Posted on 02/05/2005 9:56:17 AM PST by UpHereEh
We are not amateurs and we are going to kick your butts. We have watched you for years try to tell us how to think, what to think, who to vote for and what to believe based solely on your own agenda. In past years, you have come to think of yourselves as the fourth branch of government, the movers and shapers of opinion and the arbiters of truth. In case you have not been watching, North America is sick and tired of you. We are turning away from you in record numbers. Your audience and readership is declining faster than you can say the word 'bias', and instead of recognizing the trend, you have only become further entrenched and determined to force society to play by your rules.
Technology has allowed us to ignore you, and in many cases, replace you altogether.
I grew up watching Knowlton Nash and Walter Cronkite every night, not yet aware of their personal agendas, editorial bias and overwhelming desire to make our respective nations “see things their way”. I saw these low-level policy advocates replaced by the most ambitious, dishonest, agenda-driven TV news North America has ever produced. That Dan Rather is one of you should be enough to make you feel dirty....
You believe yourselves to be solely qualified to pontificate on the day-to-day events going on around the world as if journalism school gives you a special insight into the truth. When I was in college, people went into journalism degree courses only if they flunked out of business school and did not want the hassle to become teachers.
Well guess what? The North American public is on to you.
Persons with knowledge and experience are not only ignoring you, but also replacing you as sources of information. CBC and US alphabet Broadcast networks news ratings are falling faster than Bill Clinton’s pants on a speaking tour. These new news sources, which don't need anything but their personal experiences and skills when sharing information with the public; persons who have spent more time learning and doing than overpaid talking heads ever will, are generally more accurate and informative than you know how to be.
The Internet and Blogosphere would scare you, if you were smart enough or honest enough to know better. Some of your ratings guy and news directors slowly realize the threat and have found it necessary to have you find an unusual disgust for “pornography”, on the internet, which you do not share in any other media. This gives you a advocacy vehicle for supporting restrictive government censorship of the free market of news and ideas on the net that scares dishonest politicians as well.
Both you and your corrupt friends in politics fear people with practical knowledge and experience discussing current and historical events with more ability than you, are sharing more factual and in-depth information, and at a rate which you could never compete. We are relegating many of you to overpaid gossip mongers, while you don't want to acknowledge that we are eating your lunch.
You manufacture polls, trying to convince us of what people are thinking as you have always done, but now, knowledgeable people are analyzing your methodology, your weighing and sampling and pointing out if your polls are to be believed. You can no longer expect what you say to be taken for gospel, because we are no longer amateurs about information. Someone, somewhere on a little web site is going to smoke you out, report your biases, and make you less believable than you once were. Count on it.... Liberal spinners, remember the subliminal gun flash ad?
I'm writing this, because I know you are watching. Just as you watched last week when one of us 'amateurs' beat you at your own game. It happens here all the time. Free Dominion or Canada Free press or Free Republic are not groups of 'amateurs' or nutcases in a “shadowy” treasonous agenda, as you like to think of us. Perhaps you’re projecting your own agendas on us. The chat rooms, bloggers and e-zines are a slice of Canada, filled with people from all walks of life, whose cumulative knowledge dwarfs that of you and your “paid guest experts” who validate your case on receipt of their pay check. I was offended to read the opinionated MSM’s reaction to people here and at the Blogs who shared what started your fraudulent flunky Dan Rather, and his attempt to pass off what was clearly a forged document as legitimate news.
You attempted to deride us, not take us seriously, dismiss us as partisans (which is apparently only a bad thing if one is conservative) and generally ignore the wealth of information we passed along to the public about one of yours trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We nailed Dan Rather, not you, and you can't stand it....
It is only going to get worse for you.
You can no longer tell us anything, and expect to be believed without question. You can no longer mix your agendas into your 'news' and expect to get away with it. We may not catch you every time, but eventually we will, and then many of you are going to have to get real jobs. And when you do, you are going to need more than the ability to mislead, lie, slander and ignore people who don't agree with you. In the future, expect for Blogs like Instapundit and others to be on you like a fly on stink when you attempt to mislead us....
You want to call Bush stupid, but you don't want to talk about his hundreds of flying hours in a jet that has killed lesser aviators, you only want to discuss what furthers your agenda, because you know that when the Liberal-left win, YOU are in charge. You don't want to talk about our President's Master's Degree from Harvard while at the same time Al Gore could not hack Divinity school. You want to talk of Harper’s “hidden agenda” but you never followed up on Martin’s conflict of interest with CSL and Chretien with Powercor.
Don't you wish you could regulate us? We know you spend your nights praying to the gods of the Fairness Doctrine, hoping to silence us, Fox news or conservative radio talk shows. Sorry, but we are here, and we are not going anywhere. Too bad we can't say the same for you. It is you who is being silenced as your audience is paying more attention to us, and tuning you OUT. Fox News is in 50 million fewer homes and gaining significant market share in Canada where it is relegated to a semi exclusive bandwidth, but they managed to beat you silly during the Republican Convention, election coverage and Iraqi conflict news programming. How did that happen? US; that's how. Because of us, the Internet, the Blogosphere, Talk Radio and others, the nation no longer see you as the gatekeepers of information....
You might actually learn something from us merry bands of 'amateur' journalists. You see, we don't have an audience to please. We don't have to sell ad-space, or get face-lifts to keep our jobs. That leaves us free to share information on the subjects we might know a little something about without angering our liberal masters. On Free Dominion, you can at times find as many threads angry at Conservatives as you can Liberal. We don't have to hire experts, if we don't know something, we can ask a fellow FDer or use Google, much faster than you can pay someone to tell you what you want to hear.
On Free Dominion alone, there are experts in many fields. They have writers, party officials, engineers, businessmen, market investors, industrialists, aviators, artists, journalists, (they keep that on the down-low), lawyers, historians, teachers, politicians, current and former members of all branches of the government; all who actually know what they are talking about without having a script (or party talking points) shoved in their face.
The choice is yours, MSM. You can join us in working to share information with a hungry audience, or you can be replaced. We don't need Nielson, just a web site and an idea. Instead of insulting the remainder of your dwindling viewers, readers and listeners, why don't you just agree to cut the crap, stop the parroting of the NY Times, Toronto Star or BBC long enough to do your own work, and finally decide to become REAL journalists again.
I'm not saying we are journalists; we have jobs and careers beyond 'he-said-she-said'. We do like to share what we know, and we don't even get it right every time. However, the truth is in the numbers. We have them and they are growing, while yours are shrinking more rapidly every day. If you don't change your ways and soon, you are going to become irrelevant before this decade is over. Many of you already are. We only tune in to Peter Mansbridge to watch him bravely strain to keep his composure whenever he has to report another Liberal scandal too big to hide or another Conservative seat gain or provincial win. On a good night CBCs total viewership barely equals the number of viewers on the Wymin’s network.
The trends are in our favor. If you don't wise up, we will kick your agenda-driven *sses.
With my sincere thanks and apologies to "Pukdog" for editorial licence
Hat tip to Free Dominion
a great rant to read!
Bada-bing, bada-boom, LSM (lame stream media)!
Thanks for a great read! As a fellow northerner (Minnesota) I can share your disgust with all the liberal drivel that we have to hear every day. I know there are lots of common sense Canadians out there, and the fun has just begun for all you conservative thinkers up there. With Fox News upsetting all their monopolistic airwaves, plus the emerging Canadian blogosphere, I expect great things from our like-minded neighbors from the north!
Great read!!!!!!!!!!!
Agreed, excellent rant!
And this line reminded me of a news show ad:
"In past years, you have come to think of yourselves as the fourth branch of government, the movers and shapers of opinion and the arbiters of truth."
IIRC, CBS had an oozing ad a year or two ago stating how they were the chief 'shaper of opinion'.
I've been noticing your posts since you joined, and haven't had the chance to say "Welcome to FR". It's always good to hear that up there someone understands reality. Now if you could just get rid of all those mosques along I-5 going into Vancouver............
Kudos for the great read!!!
Mike
As they say, "Suitable For Framing."
Great rant!
We have a WINNER!!!!!!
Thanks for a great read.
BTW, it's not PukDog, it's Pukin Dog. Since I'm (STILL) a charter member of The Pukin Dog Fan Club even though he's no longer around, I am impelled to give proper credit where it's due by providing a link to the original thread:
OPEN LETTER TO THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA: We are NOT Amateurs and we are going to kick your butts.
Thanks, I'll see what I can do ;)
It was just posted there today so I figured it was a new one, and only did a recent search. Well worth a repost though, he hit it right on the head with this one.
No complaint from me! Glad to see it finally reached our Canadian counterpart!
BTW, have you ever been to Point au Baril on the Georgian Bay? :-)
Thanks Mike, just sendin' some love from up here, eh!
I've been to Georgian Bay, but not specifically Point au Baril. It's beautiful up there, eh?
In the summer, at least. It's gorgeous. Only the toughened Canadians and Newfies can take it during the winter.
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