I've been a good boy lately about staying out of discussions on blogs run by people who buy their hats a size too small. But this one sucked me in.
Warning: You have to wade through a long, self-congratulatory post about bloggers doing journalism (Look! I have e-mail! Look! I can use a telephone!) before getting to the nub, which appears to be the writer's belief that exercising news judgment is in itself a violation of the journalist's obligation to be neutral and objective. I couldn't quite believe what I seemed to be reading and said so in the comments.
In his response, the writer pointed out, quite sensibly, that I am a dipwit, snotty, lame-assed, whining, wussy, loudmouthed pustule, lying, agenda-driven, pathethic loser of a jackass who operates a socialist cesspool of a blog.
True enough, as far as it goes, but is he serious when he links news judgment to Nazi propaganda? Apparently he's trying to be. Pretty sad.
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12 comments:
David, you never cease to amaze me. As busy as you are, you have time to wander over to a kindgergarten-playground of a blog and argue with some fool who wouldn't know a real news story if it bit him in the ass? My God, he thinks he's Woodward and Bernstein (no, wait; he despises them) because he "breaks" a story about some $6-an-hour phone jockey working for CNN. And then you argue with him! Get back to work, man. You've got important stuff to do.
Ed, I swear, it's been months since I've done anything like that. I had a weak moment! Too much turkey. Too many homemade tamales. Too much time off.
Never again. From now on, it's straight to the porn.
The Daily Pundit pounds on the MSM, but the guy peed in his pants when he was mentioned in the New York Times. He's an MSM wannabe. The evidence follows:
July 26, 2002
DailyPundit Reader William Safire Says....
Blog
The first use I can find of the root of blog in its current sense was the 1999 ''Robot Wisdom Weblog,'' created by Jorn Barger of Chicago.
Then followed bloggers, for those who perform the act of blogging and -- to encompass the burgeoning world of Web logs -- blogistan as well as the coinage of William Quick on the blog he calls The Daily Pundit, the blogosphere.
I have to say I never expected to find DailyPundit mentioned in the pages of NYT .
Posted by at July 26, 2002 06:10 PM
True, most blogs aren't worth squat, and most bloggers are jsut airing out their egos. But you guys in journalism - it's annoying - you're all legends in your own minds.
Anonymous, Interesting you should say that because part of Quick's argument was that my opinion doesn't matter because his blog is bigger than mine. Isn't that exactly the sort of arrogance that was supposed to bring down MSM?
And another thing: There is a certain amount of arrogance in the press, just as there is among bloggers -- and probably for the same reasons. I'm not persuaded that it's possible to get up every day and write stories and opinions for mass consumption without a certain underlying arrogance. I think I would be a better blogger if I had a bit more of it.
Arrogance is the thing ... it's not that you aren't good at what you do, or that there isn't a certain craft to your craft. But when criticism comes your way, your attitude is that it is beneath you. That's more what I refer to ... "The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people." (Justice Hugo L. Black) There's a whole lot of deceiving going on these days, in Iraq to be sure, but all over, really, and most of you in the press aren't doing squat to expose it - and yet you're so sure, when faced with criticism, that you got it all .. that's arrogance.
Anonymous,
I've heard arguments similar to yours many times, and I honestly have to say that I don't get it. Obviously, a certain amount of criticism of journalists is endemic, and you have to shrug it off or you would be so consumed by self-loathing that you wouldn't be able to continue. But I've been in the business for a long time, and the notion that journalists don't take criticism seriously is entirely novel to me. Serious criticism sticks in my head for a long, long time, and that's true of most of the people I've worked with over the years.
I had a boss once who said the chief form of exercise among newspaper editors was sitting bolt upright in bed at 3 o'clock in the morning. That seems about right to me. This is not a business for the smug.
Perhaps, then, it is what is considered "serious criticism." Anyway, read, if you will, Michael Massing, "Today's Reporters: The Enemy Within" in New York Review, hopefully you can access it for free at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18555. It's written to criticize but also to understand the pressures journalists face in our current hostile atmosphere. Give it 20 minutes, if you have 20 minutes.
Well, I wouldn't give too much credibility to a critic who hides behind either a synonym or chooses to remain "Anonymous" while shooting his/her little darts. Like a sniper in a tree, hiding and criticising without exposure or accepting responsibility and the inevitable consequenses of return fire or criticism of their own remarks is cowardice, especially when lambasting journalists who must face criticism everytime their columns are printed. Come on out of your little bush "Anonymous" and take public responsibility for your own writings and then, you can legitimize your own critiques of others!
I tried hiding behind a synonym once. It was actually a synonym for cinnamon, but I don't remember what it was now.
Synanon?
Hansen got it right - I've been hiding behind a synonym. I should have signed myself as "Name WIthheld".
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