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CBS Sees no Journalism in Blogs
hende_jman writes "CBS News online has an article comparing some politics-oriented blogs to the kind of stuff they used to run in the author's school newspaper. It's an interesting read that has some valid critiques of the format as far as journalistic integrity is concerned (not that CBS hasn't been without its problems)."
Kerry was "in striking distance" in Florida and Ohio, said the Drudge Report.
;-) I guess it could have been the same with any other channel and it might have just been their methods/algorithms but take it for what it's worth.
.02
And last election FoxNews claimed victory for Bush well before it was officially called. All media outlets have their own biases that they use daily on a large cross-section of stories. Hell, some news stations go so far as to create near pandemonium out of stories like "Are our college students on death row in their dorm rooms?" when they are comparing jail cell fires to dorms?
Big plans and big claims are to be expected from folks - pajama-clad or not - who are dabbling with new technology and new modalities of public expression.
Coming from someone writing for the big dogs I can honestly say I'm not surprised. What the hell else was he going to say? "Oh, the mainstream media is fucking dead. The Internet will take over as the true purveyor of news? Yeah, that would have been printed...
You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally - or in the battleground states of Florida or Ohio. The editors, producers and executives who run these MSM organizations, in typical responsible, dinosaur fashion, know it would be wrong to do so.
From the little bit of flipping I did between the Daily Show, FoxNews, and NBC I was seeing quite a bit more information coming earlier from FoxNews about which states Bush had won and what they were projecting... I didn't see that so much from NBC and I certainly didn't see it on the Daily Show
His constant comparison of the blogs to his school newspaper is rather annoying and honestly quite childish. Perhaps we should heed his words and pretty much ignore what we see on the Internet from the "media outlets". If he really wanted me to listen to what he said he should have done some quote for quote comparisons between the blogs and traditional media outlet's stories and shown where exactly the blogs were lacking. Maybe that would have even helped the blogs.
Making mention of Drudge as your main point is really sad. Drudge has a lot of funny stuff but you have to take most of it at face value. I certainly don't read it often mostly because it's fluff and bullshit. Perhaps this guy should have done some googling and found some valid political blog sites and then done his comparison.
That's my worthless
I read this story yesterday, and it turned out the editor's speculation was wrong! When they issued a "retraction" they didn't apologize, and that editor added some political spin to it!
The mainstream media has a terrible credibility problem. This is why blogs are so popular these days. If no one has any credibility anyway, you might as well listen to the new guys.
"But I worked on a school paper when I was a kid and I owned a CB radio when I lived in Texas. And what I saw in the blogosphere on Nov. 2 was more reminiscent of that school paper or a "Breaker, breaker 19" gabfest on CB than anything approaching journalism. "
That, I believe is as good a description of blog culture as we're likely to find.
The reason why publications like the New York Times or National Public Radio are considered authoritative is because they have a long established track record and are trusted to provide a factual and balanced report.*
Bloggers simply do not have that level of trust, They still represent one guy with a website, and are only as reliable as the person typing the blog entry. That does not mean that bloggers do not sometimes add to the coverage of stories, just that they tend to be reactive, and sometimes prone to gossip and rumour more than journalism.
* Except of course by the right wing twits who go on and on about liberal media bias.
Three Squirrels
I shall never watch CBS news again! SLASHDOT, the one and only, the best
But without blogs, how would anyone get the really important news? Like George Bush attempting to eliminate his enemies?
Oh, wait...
You probably shouldn't click this.
that CBS seems to have difficulty understanding that sometimes the best thing one can do is just to drop an issue and wait for people to get caught up in the latest Britney or Paris 'scandal'. Within a month most people will have forgotten about the forged documents and they can go back to business as usual. Fighting it just brings back all the memories.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
the irony of the posts that are about to follow is delicious....
Anyone at CBS commenting on Journalistic itegrity has to be the biggest joke of the year. They have no integrity or credibility after their actions during the last 60 days.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
At the same time, Taco, the fact that you and other Slashdot editors so horribly mangle summaries and headlines alike does nothing but lend creedence to Engberg's mindset. This article is an opinion piece. That means that the opinion expressed therein does not reflect the opinions of CBS, Major League Baseball, or Sane People. The headline should read "Engberg Sees No Journalism in Blogs".
Quit giving blowhards like Engberg such easy fodder. Show some interest in getting it right, not making it hot, dammit!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
what in the world qualifies?
Yes a lot of claimed bias isn't real (just look at all the bias people claim about Fox). But your examples would be akin to calling the AJC (Atlanta Journal) balanced.
It just doesn't cut it.
I don't think anyone has suggested that bloggers are going to be replacing journalists anytime soon or that blogs are going to be taking over the media. But bloggers can be very good fact-checkers as was displayed in the CBS/Dan Rather memo flap.
That incident was a great example of a large group of volunteers rallying together experts that could show a news story to be false.
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infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
I'm sorry ... but since when did blogs ever consider themselves Journalism? I know of exactly ZERO people who get their news from blogs. This has got to be the biggest non-story I've ever heard of.
I'd also point out that when websites like CBSNews are running "news" stories that do nothing other than reveal the results of reality TV shows, perhaps they're not the best ones to be preaching about journalistic integrity.
CBS and NBC, ABC, CNN, Faux News, et all are nothing both mouthpieces for the status quo. THey are the means for maintaining the stranglehold of the rich and the corporations on the rest of America.
There is more real journalism on ANY politics blog that on CBS over the course of the last DECADE.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Linux is following that path, with Microsoft deep into fighting territory. Blogs have passed being ignored, emerging from laughter, and starting to be seriously attacked.
Just what do you expect from self-important competitors who are being eclipsed?
Blogs are newspaper articles without all the responsibility. Many times people post to their blog with an alias, which usually means one of two things, either the person wants to remain anonymous, or they are just pulling statistics and such out of their ass. If you submit an article that gets published and it is complete BS, then yes your reputation and credibility is at stake. So yes, I think there are definate advantages to traditional journalism.
go to kuro5hin.org
wherever you are on the political spectrum, the stuff there can be pretty laughable, or scary (everything from conspiracy theorists to extreme liberals to libertarians to racists to your obvious trolls)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
www.ratherbiased.com
The problem is that the mainstream media tries to paint itself as some kind of oracle of information. The "blogosphere" is an organic system in that there is no official channel for information. So for instance, when Dan Rather stated to the world that the Bush National Guard documents were proof that Bush was AWOL, where were the dissenting voices? Where was the actual analysis?
Instead what we got was CBS news using blatant forgeries, selectively shopping them around to "experts" and pushing a story that doesn't even pass the smell test. The Bush docs story stunk to high heaven, and it took bloggers a matter of hours to determine that CBS lied through their teeth. Bloggers like those at Powerline devastated CBS' story because the media was not willing to do the ground work they should have. Whether that was through sheer laziness or bias I will leave as an exercise to the reader.
The mainstream media doesn't do reporting anymore. The blogosphere allows for a lot of crap, but through that crap comes a lot of valuable research. How many Iraqis are allowed to give their opinions on the nightly newscasts? Yet I can chose any number of Iraqi blogs and get a point of view that I would never see on the evening newscast - and because of it I've learned things about Iraqi culture and the situation there that the media would never have time to delve into.
It would be much better if those crying about the lack of journalistic standards with bloggers were any better - but the only thing that seems to separate journalists from bloggers these days is that bloggers have a greater tendency to check their sources when called and don't carry around the façade of officious objectivity like a shield.
Quite frankly, I give more credence to Glenn Reynolds than I do to Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, Andrew Gilligan, or Dan Rather - all of whom have shown that the combination of arrogance and groupthink in the mainstream media is far more pernicious than the open biases of bloggers.
- Lack of journalistic professionalism.
- Willfully distorting facts to support a political agenda.
What's your poison?A blog is just a means of sharing information and opinions, just like newspapers and television. A blod is just another way of presenting information, like the digital versions of newspapers do.
The quallity of a blog depends on the person administrating it and running it, and the people who write in it. I mean, come on, some of the major news websites out there are blogs. Like slashdot...
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
In my experience, bloggers rarely claim to be objective. People are voicing opinions. Journalists, on the other hand, claim to be objective truth seekers but they seem to get everything wrong. Why is it that whenever they write/talk about something you know something about, they're dead wrong? One has to assume that's the normal standard and that they get away with it because most people don't notice most of the time.
IAAAL - I am actually a lawyer
I call blogging "Layer 3 Journalism". You have the reporters doing the work, getting the story and writing it. Then you have the editors making political decisions on the stories, and deciding what gets put out, and how it gets released. Those are the traditional two layers of journalism.
Bloggers are a new, third layer. They take what was already reported on by other sources, and put their own unique spin on it, with outside commentary. The problem is, the further you get from the first layer, the more distorted the original facts get. As people read the blogs, email others, and pass the commentary on, it starts to generate a buzz online, and the story gets distorted further.
It's important to remember that most bloggers do not report the news; they report ON the news. As such, it can be useful as a sort of "watchdog" on the media. But when people start taking blogs as well-researched fact and start passing it around, it can generate enormous numbers of misinformed people.
Not that people aren't already misinformed...
'nuff said
Wow, some bloggers said Kerry would win the election, but they were wrong and are therefore not real journalists. I'll bet no major news organization ever made the mistake of wrongly guessing what would happen in an election. Undoubtedly, the bloggers will fold up their tents now that this esteemed personage has informed them that they are not in fact journalist.
of Slashdot posting an article about new media "journalism".
Interesting, because I don't see any journalism at CBS...
The pot calls the kettle black. Nothing new here.
But the greatest irony is that evidence is growing that Bush stole the election -- that the exit polls were in fact correct. I personally worked the polls handing out sample ballots for the Constitution Party, and the Republican standing next to me handing out his sample ballots told me he was expecting Kerry to win 2-1 at our precinct based on all those who preferred the sample ballots from the Democrat standing next to him than to his Republican sample ballots. Bush won in our precinct.
It's too early to make the claim that Bush stole the election. But it's also too early to say that the blogs were wrong for reporting the exit polls. It's doubly wrong the ignore the current blog focus on finding election anomalies, such as the one from kuro5hin that was finally proved out in the mass media (with credit going toward "callers" to Ohio election officials rather than to kuro5hin).
The mass media is supposed to be acting as the fourth branch of government, keeping the other three in check. Instead, the mass media is acting as a department of the executive branch, and it is now it is up to the blogs to keep the media in check.
The only reason you didn't see the major news outlets doing the same (well, at least they showed some restraint *cough* foxnews *cough*) was because they all got their hands slapped during the 2000 elections doing just what the bloggers were doing during this one.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
And you'll see what the Columbia Broadcast System is all about... :)
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Mainstream media bad!
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Slashdot loves uninformed biased bloggers!
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One mind!
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Wow, that's kind of how I feel about CBS News.
That's quite all right if CBS doesn't see journalism elsewhere, because the rest of us are having difficulty finding journalism in CBS.
Well, there certainly are some drawbacks to "blogs" as a news source. First and foremost, few of them have any professional journalists spending all their time searching out and writing up content. Secondly, their reputations are not as important, thus articles that have little or no credibility may still get posted (no one is worried about losing the public trust). Third, the quality of writing is, generally, much less professional and no one has copy editors read over their posts.
On the other hand, blogs have some serious advantages. Strength of numbers is one of them. No media outlet has as many eyes looking or as many fingers typing as Slashdot does. The lack of a need for credibility may allow for stories that other news sources would never run, blogs allow the readers to be the judge of a story's merit. Audience targeting, the internet allows for news to be targeted, and even custom fitted to a particular person's interests. If you really want to read about fishing, or chess, or explosives, there is a blog out there for you. Finally, blogs allow for audience participation. If you want to know more about a particular subject, or have specific knowledge of a topic, you can jump into the fray, and either learn specific things, or teach others.
Look at this article. It was not balanced, nor particularly well written, or thought out. Not many people would be interested in the article itself, but a blog discussing the article can be both meaningful, and entertaining. I don't think traditional news is going to vanish anytime soon, but the author's flippant criticism is poorly thought out. Blogs have a lot to offer.
CBS and the other networks pay for some stupendously useless exit-polls to be done. Then they leak the results to a web-site or two (i.e. Drudge). Then they use the leaks as an excuse to blather on about the results of their useless exit polls for hours. Then they get stung when it is revealed just how far off the mark the polls were.
Then they blame blogs in general for their lack of journalistic standards.
Pfft. I fart in their general direction.
95% of the blogs out there are these little high schoolers writing their journal online hoping someone will comment. Yet every one of them have "0 comments" day in and day out.
Anyway, whatever. No body here can't see the irony of CBS saying this.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
The problem here is that CBS is confusing WRITING with JOURNALISM. NO surprise, since a lot of others are doing it as well. I've written for many gaming websites, as well as student magazines, and I have always refrained from ever calling myself a journalist. Quite frankly, I think that the only time writing can ever be called journalism is when you are writing about a first-hand experience.
That said, with so much of news becoming little more than opinion and thin analysis, writing is usually preferrable, just because the bias and editorializing is clear and expected. Journalism should be fair and unbiased, and rarely is.
That said, I think blogs are becoming the "new journalism", people writing from their own experiences and sharing that knowledge with others. Blogging is an exchange of ideas, debate in it's truest form. That something that Journalism stopped doing right around the time that the corporations bought up all of the media.
"not that CBS hasn't been without its problems"
I count three negatives in that sentence. So it's logically equivalent to "CBS has been without its problems". I think this is the opposite of what the writer intended to say.
grep -ri 'should work'
We need an official debunking of the pre-election exit poll figures that seem to have suggested a lead by Kerry! I know, let's attack the legitimacy of those who published them!
so everyone knows blog are stupid. they are just online diary's. How someone can make a jump from diary to "new news medium" is stupid and should be shot on site. I am not defending the dinasours, but this is a far strech for blogging. is shows how dumb the people are who put stock into this type of thinking.
Not only are they supposed to suck his dick, they're required to tell him how great he is.
Afterwards, they'll march in front of a wall, read a statement of apology to the American people for all their misdeeds, put on their own blindfolds, yell out "I Love Big Brother", and then beg for the bullet in the back of the head...at least in any of the Coulteresque/Murdochian fantasies of your typical Fox News-watching, Bush-voting red stater.
The rest of us are cowering in abject terror under our desks.
Where was the right wing corporate media on those stories?
Alternative sources had the news, and kept it fresh, for months and years before the sheeple were allowed feed on the mainstream. How many news hours has Clenis/OJ/Kobie/Jackson/Petterson had in comparison to Enron, MooniecrowninginDC, or the dollar dump?
Thou shall not kill, steal, bear false witness, covet, do unto others. The extreme right and their fundamentalists are following none other than the anti, so it shouldn't be too surprising. Simply disgusting.
Coming from someone writing for the big dogs I can honestly say I'm not surprised. What the hell else was he going to say? "Oh, the mainstream media is fucking dead. The Internet will take over as the true purveyor of news? Yeah, that would have been printed...
Right... I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the network news to put out a story that network news has become sensationalistic garbage.
The only fact checking I've seen was in the presidential debate after the VP one. Some reporter came on afterwards and debunked a few claims made by bush and kerry, ala factcheck.org. Still, they presented just a small handful of claims, and they presented them evenly - two for bush, two for kerry.
But to any news broadcaster reading this: Sometimes things ARE UNEVEN! And you must report it! Unbiased does not mean you massage every story until it sounds like both sides have equally balanced and valid points.
Often you'll hear "A 10 year study from [insert respected non-partisan group here] revealed today that [insert political statistic here]. [Political party] dismissed the claims."
So network news broadcasters are content to let a spokeman "dismiss the claims" as a valid rebuttal? Why, at a press conference or in a phone call, don't they insist on a real answer? An explanation? Are reporters really so trusting of their politicians, that if they "dismiss the claims" then the 10 year study is ignored?
God, it's frightneing how lazy major media outlets are these days...
$8.95/mo web hosting
That's funny -- CBS doesn't see journalism in blogs, blogs don't see much journalism in the likes of CBS, either!
When did they admit that the documents were forgeries and not just "unable to authenticate at this time"? When did they apologize for running a story based on documents that their own experts said were forgeries?
I don't want them to, as you put it, "Suck George Bush's pecker". I want them to:
a: Try to verify the facts of their stories before airing them, even if the story is about a politician that they like/dislike.
b: Admit that their own political and moral views may not be 100% correct, and try to reduce the effect of any bias on their reporting. That means fact-checking politicians both when they say theings you agree with, as well as when they says things you disagree with.
CBS Sees no Journalism in Blogs
I see no journalists at CBS, so I guess that makes us even.
...many bloggers don't see much Journalism coming from CBS. Come on, this piece is largely sour grapes because many bloggers called CBS out (and rightly so) on the whole forged Air National Guard memo issue.
I love that the networks are putting down someone for calling Florida too early. They would never do a thing like that :)
Talk about throwing stones from a glass house.....
Editorial commentary aside, name one blog or even collection of blogs that even comes close to being the primary source of raw factual reporting as just one of the news outlets you've mentioned?
Until the bloggers spend some cash hiring reporters and stop using the mainstream media's reporting as the basis for the bulk of their output, they'll always be playing second fiddle.
Close, but not quite:
In the mainstream, journalism isn't dead, but reporting's been pushing up the daisies since the 70s.
What CBS does is "Journalism". Figure out what sort of story you want to tell, then send a guy out with a camera (or dig up some stock footage) who can come up with the iamges to tell the story.
Terrorist? Freedom fighter? No problem, we'll find someone to argue both points. Dirtball spammer? Ethikul small bidnidman and oppressed ontreprenooer? All the same to us! Safe car? Time bomb? We've spent a lot of money on this story so far, and we're not gonna throw it away, so let's rig the test to make sure it blows up real good! Obvious Microsoft Word forgery? Story's what we want it to be no matter how obvious the forgery is? No problem, we'll pay off a handwriting expert who's not even taken seriously in his own loopy field, and a couple of Democrat partisans to distract you from the real issue and to repatedly drub it into your silly little minds that our story is true, even though all the evidence we've brought before you is actually pure, Grade-D bullshit.
CBS: All journalism, all the time.
What bloggers do is "Reporting". Look at the screen (or listen to the scanner, or check your IMs and emails from your inside source), and state what's happening. Then spin it -- but always making it clear what parts are spin and what parts are fact.
Blogs: All reporting. "Here's the numbers: K57/B43. Because I support [Kerry|Bush], I think that's [great|horrible]. Be warned that these numbers are unconfirmed. Take with huge grain of salt. I'll report more numbers as I find them."
> > CBS Sees no Journalism in Blogs
I'm tired of getting my news spun for me. I just want the goddamn facts, separated from the spin. Blogs serve this purpose. The mainstream media used to -- but hasn't in decades. No journalism in Blogs? GOOD.
What about the story on missing explosives that they were going to spring on us on the Sunday night before the election? They tried to influence the election results, that is not journalism, it is propaganda.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
at least in any of the Coulteresque/Murdochian fantasies of your typical Fox News-watching, Bush-voting red stater.
t e2004/countymap.htm
Most of the country is red, when you look at it from the county level. I only see a few states where blue is the majority.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vo
It's also easy to tell where the large population centers are. Hint: they're blue.
this is my sig
I have to admit I did not read the article, but I just thought of something I felt was interesting...
:)
The great thing about blogs, is that whilst adding to the noise, they also act as a giant filter. Search indexed blogs give search engines like google a boost: by ensuring truly great links are easy to locate and are distributed adequately- like filtering repeaters.
Sure, this generates a lot of "noise" but it also refines knowledges and opinion all the while bringing people with similar interests and opinions together.
I find everyone has an agenda, media-outlets included. Only in blogs this agenda is clear. This allows me as an information hunter to make more informed choices of agendas I incorporate into my own.
How is this not better than traditional journalism?
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
that many of us don't trust there reporting either!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I can't remember who said it, but one of the media moguls said something about the media being able to directly influence 30% of the voters, or something along those lines.
2004 was the year the media tried to overthrow a sitting president. You have NY Times coming out and endorsing Bush, you have the CBS "journalism", Michael Moore and the Hollywood loony crowd getting all sorts of air time.
And the public saw threw it. I think a lot of people voted Bush in spite of it. Kerry was stupid to align himself with these folks. After Whoopi Goldberg had her moment of sheer stupidity at the Kerry fundraiser, that guy actually comes out and says something to the effect of her being the "voice of the american people".
She isn't. Hollywood isn't. And allying themselves with that crowd of dopes cost Kerry the election.
The Kerry campaign constantly hammered Bush for being a liar, but if you look at the campaign, all the lies and half-truths were from Kerry boosters. The document scandal, the missing explosives, saying that orders to torture prisoners in Abu Gharib came all the way down from the top.
CBS is pissed because bloggers took them down, saw through their lies. People don't just watch the news and nod and accept it as fact. They go online. They discuss, they read others opinions.
The media's power is diminishing. The people saw through them this time. They didn't have the effect they wanted. So they're throwing a tantrum about it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That only works if the opponent cares what outsiders think.
Had the Japs won WW2, Ghandi would have said, "First they march you through hundreds of miles in the jungle heat, then they shoot you, then they disembowel you, then you lose."
Getting all the Bloggers or Slashdot commenters to spin a story in one direction is dam near impossible. However if there is sufficient political or monetary gain how hard would it be for the folks at CBS to all pull in the same direction? Of Course you cannot rely on the bloggers for the gospel truth everytime but you can take in many internet sources sift through the information and form your own opinion. At CBS they form it for you. I don't really need CBS, Michael Moore, or Bill Oreilly to help me make sense of what is out there. Maybe some folks do and more power to them. I am very greatfull to all the independent voices on the web. I trust the people much more than any "News Organization".
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
There was a reason most of the blog sites predicted a Kerry win -- he actually did. If you look in most states that had e-voting machines WITH a paper trail, you'll find the exit polls and actualy results are within 0.1%. But if you look at the states with e-voting and no paper trail, the results are wildly skewed up to 5% towards Bush from the exit polls. Ohio is the case in point - earlier this year, the president of Diebold said "[We are] committed to helping Ohio to deliver its electoral votes to the president next year". If that wasn't despicable enough, alot of the memory cards holding precinct votes were just thrown in a pickup truck and driven to the central counting area. In one case, the truck had a Bush/Cheney sticker on it... There's just so much bullshit about this election. We need more populated cities or something, because they're the only ones that seem to understand Bush & Friends are driving the country to hell. Moral relativism my ass.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Please ignore this post, cancelling out accidental mistaken mod.
Suppose that shows a flaw in this blog...
- The FBI and CIA collectively knew there was a terrorist cell in the US planning to attack the world trade centers, but wasn't able to put the pieces together.
- It's generally agreed a major issue that the intelligence community is dealing with is that they have way more information than they can fully analyze. Some even claim that the above sentance is automatically scanned by the CIA/FBI, automatically determined if it's "terrorist chatter", and automatically sent to analysts if a computer determines it needs to be.
- On the smaller scale, there's a ton of news out there, and every citizen seems to find less and less time to do the things they want to commit to any one thing, news included.
So when 20 Random Joes and Janes on the internet see a forged document, and each has the expertise to make a tiny criticism of it, we still don't really know anything. It takes other layers to start collecting the information into one coherent mass that makes it obvious that the Rather documents were forged.One common criticism of US news is that it is very selective. There are a number of major humanitarian crises in the world that the US public basically never hears about, and they instead get to focus on the latest celebrity court case. It's not that there aren't news outlets somewhere in the world covering the various problems out there, it's that we don't know to focus our attentions on it. A broader and more democratic network provides viewers with more choices as to what they can focus their attention on.
He's spamming us with ads for a pyramid scheme
I have to say "Kettle, meet pot. Pot, meet kettle."
Exit polls, predictions, and who called what state before whom aside, I'm curious what the /. crowd thinks of this county level map:
t e2004/countymap.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vo
this is my sig
CBS Sees no Journalism in Blogs
Coming from the network which brought you the forged document dump just in time for the election, CBS's assertion is laughable.
I see no journalism from CBS a.k.a. Collection of Bogus Sources.
"I now inform you that you are too far from reality."
Propaganda is reporting only those things which are detrimental to the other side and positive for "your" side. CBS, like most supposedly "liberal" news organizations, has done its fair share of both. Just because it reports something that is critical of the GOP does not make it biased. NOT reporting the same thing does.
BIG MEDIA: Bloggers are at best, amature journalists. They don't have *our* skill at conducting important, investigative journalisim.
BLOGGERS: What about FOX, with their 'fair and balanced' coverage of news? And why is everyone starting to mimic them?
BIG MEDIA: But, but, er...um, that is...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
And in true journalistic fashion, they brew up diatribes like this to uphold the belief that you need a special kind of education and skillset to get the facts from the field to the viewer/reader.
True, some people can't handle the raw data, but is that any worse than having thier head spun by "proper" journalism telling them what to think?Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Mr. Engberg, while making a few interesting points, demonstrates that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. If the mainstream media want to remain in denial that the nature of communications and journalism is changing, I say let them.
There has been more than enough coverage on the 60 Minutes debacle. One would expect "real" mainstream media journalists to check their sources a bit more thoroughly, particularly one of the patriarchs of the news magazine genre of shows. But let's consider the genre itself for a moment. Mr. Engberg takes the following swipe: "The public is now assaulted by news and pretend-news from many directions, thanks to the now infamous 'information superhighway.'" The same could be said of many of the so-called news magazine shows on the network channels. Even the progenitor of the genre, 60 Minutes, gets the periodic poke in the eye because of shoddy work. A short examination of shows like 20/20, 48 Hours, Extra, and other travesties are shown to be fluff just by ordering and reading the transcripts. They are heavy on hype, light on content, and fill their time slot with repetition of the same information.
Cable has brought us little better. In that realm, we find shows like Anderson Cooper 360, The O'Reilly Factor, Crossfire, and any number of others that serve to spin the news directly at a target audience that already believes precisely what is being said. Debate shows are little more than sound bite shouting matches between pundits, not real newsmakers. They serve to make the host(s) look intelligent while devoting precious little time to actually allowing the expert to thoroughly explain his or her position. This is "real" journalism?
Mr. Engberg then continues with: "Let me tell you a few things about 'exit polls'..." Oh please do sir. After all, your profession gave us the "Bush wins Florida"/"Too close to call" mess in the 2000 election. Apparently our friends in the mainstream media weren't listening to the "PhD-style" expertise very hard. This year, we saw the races in places like Vermont, Georgia, and several other states called before more than a few percent of the vote was in, and less than an hour after the polls closed in those areas. Ah, responsible use of exit polls. In addition, it was widely reported by the mainstream media sources that Kerry was getting strong support. As a result, the stock market began to dip at the end of trading on November 2nd. Again, more of that "PhD-style" expertise, serving us so well. This is in direct conflict with this statement from the article: "You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally." Apparently he didn't bother to check his facts against what Wall Street already knew.
Finally, it galls me to no end that this fellow seems to believe that we're all college students studying something fluffy. I know there are PhDs who read this forum, and post to a good number of blogs on a regular basis. A great number of us have degrees in mathematical sciences, and as such, know very well the limitations of statistical analysis. In fact, we know it much better than the average journalist since we were required to take those classes in college or university. Just because Mr. Engberg hasn't studied enough math to understand the statistical magic doesn't mean his readers haven't.
If the mainstream media wish to stick their heads in the sand, so much the better. As an intelligent consumer of news and information, I will continue to rely on multiple media and sources for what I need, and it will continue to include political blogs, thank you very much.
On the face of things the criticism is aimed at the bloggers. The more disturbing accusation, allbeit veiled, is that the people are too stupid, ignorant or lazy to understand that the blogs are not objective news sources. It is as if the author thinks people can't evaluate the value of a news source.
Moreover, the author seems to suggest that people need to be shielded from these bloggers who are trying to mislead them. I guess the First Amendment only applies to Viacom and the like?
Perhaps the point Mr Engberg missed is that one doen't get news from a single source in the Internet world? Instead, multiple sources are read and compared to minimise bias and stupidity. If there are statistics which require a PhD, go and find someone who has a PhD, knows satistics and can explain it to you, such as Tanenbaum.
"hey, aren't those blog things a joke, news directly from the people involved...that'll never take off...people want opinionated, biased journalists...hey, look over there...on that wall...someone's been writing on it....anyway, what was I saying..."
a: Try to verify the facts of their stories before airing them, even if the story is about a politician that they like/dislike.
Actually, the reason they ran the story was becuase the facts were true, just one of the documents wasn't the original. Also there were hundreds of other pages that all panned out to be real, unfortunatley the most damning one was a forgery of a document that had long been purged from the records.
Did anyone else choke on "not that cbs hasn't been without it's problems"?
Okay... not hasn't = "cbs has been without its problems"
somehow i do not think this was the intended meaning.
What I really like are blogs that give real information - not the kind of populist watered-down news you get on TV or the newspaper.
For example, check out these blogs by actual economists...
Marginal Revolution
Cafe Hayek
EconLog
Ben Muse
.. the fact that CBS has been unable to do that is directly attributable to the fact that the blogosphere refuses to let the story die. That's the influence they weild: they, as a whole, define what the politically-aware public is talking about. It's not handed down to them by 60 Minutes or 20/20 anymore.
That's why you see MSM stories discrediting bloggers .. they're sore losers.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Most people would agree that our current political climate is heavily polarized. The media most often calls attentions to extremes in the issues, rather than seeking common ground between groups. Even the president jumps on the bandwagon with statements like, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." With no room for compromise, fueled by a media system which seeks to divide everything into two clearly contrasting piles of soundbytes, it's no wonder half the public is extremely polarized and the other half extremely apathetic.
How did things get to this point? Many argue the winner communicated more effectively than the loser. I agree. And many argue that the losers didn't have the right message. To that I also agree. But trying to understand what the Kerry camp did wrong is a waste of time when you ignore the extreme tilt of the playing field upon which they performed.
It is my contention that two specific events have contributed to the current situation:
1. The veto of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by Ronald Reagan:
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine harkened a new age in media and journalism. News outlets were no longer forced to adopt middle ground positions when covering issues; editorial no longer need be confined to narrow areas, and the airwaves exploded with thousands of heavily polarized pundits broadcasting 24 hours a day their agendas, without any concern for fairness or covering alternative viewpoints.
Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and thousands of other partisian pundits were free to spew their slanted take on the world without ever considering the need to offer anything but a wholly one-sided tale of the issues. Left un-regulated and therefore un-challeneged, their hubris expanded to epic preportions as evidenced in statements like, "Fair and Balanced, "No Spin Zone", etc.
And thus began the modern propaganda wars. Unfortunately it's more of a massacre than a real war.
Yes, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine also gave liberal entities the same freedom. The problem is the platforms for these pundits were mostly commercial radio stations, and the conservatives took the role of spokespeople for the agenda of corporate America, unarguably the true political power in the nation. Liberals, representing the moderate voice of the mainstream didn't have the resources that mouthpieces for big-pharma, insurance, finance, oil and defense contractors, and as a result, found themselves literally drowning in a sea of pro-big-business propaganda, with no way to get equal airtime and thus, no comparable method
A good deal of the stuff that is on the Blogs - and not trustworthy - winds up making it onto the "real" news sources a day or so later - once there is no longer any way to ignore it. Look at the missing explosives in Iraq - started on a Blog, NBC said oh - actually there's a mistake they didn't go missing we know all about it and then after the election - oh yeah, they were stolen - AND WE WATCHED. Anyone who believes everything they read in a Blog is a fool. Anyone who believes everything they read in the "popular" media also a fool.
Yes.
Yeah. There's a big difference between reports and commentary--if you want the facts, you'll want to go with the people who have the resources to actually, you know, go out there and, like, get the facts; while if you want commentary, flip through the Joe Shmoe blogs and find the ones who write well and who you enjoy reading.
This is a pretty crucial difference, I think, and it's one that doesn't get enough play. I don't see blogland doing much in terms of actual reporting, but in terms of getting people to actually talk about stuff, interpret stuff, draw conclusions from the information available? Yes, they can do that.
The wonderful irony of this (ex-TV reporter's) piece is that the TV journalism industry itself is largely responsible for the whole "need to know RIGHT NOW" attitude that most folks have. Breaking stories as quick as possible (which leads to better ratings and therefore more advertising revenue) was great for TV networks back when they competed with newspapers and radio. But when something comes along that can do it faster and cheaper than TV can, all of a sudden it's ok to label it irresponsible? That strikes me as hypocrisy at its finest. Cmon buddy, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? And it's not as if he can claim that TV gets it right every time, either. Does this man not remember the TV networks calling Florida too early back in 2000? Or, how about the whole Air National Guard memo stink over the summer, which is even more ironic since the memos were first discredited on the internet? I dunno, this guy just strikes me as someone who goes after low-hanging fruit, as it were. I bet if the blogs correctly predicted the outcome of the election he would be singing their praises to anyone who would listen.
the coolest club on
Big Money is relative. And the biggest money is always looking out for the status quo because it is always owned by or funded mostly by the rich, the powerful, the megacorps, etc. Thus, after any media system has reached Steady State/Equilibrium, then whenever you find BigMoney media, you have, by definition, found No Real Journalism.
Real Journalism in a steady state system exists only on the edges, the boundaries, the shoestring operations. Look there for real political debate, real discussion of the issues.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I'm sorry, I must have missed their apology to President Bush for running a patently false hit piece against him.
No, their apology was from the Clinton book: "Sorry we got caught. We will cover our tracks better next time. Now can we all just move on?"
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
... at CBS.
Will someone please tell the mainstream media that blogs and "the media" are not the same, are not trying to be the same, and will never be the same.
You see, they are different. (I feel like I'm a primary school teacher here.)
Blogs are one person's perspective on the news and can be a great way to watchdog the media - as many posters here have surgested. This isn't trying to uproot the main media becasue the main media currently doesn't have anything like this. (Retractions? No need to retract, we'll just hope no one notices.
Blogs can also be great grassroots news sources. You wouldn't hear about the Election from a blog and that's why I didn't write about it in mine - everybody already knows from the media! But, as we saw during the invasion of Bagdad (someone else google for the Bagdad Blogger - I'm too tired right now) and post 911 NY, blogs can be great grassroots sources, picking up stories which are later picked up and expanded upon by the media. Again, the media has no equivilent to this and shouldn't feel threatened by it.
What about project blogs? These are different again! CNN wouldnt carry a story about the latest version of Apache - why would they! ("Yeah but we survived before all these fancy "project logs" came about". Really? Guess which famous project blog this quote came from: ... register online prior to the conference and save US$100 on the full conference...). Essential infomation - if you're interested in it. So this is another kind of blog again.
Finally (and this is what *really* annoys me) there are personal blogs. These are personal and should NOT be confused with the above two. (It's not the personal blogs that annoy me, its that people group the two and critisize them as one entity when they are different.) Sometimes a personal blog can oscilate between the other categories, but personal blogs are great ways to keep in touch with family and friends. It's easier than email, more public, and less intrusive. (I live 6000 miles away from most of my friends because I'm a TCK and believe me, it is useful.) So what that they're just complaining about who they're crushing on - thats the kind of stuff I want to know. But not all blogs are personal and have this kind of infomation. "95% of the blogs out there are these little high schoolers writing their journal online" is a valid critisicm of blogging in exactly the same way that saying "95% of the websites out there are porn, personal homepages of highschool drama queens, and spam campaigns. Therefore its all useless". The statistics may be true but I still find the website of my best friend pretty useful, and BBC.co.uk too.
Something to think about...
Daniel
THANK YOU!!! I knew I'd seen that map somewhere and it made a HUGE impression .. when I went to find it again, I couldn't for the life of me remember where I'd seen it. Thanks for posting the link.
Speaking as a print journalist (and editor), I'm saddend by attacks on the media's credibility. But I, too, think there's a problem.
The problem that dinosaur media has is: how do we put out a daily paper that's relevant to readers who are getting real-time news updates online? Answer: shorten the news cycle, rush to scoop the story, let others do the thinking.
Think of newspapers are the layman's scientific journals--they report the latest discoveries and happenings of interest to the target audience. Now think of how credible a scientific journal would be if it had to have 24-hr. reporting cycles. There's no way the editors could fact check everything, look deep for signs of bias and spin, etc. I don't think it's humanly possible to deliver hard, unbiased, fair, and comprehensive news with today's news cycle.
What should happen is a return to the days when nobody claimed to be 100% unbiased. If you look at 19th century newspapers, there was quite a bit of editorializing even on the front page. But just because we can't be perfect doesn't mean we have an excuse to be bad. In contrast to journalists, bloggers don't try hard enough to be objective and as accurate as possible.
The right balance between speed and fairness, IMHO, is professional journalists doing the blogging. Even if journalism is a craft and not a profession, crafts need to be taught by experienced craftsmen.
My ideal solution, though, would be slowing down the pace of life, but that's not going to happen.
Because i see no journalism on CBS :)
My other OS is also FreeBSD
Since the beginning of the www, people have been criticizing the medium not the source. This is a rediculous notion. To suggest this is to suggest that if there are a couple of bad television stations, then television as a whole is a bad source of information. I have seen broad inditements of the whole Internet because of some misinformation regarding health news. I know that the internet is full of nonsense. The government specifically warned about health information on the internet. This is no reason to doubt the veracity of every site on the internet. To bring this to it's logical conclusion, I was reading Penthouse Forum. I am fairly certain that either I am pretty lame or some people contributing to Penthouse Forum have embellished a touch. Is this a reason to consider periodicals as an unreliable source of information?
News consumers should always Consider the Source. I assume that when I am reading Penhouse Forum, there is a fair amount of fiction. The same is true for websites. If I am reading some guy's blog who has not proved his credibility, I take his views with due skepticism. When I read some of the more established or trusted bloggers, I will give them greater deference. The same is true for magazines. There are some editorialists who are always wrong.
As for this article, I would consider the source.
That's freakin hilarious .. next time warn me when I'm drinking soda too close to my screen, ok??
Just sounds like these "journalist" are a bit bitter that "amateurs" are stealing their thunder, and reporting the goods.
Granted reading blogs, you may not be getting the best writing, but chances are you are getting the information by someone who is at least passionate about the topic. (Why else would you write about an obscure topic unless you were interested in it? Or else you're paid to write about it.)
In anycase, I always thought that if you don't hear the straight goods from the horse's mouth, it's all hearsay anyway.
Reading a newspaper or watching CNN is like going to court and hearing the witness say "Well, I heard from so and so that this happened."
Yeah... I'll believe him.
Live forever, or die trying.
I get lots of news from blogs. News I would otherwise never hear from the big 5 media companies. Slashdot keeps me appraised of changes in copyright legislation more effectively than any news outlet available. Macworld's online MacCentral blog is way better than a monthly print. I'd say that most of my news comes from the web these days. I don't subscribe to a newspaper. I rarely watch TV. When I do turn it on, they are usually discussing something I read online days or weeks earlier as if it were 'late breaking, up to the minute news!!' It seems to me that bloggers are doing a better job, and doing it for free. That has the mainstream worried. Yeah, blogs can be inaccurate as yesterday's Google picture archive story here illustrates, but retraction was fast and front page; Unlike what you will find in a newspaper.
...the blogs don't see any journalism in CBS, either.
Chris Mattern
Yes a lot of claimed bias isn't real (just look at all the bias people claim about Fox). But your examples would be akin to calling the AJC (Atlanta Journal) balanced.
It just doesn't cut it.
Guessing that you're conservative, and quite possibly Christian, I'll quite a Bible passage.
Luke 6:42 "Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye." (KJV)
Your perception of bias is a function of your own bias. I would question how much PBS you watch and how much NPR you listen to to arrive at your suggestion that they are hopelessly biased. It all depends on what sort of bias yu are looking for. Not sure what I mean? Consider this: NPR and PBS gave far more coverage to Michael Badnarik and David Cobb than Fox. Badnarik, in particular, polled very strongly for a third party candidate in the election, and NPRs coverage was roughly in proportion to how votes were cast. In comparison Fox's coverage was far more limited, and not at all in proportion. ABCNNCBS were even worse than Fox in that respect.
Want to look at it another way? Compare the coverage Nader got, to the coverage Badnarik got. Now look at how many votes they got in the election? Note any discrepancy?
So on that particlar issue PBS and NPR were pretty clearly the least biased news media around. If you were a big Badnarik supporter, you'd have to say that NPR was the way to go, and the mainstream networks were horribly biased.
If you pick a different issue you will almost certainly find biases stacking up differently. In a large part your perception of bias will swing heavily on which issues you consider most important.
But trying to look at it objectively (as best we can) NPR and PBS spend most of their time reporting facts, and work hard to support their opinion pieces. You can claim bias in what you choose to report (which is where many of the claims of Fox bias come from), but if you actually compare coverage you'll find they are actually surprisingly even handed with what they report.
The NYT is, unfortunately another case, and I won't try arguing that one (in a large part sue to lack of knowledge of it).
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
And after a statement like that I'm supposed to trust this guy's opinion? I stopped reading at that point.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I wish they would go with the flow, modify their business and career. I expect them to FUD, cry, legislate and get in the way as long as they can.
Here's a quick list of things that could not be done by volunteers, co-operating and, yes, earning a living at the same time:
The new is better than the old. All of the above have costs that are orders of magnitude less than the traditional methods they replace. At the same time, free quality is also vastly better.
Next on the list are:
Those traditional news and entertainment groups who move with things will survive. Those who try to legislate the limits of gramphones and AM radio on us all forever are going away. It will be possible to make money on news and entertainment but the transaction costs are going to fall and people will have to work with that. The path of least resistance is the path that always wins and people always hate the middle man. Take note, all you magic diamond people, the asshole in the middle is going to be squeezed out.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Despite the projection by conservatives that the media is liberal, the purpose of the media seems to be more of conserving the status quo, especially with the way mainstream media outlets are owned by a few corporations. OTOH, if blogs want to be more of a legitimate source, then it must take constructive criticism and improve. A story on MarketPlace suggests a candidate may emerge from the internet realm. In order for something like this to happen, bloggers must improve and accept criticism.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
CBS and all other for-profit commercial news outlets have something to protect; their profit margin. Blogs take all of that away. Blogs don't quite yet, but may soon, force these mainstream "reporters" to start taking a second look at what they have been peddling as "journalism."
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
I kept one about unemployment and looking for work for about a year. This was MY observations and opinions. Nobody should take this as predictions of other jobseekers' expectations.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Insightful from a guy pushing pyramid schemes? Dear god.
Since the explosives were not at that location when the troops arrived, a year and a half ago, calling it the Administrations fault they are gone is a lie. Trying to spring that story two nights before the election is manipulation. That has nothing to do with journalism. Since it broke early, they just looked mean and vindictive.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
-Some- problems? How about intentional violations of Federal Election laws, collaboration with one campaign against the other, and fraudulent documents?
CBS engaged in several -criminal- elections violations this election.
Editors and their bosses at GE, Westinghouse, Disney and M$ have their heads up their ass.
Bloggers have their head outside of their windows. It's first hand and they are in a better position to validate what some official thinks is happening in the world than any talking head. Blogs enable normal people to witness and report. It replaces the whole editorial food chain.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Wait, using another source for your news? You mean like the Associated Press?
Even the MSM simply puts its ear to the wire for a good chunk of its news.
Here's a dollar. Go down the corner store and buy yourself a clue.
I love blogs, and I read 'em all the time for insight on individual opinions and analysis. I don't turn to them for facts, because anything in them may be 1) misinterpreted, 2) misunderstood, 3) lacking any sort of research or corroboration of their veracity, or 4) opinions spouted as fact without even a hand wave towards objective data.
Your post falls firmly under #4, and as such I'll take it with a grain of salt. Likewise blogs in general. The major media doesn't get it all right, all the time, but at least they make an effort to check sources and verify stories before they run 'em.
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
Andrew Sullivan may have overestimated the impact of political bloggers, but all Engberg is doing is defending the status quo on the points of professionalism as defined by big media and the newspaper world it came from.
His criticism that bloggers
don't care about the veracity of the stories they are spreading... Their concern is for controversy and "hits"
could easily be levelled at various media wizards like Rush Limbaugh or Geraldo Rivera, or for that matter at television news itself, whose economic function is to provide an audience for advertisers. An alternative reason bloggers tend to say outrageous things is that they are saying what they genuinely feel, because they don't have to worry about offending sponsors or parent corporations.
I think big media's real problem with blogs is that it's difficult to adjust when "Freedom of Speech" suddenly means the freedom to speak loudly enough to be heard.
Can you say "forged documents?"
not that CBS hasn't been without its problems
Let's look at this with boolean algebra:
~~~Has(CBS, problems) = ~(CBS, problems)
Each ~ corresponds to a negation of the proposition that CBS has problems. First we have "not" then "hasn't" and finally "without", making three. And as we all know, in boolean algebra, two wrongs do make a right, but three wrongs still make a wrong.
So, CBS has not had problems.
I think what you meant to say was something like "not that CBS hasn't had it's own problems", which only has two negations:
~~Has(CBS, problems) = Has(CBS, problems)
We would all do better to convert our wit to a prolog-like syntax for a logic-check before transcribing it in the original English.
"Not that CBS hasn't been without its problems" should probably read "Not that CBS has been without its problems". Unless, of course, you mean to imply that CBS is the paragon of journalism. ;)
That said, particular blogs can be excellent.
I prefer a concentrated forum such as /. and USENET or newsgroups, where rash statements are quickly challenged in the fire (or bullshit, depending on the forum) of discussion. It soon becomes apparent who contributes the most in such forums.
Wait, did I miss a memo? People respect CBS as a solid medium for reliable and unbiased news? Didn't that stop in like... the 40's?
The feeling is mutual.
If anyone other than CBS had said this I might have given it some credibility, but CBS has none left. After their handling of the 2000 elections, the fabricated documents of the Bush National Guard story, and the dubious story about missing weapons in Iraq, I don't know how anyone can say 'CBS' and 'News' in the same sentence. Coincidentally I wrote about the demise of CBS recently in my journal.
You got it. When I was a production assistant intern for the morning new show for a CBS affiliate, that was the first thing I did when I got into the station ni the AM---I "ripped the wires", as they say in the the parlance of teevee newsland. THe printer would print out reams of AP stories, and I would rip them into individual story pieces.
THen the producer and I would choose several for the news, and I would condense them into teevee newspeak. So, a good chunk of teevee news (and of course newspaper news) is simply AP news.
And the AP is the biggest, fattest hog in the status quo establishment media. They go back into the 1800's or thereabouts.
The Associated Press is Pure Evil, condensed down through the decades....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Anyone else think it's funny that this writer said:
Since when do journalists need a conscience? I thought that a lack of conscience would lend itself better to this "craft".
scott king
While traditional media may be letting us down in a big way these days that doesn't mean that news blogs are going to replace them. The problems that have caused traditional media to let us down recently are the direct result of the corporate media consolidation that have forced news departments to become entertaining profit centers in the company as opposed to serious outlets for informing the public. As the author of this article points out that's his main complaint with news-bloggers: their main concern is to generate hits and commentary by breaking controversial "news" as soon as possible. He is entirely correct when claims that this is NOT journalism.
:-)
Don't get me wrong, blogs are a great thing and give many people the opportunity to voice their opinions and talk about how life for everyday people really is during times of great importance. Imagine how valuable a resource it would be to historians to discover an ancient blogsphere of some sorts that offered insight into the daily lives of Roman citizens, for example. That's what blogs excel at, documenting everyday life. Information that's valuable not only to future historians but to contemporary researchers and (we can hope) leaders.
Back to the problems with traditional media. Jon Stewart makes this point best in his chapter on the media in American the book as well as on his Crossfire appearence. Those are real problems and they really are doing serious harm to the democratic process in the USA. The problem with American media today isn't that they are old stodgy dionsaurs that can't keep up with the internet age, rather it's that they've abandoned the slower, methodical approach to journalism that produces accurate, insightful stories. We need more professionalism and accountability in journalism, not less. If you want to understand the mood of the digital street, as it were, turn to the blogosphere, if you want insightful, accurate and factual reporting you turn to.... err well, I dunno The Daily Show? Traditional news outlets have dropped the ball and are basically just a conduit for party talking heads to transmit talking points and no longer bother to point out if the talking points are accurate or even remotely connected with reality. That needs to be fixed, by returning to high standards of professionalism that industry used to hold itself to, the kind of journalism that investigated Watergate not the kind that investigated blow-job-gate.
Blogs will play an increasingly important role in the journalistic landscape in coming years and will supplement traditional journalism rather than replace it. Their highest potentional is to serve as an important check and balance on the fourth estate, the meta-moderators as it were on the people charged with keeping government transparent and honest. They will also continue to be the leading source of news on who your cousin Steve is dating, what your giant asshole of a boss did at work today, not mention becoming the single biggest source of teenage agnst on the planet
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
So Fox called it right before anyone else? I never understood what everyone complained about. I remember that night, and Florida was called for Gore before the polls even closed. Who has egg on their face for that?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Totally missing the point. Blog reporters are people on the scene who happen to have weblogs. There are bloggers in Baghdad, for example, reporting on the war. No blogger has to hire a reporter to fly out to Baghdad; it's already covered.
Nor does there have to be any single collection of blogs. Every reader subscribes to his own set of feeds. Everyone has his own collection.
Yeah, coverage is spotty at this point, but we're just getting started.
Or for another example, Kevin Sites may be reporting for NBC, but also has his own unaffiliated blog.
Would this article have been posted? I doubt it. This to me seems like a great example of the Old Media guys gloating, "HA! Those bloggers really f*cked it up this time! We are still relevant!" Too bad standard media fell for the exit polls last time around themselves. These polls occur in the realm of statistics and probability. They require PhD-style expertise to understand. While I personally don't have a PhD in statistics, I understood exactly what I was getting when I hit reload at Wonkette all day long, I was getting results that may or may not have any bearing on reality. Turned out that they didn't. Every site that I read exit poll results on had a disclaimer stating that I should take these numbers with a huge grain of salt. It's inexact information but why shouldn't I have access to that information if I want it?
The author of this opinion piece makes a good point. The journalistic quality of a lot of blogs is very much lacking. However, his point, doesn't support his premise that blogs will not overtake mass media especially considering that the journalistic quality of the reporting coming from the mass media is also seriously lacking. There is no reason to suggest that bloggers can't provide accurate and well-researched information as well as any "professional" journalist.
I don't think mass media is dead yet as the overwhelming majority of people in this country still heavily rely on them for information. However, it does seem obvious to me that as more people begin to rely on the Internet for news and information that bloggers will begin to make traditional journalists less relevant. The only thing that keeps them relevant now is the fact that their employers are the ones that control the flow of information. As their control wanes, so will their relevance.
life is high school!
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
As I said, the jury is still out on whether Bush stole the election, and the mounting evidence is still piecemeal and not yet worthy of a full blown pronouncement and story. In light of this growing evidence, it was way too premature for CBS to pounce on the blogs for reporting "incorrect numbers," for in this era of electronic voting it's going to take a lot of sleuthing to find out what the real numbers really are. But blackboxvoting.org is trying. Where is the CBS story on the massive FOIA effort of blackboxvoting.org?
Journalism isn't dead, it just smells funny.
We miss you, Frank!
Anyone find it ironic that facts or figures or even examples are hard to find validate in this piece? Yet it's written as "this is just obvious fact."
I'd have to admit, It's probably accurate to say most blogs are not journalism. But this article attempts to imply all blogs are not journalism. This is a classic trap in which most americans fall because they are not analytical.
And that's the most important point. Every news story must be evaluated on its facts. Every news organization must be evaluated on their treatment and use of the facts.
This is just yet another smear tactic in a long list of age old smear tactics. The smart people amongst us simply say "shut up and give me some facts already. It's the only way I'll make sense of what your saying. If I get no facts, then I call bullshit, plain and simple."
Unfortunately, no one in the US really cares about facts any more do they? If they did, they would have voted for Howard Dean or that Green Party guy.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Someone moderate this man up.
Daniel LaRusso did.
Isn't mocking blogs so blatantly and mercilessly also bad journalism? It seems a bit impartial for them to be reporting that kind of thing about bloggers, who compete with them.
Ok folks, this is just asinine. Here we have CBS making a judgement call about the quality of "journalism" somewhere else... CBS certainly has balls, I'll give them that, considering they have no right to say anything about anyone else's journalistic integrity (seeing as how they don't have any).
does cbs think reality tv is great tv? seems so, all the networks have top reality shows that all fight for the top rating. blogs seems like reality journalism for a lot of people, not cb radios.
So apparently the news is doing a great job at being impartial. Course you can look at it another way, people dont watch the news, since 75% of people who voted for Bush still think there where WMD in Iraq and that Iraq funded the attacks... neither of which where ever true
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Let's start with this: The sky is green. That statement is actually true in a way, in that there is green light coming from the sky. If you ran the light from the sky through a prism (you would have to columnate it first), you would see that this is true. And if you looked at the sky through a filter that only let green light pass, it wouldn't be black. So in that sense, it is true that the sky is green.
Nevertheless, the truth is that the sky is blue. I mean, go outside and look up, and what do you see?
I say all this to illustrate what I mean by "the truth" versus "what is true". And once you look at things with this distinction in mind, you see this all over the place.
Politics, for instance. The two examples that immediately come to mind are, "I did not inhale" and "I did not have sex with that woman." And both may be true. But the truth is, he smoked pot and he had sex with that woman.
But the point here is the news media. "Today John Kerry charged blah blah blah. The White House responded blah blah blah." And it's all true. John Kerry really said it. Someone from the White House did in fact say the other. It's all true. But what's the truth? They don't tell us.
This is the glaring flaw in the current news media. They are trying so hard to be "unbiased" (never mind that they do show bias in what stories they run, and they slant the stories a bit). But they are determined to give quotes from both sides, to let both present their side of the story. The problem is that the truth is biased. Somebody's view doesn't square with the facts very well. (Or, quite possibly, neither side does.) But the media doesn't point this out so that they will remain "unbiased".
I don't know if blogs are the answer. But the news media is certainly the problem.
Because most blogs find little journalism in CBS.
I tried to search using my standards compliant open source browser "hardcore schoolgirls asian female ejaculation water sports bestaility horse love dog love atm" and it got no hits for the image search. PS Your search engine is fucking weak.
and while making adjustments on a Westar ABC feeder channel I happen to hear "Hail to the chief". It was a live feed of Pres. Reagan speaking at the NOW convention in New Orleans, IIRC. He was received with a standing ovation that lasted well over 5 minutes. During the course of his 20 minute speech he through out about a dozen jokes. All but one received good laughs from the crowd. He finished his speech and received another standing ovation as he left the stage.
I didn't give it much thought. About 15 minutes later the main ABC news broadcast began airing. Their lead story was "Reagen receives mixed reviews from NOW", and they show a 10 second video clip of that ONE joke which no one laughed at. Then for the next minute and a half Eleanor Schmeal (sp?) ranted about how Reagan was going to drag women by the hair back into the stone age. I was stunned. ABC's 'report' could in no way be considered a fair representation of what I had seen on the news feed.
Since part of my business was setting up satellite receivers and connecting them to computers for stock market brokers, I began using a dish to watch the big three new feeds instead of the actual news programs. I was able to see a consistant Left Wing spin by the anchors on everything that the feeds gave to them. I watched Harry Reasoner and Frank Robins debate on one news feed channel the choice of word to use to express the 'news' they wanted to 'report'. The report, needless to say, bore no resemblance to the actual event. I noted the Time and the other mags followed the same line. From that time on I have never trusted the major media.
Now that internet news has arrived I depend on it. Folks who are eye witnesses describing what they see in blog reports.
Eat the "news" from your corporate masters! (BTW, dollar sell-off now under way in China. Not to be found on CBS, NBC, Fox... All over Blogistan.)
The Revolution will not be Televised!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What a load of horseshit. Sorry for the language but that's the way I feel. Although bloggers may have posted the exit poll data and declared the likelihood of a Kerry win last week, the mainstream media also screwed up. The reason why they refused to call Ohio for Bush despite the fact that it was obvious to everyone that he had won it was because their exit data showed a Kerry win.
That's why they declared states like Michigan (with a little over 80 per cent returns in) for Kerry despite the fact that less data had come in for those electoral votes then had for Ohio (where they refused to declare with over 95 per cent of returns in). Their exit data confirmed a Kerry win in Michigan but not in Ohio. They were blinded by their own faulty data and refused to acknowledge the Bush victory in Ohio.
The real story isn't that bloggers blew it by reporting the faulty exit data that the mainstream media paid for, the real story is how that data could show six states going for Kerry that ended up going for Bush. That's the real scandal, the one that the media has ignored in favor of blasting a few people who posted exist data. How did six exit polls get fucked up. Did monkeys do their surveying?
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Something I wish more bloggers would do is go out and do their own reporting and journalism.
At the same time I disagree with Junks Jerzey on one count: The good blogs that rehash existing news stories often come up with insightful new connections. They do have merit.
As for doing real journalism: Hey bloggers! Find a topic, figure out who it affects among the people where you are, and start asking people questions. Interview people, do research, and write about those things. Come up with original material rather than react to pre-existing news stories. It's a lot more fun and fulfilling.
There are some bloggers who do this. I aspire to do it when opportunities arise (I'm still a student so sometimes coursework takes precedence). Since I've been hired to do that kind of blogging in a newspaper's website, I figure I at least owe them some original content and not just--as the parent so aptly put it--letters to the editor.
As a bonus I'll throw in this bit of wisdom from legendary reporter and journalist Bill Moyers: Real News is the news we need to keep our freedom. That's what should guide CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and whothefuckever else dares to call themselves a news source.
You probably believe that B.S. story about the Russians, right?
KSTP news embeds with the 101st Airbourne filmed the explosives at Al Qa Qaa. The evidence in indisputable no matter how you try to spin it.
For a truly reprehensible action, how about how the Bush administration waited until after the election to attack Fallujah so that they wouldn't have to deal with all negative consequences of casualties beforehand. Talk about putting politics ahead of everything else!
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
Any blog that also reads AP wire?
Considering that they're "reporting" what they're being told... "A source close to the White House"... ie., some guy who was told to come and "leak" the story to us namelessly so it has more cred than if they were saying it themselves (which if they don't honor, they're not invited to the big kids' table anymore).
Unfortunately, CBS is not a particularly reputable news source any more. I generally trust their weather reports and their traffic reports. If I listened to sports, I'd trust them to report on the final score, but not on the intermediate plays.
The criticisms are, none-the-less, valid. Most Blogs are amateurish. Many are biased and non-factual. Rather like CBS (though I wouldn't call CBS amateurish).
To be fair, I'm not commenting on CBS radio, the source of the weather and traffic reports. I don't have any evidence about their accuracy, so I'm attributing to them the accuracy of their TV station.
The media, generally, process the news to meet either an editorial agenda or for entertainment value. I have never seen a media report on an event that I also witnessed which I considered even marginally fair and unbiased. (Sometime pro, and sometimes con, but never unbiased, and usually processed mainly to maximize entertainment value rather than facts.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think Iraq is a great example. I read a few blogs written by Iraqi citizens. Stuff you would never think of pro or con US. Then I read blogs from military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, they don't give the plan away but they give insight into their experiences. Some blogs just try to report what the major news media does not. Yes, most blogs spin but the accumulated reading tends to reveal the entire picture.
p
The bloggers can be at the scene. Where CBS has to send a reporter out. Then you find out they are all at the Bagdad hotel because they are afraid to leave the hotel. The reporter is not local. So, they send out local stringers. The stringers give them the report and then they send the BS back to the states. Is a stringer going to be more accurate than Dan Rather?
Once your done blogging, you turn the toob on for some video. Usually, you've read on the blog 12-24 hours ahead of what cnn is reporting. Then you immiediately see the spin or errors in the reporting and it is irritating. You know the entire picture. You also know what they might not be reporting.
Blogs really cut the crap in the election. Like Edwards blowing out of proportion the 350 tons of ammo out of 400,000 tons and then knocking the troops for it. Or a research report released right before the election claiming 100,000 iraqi civilians killed when they had no real confirmation or evidence. And then the Bush national guard story.
Here is a good example of everything you did not hear about in Iraq for the last few weeks:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/005859.ph
We finally have a new phase to replace the archaic "That's like the pot calling the kettle black!" From now on, please use the new cliche: "That's like CBS news accusing bloggers of lacking journalistic integrity!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The vast, vast majority of even the *good* weblogs are simply rehashes of information the author found elsewhere...Someone agreeing or disagreeing with a news story, and telling the world why, is not journalism. It's a letter to the editor.
A minor distinction needs to be made, but it's the whole reason the legacy media is so pissed off at teh interweb.
It's not a letter to the editor. It's an entirely different editor.
When drudge links a story to his front page, it's a front page item, regardless of whether the Washington Times originally ran it on page a1 or c17. It removes the ability of editors to shape news that they don't like.
The best example of this is still drudge outing Isikoffs Newsweek story about a particular intern, that was in the process of being spiked.
The fact that bloggers are now fact checking the mainstream media doesn't please them either, as it displays how accurate the mainstream media isn't. Kind of embarrassing to be corrected by someone who has "no journalistic integrity".
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I don't think much of CBS's "journalism" either.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"It's important to remember that most bloggers do not report the news; they report ON the news. As such, it can be useful as a sort of "watchdog" on the media. But when people start taking blogs as well-researched fact and start passing it around, it can generate enormous numbers of misinformed people."
You mean, like Slashdot?
Look at how many don't understand licenses (or contracts).
Repeated mangling of the Ghandi quote even after being corrected multiple times.
Myths that have been dismissed by Snopes and mythbusters, but still show up.
Etc, etc, and more etc.
... "Something I wish more bloggers would do is go out and do their own reporting and journalism." ...
Newspapers have full staffs of people complete with reporters. Further almost all newspaper syndicate news from wire services like Agency France Press, Associated Press, Gannett, Macedonian Press Agency, etc. A single hobbyist blogger cannot compete with this system. Maybe they can report on one or two important local events, but they are not gonna compete with any newspaper.
Like others have said all bloggers do is aggregate and make comments on news stories written by real reporters.
Ok, the newspapers and their reporters, television and its anchors have their problems but bloggers are not even reporters. Bloggers just comment on news that newspapers publish, mostly on the internet. Few bloggers even take the time to publish or mention news articles that are not available online.
Microsoft sees no redeeming features in OSS.
Slashdotters remain puzzled, but intend to get to the bottom of this...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
So There,
na, na-na-na, nah!
... it's Eric Engberg.
It's he, you may recall, whose one-sided political hatched job on Steve Forbes (referring to the flat tax as a "wacky scheme" in a straight news piece) convinced Bernard Goldberg to expose the MSM medias biases for what they are. Such exposure cost Bernard Goldberg the number 2 spot at CBS news and likely the anchor desk once someone pries it from Dan Rather's cold, dead hands.
Apparently journalism that states its biases and doesn't use codewords like "senior Administration officials" isn't journalism -- it's better, and we can't be having that.
In an election of over 100 million people, it is easy to collect enough anecdotes to prove any point. Make sure you actually have systematic evidence before you make any accusations.
The other thing I'd suggest is even if you find problems, focus more on fixing them then crowing about them unless they are really drop-dead obvious, which I do not expect. (Personally, I expect that both sides did roughly equal fraud.) Four more years of "Bush stole the election" aren't going to help your cause; y'all have cried wolf so many times you've ("you" in general) have lost our ("our" in general) trust; unless you can prove it 100% it can only hurt you, even if it is true. That's what happens when you cry wolf.
I think the networks should have called Ohio earlier. I followed the entire thing on cnn, cspan, and fox websites, and at a certain point about 90 % of the polls in Ohio were reporting, and bush had a 3 point lead. From calculations i did based on number of votes not counted, etc. it was clear that Kerry wasn't gonna win Ohio. The networks were just waiting because they didn't want to risk the small chance of having to reverse their call, like in 2000.
You've got to be one of the biggest morons on the internet. Those are all stories that were covered by big media ad nauseam, and criticized on blogs for having been given so much time.
One of the main reasons I hate the media is their arrogance. They think that they alone have the means to investigate a matter and come to a truthful conclusion. But they are just journalists. Most of them do have any special training in the matters on which they are reporting. Meaning that there are others that may be more qualified to comment on the issue at hand.
A great example is issues relating to computers. How many Slashdot readers like myself constantly groan at the oversimplications and innacuracies in news stories related to the subject of computers? Especially when it comes to security. But those in the media look down on us, as if we have no right to dare suggest that we have more expertise than the media.
I remember, during the Dan Rather "memogate" issue, a CBS exec saying that there was no comparison between his professional journalists and bloggers who are at home "in their pajamas." Oh really? What if that blogger worked in law enforcement, and had decades of experience investigating forged documents? Would you STILL think that a journalist is more qualified to comment on those documents than that particular blogger? Why the blanket assumption that EVERYONE in the media are mmore qualified to discuss an issue than EVERYONE who is not?
The arrogance of the media is unbelievable.
Since the explosives were not at that location when the troops arrived, a year and a half ago, calling it the Administrations fault they are gone is a lie.
Ooooh good wittle monkey. How does Sean Hannity's cock taste today, hmm? Salty with a touch of wickedness?
Here's the deal, bootlick: there is video of US troops with the explosives. Video. K? At Al-Qaqaa, with IAEA restraints on it, shortly after the war was over. I know, I know, this is going to go straight into your patented GOP Filter and come out the other side with some sort of lame ass excuse that, of course, makes your fascist god come out smelling like roses, but right thinking people aren't buying that shit for a New York minute, mmmk? So please, go back to getting ass fucked by the GOP all you want, but just don't insult people's intelligence with your lies.
I read through it until I reached the point where he said that "slate.com, a well respected". bla bla bla...slate is your typical left leaning rag...
(1) I never heard them mention Badnarik once and I was listening for it because that's who I voted for.
(2) I find they have an overwhelming liberal bias both in general and in this election.
The only time I heard about Badnarik was his ads the last few days before the election, a CSPAN debate and the blogs (including /.). On the other hand, Nader seemed to be in the media every day.
Sure, NPR claims to be objective but there is bias in what they report and in the stories themselves by stating things as facts which are either simply not true or supported by their report.
--
make install -not war
Luke 6:42 "Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye." (KJV)
You are aware that you and I are supposed to take this as advice, and not pick it up and wield it like a club, right?
The difference between what CBS reporters did in their college newspapers and what bloggers do is thet bloggers get feedback, and (unless they're control freaks) you can watch that too...
Something I wrote about this 5 years ago...
Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot. Now play nice children...
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
I'm not sure what NPR you listen to but I listen to them a lot.
(1) I never heard them mention Badnarik once and I was listening for it because that's who I voted for.
Okay, try this. Search google
site:npr.org
Bush: 7700 hits
Kerry: 4080 hits
Badnarik: 9 hits
Okay, he definitely got less coverage, but he got some.
site:foxnews.com
Bush: 18400 hits
Kerry: 9980 hits
Badnarik: 7 hits
So even though fox news had a lot more election coverage, they had less on Badnarik. By comparison npr was doing quite well really.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
This guy has gray hair. He just "retired". Does he even know how to use a computer, or does he still call it an "adding machine?"
You worship an aristocrat who went AWOL. You are a dumbass.
The editorial page in a newspaper is a long-established tradition. The difference here is that, with blogs, any shmoe can get their own editorial page.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
media girl
The role of the media is to influence elections.
No it's not... it's to report the truth to the best of their ability and if that effects the election so be it.
Uncritically running a story where critical facts are not yet established, where the source has sat on OLD information in order to time the report for political impact is already highly suspect. However in itself that is NOT CBS's fault... the partisanship is on the part of their source and they can report it with a (somewhat) clear conscience. But they didn't report on it when they got it... they planned to sit on it themselves to time it for the maximum political impact. THAT is not journalism... that is naked partisanship. The NYT did the (for the most part) right thing, they reported it when they got it, they didn't time their report for political effect.
But that's exactly the point- blogs are supposed to "play second fiddle". Very few actually strive for the type of recognition that mainstream media outlets strive for. Blogs are supposed to be links and analysis, with original coverage being an aside. I find it hilarious how threatened the media seems to feel, releasing a constant stream of anti-blog articles while blogs are merely a convenient way of finding information, not intended to replace the mainstream media at all, but to interpret it critically and present one's own interpretation to the world. When blogs start generating their own information that's more than relatively brief analysis, that's when they are designated "news" or "alternative news" or "opinion" sites.
CBS, Dan Rather, and FORGED MEMOS don't exactly enforce confidence. Dan "Red" Rather shot his wad and lost.
The fact that CBS laments blogs reiforces the fact that the OLD MEDIA is upset that they are no longer the final, dictatorial word as to what Americans see and believe.
Corporatism != Free Market
You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally - or in the battleground states of Florida or Ohio. The editors, producers and executives who run these MSM organizations, in typical responsible, dinosaur fashion, know it would be wrong to do so.
Although we did see ALL of the networks AND the AP put out misleading reports of a Gore lead nationally.
I'm not saying he's wrong, just that his memory has a convenient gap right around the 1467-days-ago mark, aka the last presidential election.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Cynics might suspect these old media news sources wanted most Americans to go to bed thinking the election was still up in the air and thus less inclined to believe Bush had a mandate. For the record, Bush is the first president since FDR in 1936 to win reelection and increase his party's strength in both houses of Congress. And he has the greatest margin of victory since LBJ in 1964, an election everyone regards as a landslide.
And this Eric Engberg of CBS should have visited some conservative/Republican blogs. All election day, they were putting out well-argued reasons why the exit polls on a few liberal blogs weren't to be trusted. Bloggers, like the mainstream media, aren't perfect. But they are providing a worthwhile alternative to reporters, most of whom think much too much alike.
By the way, we should show a bit of compassion for liberal bloggers. Their ideological peers in the old media treat them badly. In contrast, the conservative old media, typically political magazines, love their bloggers.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
" It's an interesting read that has some valid critiques of the format as far as journalistic integrity is concerned (not that CBS hasn't been without its problems)."
Taco, CBS isn't just "not without problems", CBS/FOX/ABC/NBC and all the other broadcasters of corporate/lobby interest crap are part of the problem, but the REAL PROBLEM is that YOU pay lip service to the illusion that American Media is about journalism.
What about the Iraqui Army trucks moving things out a week before the war started. I saw those pictures on CNN! Besides, unless you are an explosives expert, you can't tell one kind from another, so you don't know which ones our troops were handling.
As for your pitiful vocabulary, someone will mod it apprpriately.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Like the 60 plus pages of Kerry's service record he will not release? Including his original discharge, not the one granted in 2001, but the one from the early 70's that went before an Admirals review in 76. That is never done for an Honorable Discharge, I know, I have one.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
You, maybe.
I, not believing in your little cult, am under no such obligation.
(Don't assume.)
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
One of the things I learned in campaigning for Ralph Nader was that the media has its stories, for the most part, before it even gets to the scene. I got involved in the Nader campaign in mid-September. From then until mid-October, there were almost no stories on Ralph or at most one a day from all the newspapers across the country. There was no TV coverage at all. I attended speeches at Harvard and at Brown and saw no reporters, no TV, nada. Two weeks before the election, Nader announced that he knew that he wouldn't win. From that point on, newspaper coverage grew exponentially. From no stories to one a day, two a day, five and then ten a day, it was exciting. Ralph even got interviewed by David Letterman. Almost all of the coverage focused on Ralph's potential role as a spoiler, even as his campaign press room continued to put out position papers on various issues. At one point Nader even put out a press release: "Ralph Nader hands the election to John Kerry on a Silver Platter: 10 Ways to Beat George Bush". Didn't see it mentioned once in the news. The weekend before the election, I finally saw my first television cameras trained on Ralph. Making a brief appearance in Providence, Rhode Island at AS220, a local arts mecca, Ralph gave a nice 20 minute speech. He talked about why he was running, what was wrong with the Democratic Party, what sorts of things people should demand from their government, and why there was no real difference between Kerry and Bush. The TV reporter from ABC then asked her question: 1) Ralph, do you care that you might wreck everything? I don't remember if the reporter from NBC said anything. I don't think so. To be fair, CBS wasn't there. They didn't even bother to show up. They left it to NBC and ABC and the Providence Journal that night. They were probably too busy covering 'real' news. It was as if he hadn't even given his speech. I was so frustrated. After the reporters had finished their one minute of questions, Ralph was about to leave (he was making stops all over New England that day). He waved to his army (very small but nevertheless formidable) of supporters. I asked him, "The Red Sox did it. Why not you? Do you want to be President?" He said that he did want to be President and that "the Red Sox had had the benefit of a level playing field." It was as if "he had to pitch from 500 feet off home base." Both the NBC and ABC stations ran stories that night on their 11:00 news. It was actually the lead story on ABC-6 and they both used clips from the speech and questions. Both also gave time to a Kerry employee from the naderfactor.org who had been following Ralph around from town to town across the country and giving interviews to all the press. They did not know that he was an employee. They did not know that he was not local. He got his 30 seconds of air time to decry Ralph's negative impact. But this time at least, I got mine too. Lessons: 1) Real journalists know the answers to the questions before they ask them. They only ask as a courtesy. 2) Real journalists know what the real stories are. There was little except pictures of John Kerry waving at crowd in the last weeks of the campaign. This represented reality. 3) Letters to the editors at the newspapers that do not fit the mold are not used. Even Slashdot rejected every single posting I made about Ralph Nader. (I think that I made 18 submissions.) I can't quite recall where the editors announced their support for either Kerry or Bush but they surely weren't open to third party candidates. 4) Americans themselves have to take the blame for the lack of issue discussion in this campaign. They didn't demand it. It didn't happen. There was little difference between the two major parties on the most significant issue of the campaign-- the war. There was a lot of discussion about heroism or the lack thereof and cronyism, and there was a lot of hand wringing about some actual journalism that actually got done by CBS. Dan Rather ran a story based on his gut instinct as a journalist. He didn't check it enough. They didn't get it vetted by the White House. He has since apologized and has learned-- Never run a story unless it comes directly from one of the major party press rooms. You can't take risks. You can't afford to be wrong. Ever.
Triple negatives can be tricky. 'Not that CBS hasn't been without its problems'
=> 'Not to say that CBS has had problems'
Of course, most people could care less about this kind of thing.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Here's a better thought: Don't rely on one "primary source of raw factual reporting" 'cause there's no such fucking thing.
When was the last time anyone even heard of a reporter or news outlet investigating anything? Please prove me wrong, I'd like to be wrong in this regard, but I can only recall smaller outlets like the The Register doing it. Or people with a mission, like Black Box Voting.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Who will determine what is fair if the fairness doctrine is instituted??? Hmmmmm? Let the truth be sorted by the listeners. Liberals always think they need to be the brains for the populace. Get over it. Let Al Franken compete with Rush, but don't put Al on 600 or 700 stations for 3 hours a day just because you think it's fair. If he's any good, or worth listening to he'll get ther himself. The sponsors and stations will demand it. And, I think if you look closely you'll find Kerry had fewer donations but they were larger donations, and you have got to be kidding to say the media gave greater support to Bush. Can you say Bruce Springsteen ad nausium geez.
Oh come on. Just real rough ... Badnarik got one tenth of one percent the mention of his competitors. For a candidate that was on the ballot in what 47 or 48 states, more than any other thrid party candidate that's bias. Whereas Nader got
site:npr.org
nader 155 hits
site:foxnews.com nader
nader 434 hits
Your defense is that since NPR mentioned Badnarik more than Fox News they aren't biased. Bullshit.
Your defense is that since NPR mentioned Badnarik more than Fox News they aren't biased. Bullshit.
Read what I wrote carefully. On the issue of third party candidates I merely said NPR was the least biased. Sure Nader got a lot more coverage than he deserved even on NPR, but the fact remains that NPR was still much better than Fox.
So let's go over this carefully: least biased does not mean without bias. The statistics you give only further prove the point that, while not without bias, NPR was less biased than Fox.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
More bloggers doing their own reporting would be good for several reasons:
1: Independent viewpoint where the spin is either lesser or clearer.
2: Free of the need to please your boss' sponsors.
3: No, a single hobbyist (you're the first person I've seen to spell that correctly, congratulations) blogger couldn't compete with an army of corporate reporters. On the other hand, a grassroots mass of interdependent, peer-reviewed bloggers--open-source reporting if you will--I believe would turn out some high quality work, maybe even provide a place for AP, MPA, etc. to look for people to hire. I already trust "Democracy Now!" and Indymedia more than I do CNN or Fox. Why? The voices are independent of corporate sponsors. They are a necessary addition to CNN, et al, if I am going to consider myself informed.
This apparent attempt to employ the double negative as a subtle back-handed assertion blundered with the o'er eager addition of a third negative: "not", "without" and now "hasn't", thereby actually complimenting CBS with the precious back-handed-with-a-twist syntax.
Since the context of the message otherwise seems critical of CBS, one would assume this additional negative to be in error. Here, then, are three suggested corrections:
Conventional Weakly-Assertive Double Negative:
Subtly Sarcastic Insinuation, with embedded Negatives:
Uber-Sly Double-Double Negative (recommended only for experts in closed disCourse -- don't try this at home!!)