Bukka, being ignorant on the subject of Australian media, I didn’t realize the difference between the public and the private networks.

I knew that Murdoch had penetrated (an apt word for what Rupert does) the market there, but I was still pleasantly surprised that Australian reporters were denied an open press conference with Our Imperial President because it was thought they’d be too rough on him. We could use that kind of media in the States these days and a few, like David Gregory at NBC, have found their hind legs lately and stand up to the Little King’s media henchmen on occasion.

“But I also knew a lot of reporters who were content to suck up to those with power, rewrite press releases, seal the envelope instead of push it.”

Unfortunately, I was well acquainted with this type—it would be nice to say they were part of a vast media conspiracy but the true answer was much more mundane: They were simply lazy careerists.

Go along to get along, don’t rock the boat, if it bleeds it leads, and follow the path of least resistance. (In fact, most of them wrote news stories in those sorts of cliches.)

It’s even more tragic that these dull bumpkins were often promoted to editorial and news directors, and I’ve never seen more of these slackers in positions of power at any previous time.

I didn’t think you were attacking all reporters, RS. I just wanted to speak up in defence of a profession I USED TO admire. At the time I was doing it, there were a lot of fire-breathing newsmen and women who wanted to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” as H.L. Mencken put it. But I also knew a lot of reporters who were content to suck up to those with power, rewrite press releases, seal the envelope instead of push it. You saw the biz from the inside; you know the type. They’re probably still working in the media. We’re not. Perhaps WE’RE the ones who got it wrong!

As for BBC vs. U.S. news, same thing applies in Oz. The two government-run free-to-air channels, ABC and SBS, have fantastic news programmes. Hard-nosed, unafraid of scary truths, willing to criticise the leaders who pay their salaries. The three commercial channels? Feh! Gossip, murder, celebrity. Just like in America.

Hey,Bukko, I wasn’t attacking people like you who got involved in the profession for the right reasons and tried to do their jobs, just the kids who thought it would be some kind of hot-shot celebrity career that didn’t involve much more work than looking good.

Just before the Watergate story broke, I was working as a news director in a medium-market radio station that was owned by the local newspaper. I, too, was fired for pursuing stories embarrassing to the publisher’s golfing buddies and for not slavishly broadcasting the tripe the local politicians handed me.

Of course, you stepped up to a respectable career when you got out of the news business; I misspent part of my youth in advertising following my being fired. (Forgive me, Lawd.)

ChicagoGuy, I do the same thing; check the BBC broadcast and they watch CNN, MSNBC, etc. (But not Fox—that causes acute dyspepsia.)

Watching and reading about the war in Iraq in the British media, compared to their American counterparts, is like getting the news from Edward R. Murrow in London, and then from Carrot Top in our New York studios. Even contrasting the way Wolf Blitzer formulates his questions to the way a BBC anchor does is instructive of how far right (and relentlessly corporate) the US media has become in the past 25 years.

Hey RS Janes: I was one of those “starry-eyed kids” in the 1970s who went to journalism school because I was inspired by the Watergate reporters. Not the Hollywood ones, but the REAL Woodward and Bernstein. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with that. At the time, they represented the power of the pen to challenge the corruption of those who wielded the sword.

I worked for a decade as a newspaper reporter, mostly on smaller publications. Even at podunk weeklies, I had the example of W&B;in mind, wanting to bust the chops of government officials who misused tax money, gave governmental favours to their friends and committed crimes whilst in power. I never sucked up to the officials, preferring to keep aloof when other scribblers joined the “we’re all buddies here” chuckling circles. I uncovered a lot of dirt—not the sexual kind; that was too cheap ‘n’ easy—and pissed a lot of people off. To me, that’s what being a good reporter was all about.

And you know what it got me? Fired, a lot of the time. Like the twice-weekly paper in St. Mary’s County Maryland where the vice-chairman of the county commission was a big land developer who was always getting the environmental and zoning laws bent to allow his housing projects on the Chesapeake Bay waterfront. He sued this 14,000-circulation paper for damage claims that amounted to the BILLIONS of dollars. The guy never won a case, but he drove the paper’s legal fees up so high that it was easier for it to stop reporting aggressively.

You wonder why reporters are chummy? Because the ones who aren’t become the target of angry calls from powerful people that they’ve offended. The calls aren’t to the reporters, they’re to the editors and publishers. And all things considered, these E’s and P’s would rather have fewer scandalous stories if it results in them getting less grief. They’ll sell the same amount of papers no matter what. And their lives will be a lot easier.

After getting the sack from the Tampa Tribune in 1991 (hacked off too many people pursuing a story of a small-town police chief’s wife who embezzled a million dollars from her orange grove and cattle baron boss, who did a lot os suspicious cash business from which it was easy to steal) I switched careers.

I’m a nurse now, a career that is full of shit, literally, but not the same kind that journos get. I make more money with a 2-year college degree than I did with a B.S. and 10 years of experience. And my skills are in demand all over the world, which is how I could emigrate here. But if you’re steamed at the low quality of journalism, don’t just blame the starry-eyed, 70s-inspired reporters. The go-along, get-along culture goes through and through.

It’s a given, for example, that our Great White Leaders will try to beg any tough question handed them by the press at W.H. news conferences.  My faith in our democracy will be well on its way to restoration when the GWL begs and the journalist says, “Hold on, GWL. Once again, you fucking didn’t answer my question.  I’m going to ask it again; you listen real, real hard to see if you can understand my question, repeat my question back to me, then try real, real hard to answer the question we both know and all your citizens know I asked you. After you’re finished with your answer, I will tell you if you answered my question.” If there were time for only one exchange like that at any W.H news conference, it would be more valuable to the people and our democracy than all the other BS to which we’re so accustomed.  If there were one exchange like that, there wouldn’t have to be many more.  I prefer answers to politeness, even PC civility.  One might be led to believe that W.H. journalists fear for their jobs were they that insistent on getting non-BS answers from the GWL.

Wonder what happened to James Gekert / Jeff Gannon (might have 1st names mixed up)? That BS wasn’t hardly called at all. Except for the White House to say he was not a plant.  Maybe his website “Military 9” is thriving.

Will

About six years ago I started watching BBC news on US public television and was amazed at how much world news Americans never get to see. Since then I have relied more upon the internet and less upon the mainstream media for news. I just felt that our news here in USA was more for entertainment or worse, a vehicle for Bush’s talking points rather than reporting what actually goes on in the world. I suppose it doesn’t matter to our so-called mainstream media personalities what they report, as long as they get their annual seven figure salaries.

I just wrote a letter to Reuters complaining about a so called news article.

It was a malicious attack on Chavez full of distortions and lies passed off as “news”.  The capitalist press has no care for truth ever.  The way the press should be dealt with is bombs and bullets, that is the only thing capitalist pigs understand.

Unfortunately, I think we are seeing here the results of the starry-eyed kids who attended journalism school in the 1970s because they saw Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman take down a president in an hour and forty minutes, and they thought that would be just a swell career.

Real journalism is usually lonely, painstaking work that doesn’t win you any popularity contests, something these career-minded ‘journalists’ never counted on.

Of course they spread bullshit—it’s the only thing of which they have intimate knowledge.

Along with the rise of the corporate right-wing media and the willingness of nasty Rove Republicans to try and get you fired for writing things they don’t like, the people running our newsrooms and writing our news today are mainly from that 1970s starry-eyed group who thought journalism would be a gosh-golly tremendously exciting ‘celebrity’ career.

It’s also a tragedy that they often bypassed teaching of the Constitution in those journalism classes of the ‘Me’ decade; they might have had some respect for the importance of what they’re doing, beyond guaranteeing their ‘access’ and making sure they aren’t dropped from a VIP’s guest list.

BUT as we have seen, Journalists are not alone in their cowardly approach to reality. 

politicians, entertainment czars, and even the A.C.L.U are backing away from issues which offend the far right reactionaries.

When is torture not torture,
repression patriotism,
and a bloodbath of civilians an emerging democracy?

when you read about them in the New York Times.

Whats with the Bush twin daughters??
What are they doing??
Why are they traveling instead of helping their daddys war???
Why do they get such hands off treatment since they are adults??
Do they have jobs??

This is a bit like Germany figuring out why it lost WWII in 1956.  What is he clueless??  I am sorry but this is nothing new it is an old standard that the web and Comedy Central have shown to be going directly against the market.  The market wants blood , we want to know the truth but the MSM will not give it to us because they are to busy acting like they are part of the American ruling class and now one guy stands up and says “we never actually ASK questions, and even if we do we never follow up” and we are supposed to applaud?  Maybe he should have awoken BEFORE the main stream media had proven their irrelevance instead of trying to “save the soul” of the media now that all the politico’s hate them and most of the population do as well.  The pentagon must be worried that it will lose its megaphone as the Washington Post has been one of there favored mouth pieces in the past.

Froomkin’s column is my favourite part of the Washington Post now. It’s all about the White House, particularly Bush and his minions. His column has lots of links to source materials like the full text of the Hadley memo about Maliki. He also mentions what other newspapers, magazines and broadcast channels are saying about the White House, with links so you can check THEM out. If you read no other publication online, you can still get a good picture of what’s in the American mainstream media by checking Froomkin.

He’s anti-Bush, in the sense that saying the Emperor has no clothes is anti-emperor when the emp is walking around naked.  Froomkin isn’t a rabid Bush-hater like me, but he puts things into perspective. When Bush tells a lie at a press conference, Froomkin will point out that what the weasel said is contradicted by the facts. Too bad the rest of the press corps won’t do that. Fropomkin can get away with it becaue he writes for the Post’s online version, not the “dead tree” part of the paper. You can find him in the Opinion section, under the “blogs” pulldown.

He is so right! 
People are sick of double talk.  Every advertisement telling us these corporations are trying to sell us something for a reason other than money, all the big Pharmas yearning to do good while they spend more on lobbying and publicity than on research, to the politiciens selling themselves like aging peripaticiens to the highest bidder while America is being stripped and plundered and these journalists expect us to read their drivel such as the Emily Post banter of George Wills.
Thanks to Dan Froomkin for calling it what it is, BS.

I applaud Dan Froomkin here for saying something that has needed to be said:  media, stop being relativistic and “PC” and get some guts.

Fox news, unfortunately, has realized this early on to the conservatives’ benefit.  I suggest the left follow in the footsteps of people like Sheer who choose to say that there is real “truth” and that we need to pursue the path of a secular, rationalistic society, and not be afraid to be opinionated for fear of offending someone.

Bravo