or Executive branch. Turns out it was just a small group of idiot, frustrated soldiers getting seriously out of line, and unlike the innocent civilians killed in Iraq, I'll remind you that every prisoner left with his head on his shoulders. Now how does THAT warrant FIFTY front-page NYT articles --at least twenty of which were consecutive? September 11th didn't even get that kind of coverage!
You really don't see an agenda there?
You don't see an agenda ("Defeat Bush at any cost") in the former? All major news organizations harbor an agenda contrary to the truth today. Whether it's making money by scaring people over anthrax, wild-animal attacks, and so on or pushing a political agenda, none of them really care about objective, rational presentation. Journalistic integrity is dead.
But don't believe everything they tell you.
Nor should you take the NYT or Michael Moore's work as holy words from the mountain either. That's the key here. The world isn't as simple as that anymore. Everything has a slant, and yes that includes Fox News.
-Grym
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.