In praise of real journalists...

[Dookus]

I love journalists.... real ones. People who studied journalism. People who worked on putting out a paper, or a news report. People who are trained in journalistic ethics, in the who/what/when/where/why of news reporting.

One of my dearest friends in college is a reporter ... a big one. She worked her ASS off in college for the school paper and radio station, and then worked as a stringer for some small papers, then some bigger ones, and now has a pretty good job at a major American newspaper. I trust her. I trust that she learned her craft under the tutelage of some tough old geezers who demanded she do it right.

But now we're in a stage where anybody with a keyboard is a "journalist", and I don't like it very much. I adore that anybody with a keyboard can now be heard, but I worry very much the half-cocked opinion of anybody who can afford broadband is given the same weight as that of somebody who spent 10 years covering car accidents and prostitution arrests while learning their craft.

Yes, some bloggers are journalists. Most are not. Jeff Gannon was not a journalist, and we are rightly attacking him over that, but unfortunately, we're doing it with information from OTHER people who have the same or even less journalistic credentials than Gannon himself.

We're in the midst of an idea revolution, due to the internet. Things are changing rapidly, and I don't know where they're going to go. But we will have lost something important if all ideas are considered equal, simply by virtue of the fact that somebody can type.

[tsuki]

1. But if we did not have blogger, we would have Faux unlimited.

[Dookus]

2. I'm not saying we shouldn't have bloggers...

not at all. But I would hope the consumers would show a little more discretion about what they believe, based on the sources.

[punpirate]

5. There's part of the problem...

... referring to citizens as consumers of news. That's what the news corps want us to think.

Now, here's the nub of the problem, I think. If the vast majority of all the well-washed, well-paid reporters from all the major chains and big-city papers who do manage to get into the White House every day had done their jobs, do you think the influence of the so-called blogosphere would be what it is at the moment? Not bloody likely.

Now, I understand that there may be much restriction on reporters these days from above, and that what's currently happening may not be their fault exclusively, but I also don't see very many risking their well-paid, high-visibility jobs asking the sort of questions which have gone unasked for a long time, either, which, these days, is a clear moral and constitutional failing.

There's a serious vacuum in the news business now, and the bloggers are filling it. Would I like to see standards for bloggers? No. I'd like to see standards for the great many journalists who seem to be operated by remote control to a degree not seen since the McCarthy days.

Bloggers are just a symptom of the real problem. One never cures a problem by trying to make its symptoms disappear. One goes after the root cause.

Cheers.

[Dookus]

7. But I also see a problem

where "news" is reported, and often accepted here, based on the opinions or uncorroborated research of a blogger. There are no standards, and there are no little to no repercussions when they're wrong. Look at Drudge - people were readily accept that he's a hack, but if he were on OUR side, he'd be quoted like gospel.

We've had literally thousands of posts now on the Gannongate "wrinkles" that were all begun by ONE blogger who found something about Gannon "reminiscent" of another scandal. That set off a frenzy to prove that Gannon is either the Lindbergh baby, or Aimee Semple-MacPherson, or lord knows who else. It's pure, unadulterated speculation allowed to run rampant because this blogger is given the same credibility as a real journalist.

[Swamp Rat]

9. What the...?

I haven't been able to follow the Gannon threads since I can't seem to figure out what the hell everyone is talking about. I cannot tell what is fact and what is fiction in that jumbled mess.

[Dookus]

16. it's hard to keep up...

but Gannon is supposedly a boy that was kidnapped a long time ago by a pedophile ring that includes George H. W. Bush.

Then, for some reason, the people who run this pedophile ring believed it was a good idea to stick him in the White House Press corps. go figure.

[punpirate]

10. Is that situation fundamentally different...

... than what's happening in newsrooms today, in its final effect on how the news is presented? No. Reporters who stand in front of Scott McClellan and do "he said, she said," are the real authority figures in the news business, not the bloggers, and they're the ones that most people are reading and watching and listening to these days.

Yes, I know what you're referring to, and that's a fundamental part of human nature, to misunderstand, to go off half-cocked. If it weren't, the tabloids would have been out of business decades ago.

But, don't look at it in terms of the microcosm here, or on the blogs. Look at the larger reasons for why the blogs are getting noticed, if only in this sense: for two damned years, the supposed best and brightest in the news business had an imposter daily in their midst at virtually every news conference and gaggle, and not a single one of them decided it was worth writing about.

That's an extraordinary circumstance, fully illustrating what's wrong with the news business today. Bloggers noticed that imposter, and if any in the White House press corps did, they damned sure didn't investigate it and write about it.

The problem with blogs is not that exist, or that they encourage this sort of speculation, but that the largest part of the corporate press has abdicated its investigative, muckraking role to them. Many of the bloggers aren't trained in journalism--that's abundantly clear, at times--but those who are, aren't doing the job.

Remember that a lot of the news during the Revolutionary War got out to the public through the pamphleteers, who were, for the most part, printers, or people who knew printers. Why? Because the official press was under the control of Cornwallis and the king.

If the bloggers are a chigger in the armpit of the mainstream press today (and there are already indications that they are), that ought to spur the dilettantes to ask why they've suddenly been infested with chiggers. Right now, they're just scratching and complaining. :)

Cheers.

[lonestarnot]

12. chiggers in an armpit, chigger infestation.....that's a clever way to

describe, do you have lightening bugs where you live too? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[Swamp Rat]

8. "Bloggers are just a symptom of the real problem."

That's one way of looking at it. (symptom as manifestation)

I was thinking bloggers are a reaction to a problem, as a spontaneous resistance to oppression oozing up from the ground.

Perhaps neither idea precludes the other.

[punpirate]

11. Same-same...

... a runny nose is the body's reaction to a cold virus. It's a symptom.

The body politic's main immunological defense, the free press, no longer works on the latest new assault. Some other defense is necessary. It may not work well, but it is an immunological response to the Bush virus. :)

[lonestarnot]

13. chiggers, viruses, bird flu, computer spies, snuffed agents, my my we

have many things on our plate tonight.. no chicken please.

[punpirate]

14. Well, if the metaphor fits...

... I always say.... :)

Talking about the American press today invites comparisons to pestilence....

[tsuki]

6. That is the problem...sources. I remember McCarthy. They said this...

They said that...

I watched Maher one nigh and Tucker Carlson said there were a million studies out there that proved his point. No one asked him to identify one source, one study.

They said is good enough for most. Bloggers are different. They must prove themselves, or perish.

[Swamp Rat]

3. Seymour Hersh, Bill Moyers, Helen Thomas.. I wish we had more like 'em n/t

[Dookus]

4. yep

so do I.

[lonestarnot]

15. Oh I do agree here. n/t