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The Media Mob
American Thinker ^ | August 21, 2007 | James Lewis

Posted on 08/22/2007 3:09:56 AM PDT by Puzzleman

...snip...

The Big Media are a mob. That should be Politics 101. They are a tiny, unchecked power elite, locked into life-long careers in the remnant of a crumbling monopoly over America's national conversation.

...snip...

It's all very effective; with a more truthful media the Democrats wouldn't stand a chance in electoral politics. The entire American Left owes its existence and power to the Media Mob.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: democrats; liberalmedia; media; mediamob; msm; politics
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Wow! A lot of truth here!
1 posted on 08/22/2007 3:09:59 AM PDT by Puzzleman
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To: Puzzleman

It is always refreshing to hear the truth so clearly stated.


2 posted on 08/22/2007 3:55:28 AM PDT by wgflyer (Liberalism is to society what HIV is to the immune system.)
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To: Puzzleman
Like other unaccountable elites, they are monumentally fickle, self-indulgent, snobbish, vain, vulgar, entitled, incestuous, arrogant, ignorant, unprincipled, hysterical, and demagogic.

I love that line.

3 posted on 08/22/2007 4:01:08 AM PDT by Fishtalk (http://patfish.blogspot.com)
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To: Puzzleman; Timesink; martin_fierro; reformed_democrat; Loyalist; =Intervention=; PianoMan; GOPJ; ...
Media Schadenfreude PING.

Absolutely BRUTAL description of The Media Mob (the MM). We may have a new acronym for the MSM, and now the Media Mob will have to write new stories condemning the use of MM as "right-wing know-nothingism".

Not that they'd actually understand what the term meant...

;-)

4 posted on 08/22/2007 5:58:59 AM PDT by an amused spectator (AGW: If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a research lab, you never know what you'll find)
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To: Puzzleman
Fine article. I always respect writers who go deep into the history of the United States to arrive at conclusions about the present and the future. Thank you for posting this.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, "Meet the Honorable Jose Carranza, Mayor, Governor, Congressman, Judge and President"

5 posted on 08/22/2007 6:07:53 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob (2008 HAS BEGUN, www.ArmorforCongress.com)
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To: Puzzleman

Brilliant synopsis of today’s MSM


6 posted on 08/22/2007 6:33:36 AM PDT by mort56
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To: Fishtalk
Like other unaccountable elites, they are monumentally fickle, self-indulgent, snobbish, vain, vulgar, entitled, incestuous, arrogant, ignorant, unprincipled, hysterical, and demagogic.

I love that line.

Yeah, I just wish he wouldn't hold back his real feelings...

7 posted on 08/22/2007 7:21:00 AM PDT by GOPJ
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To: Puzzleman
Political arguments were often heated, with news sheets flaming each other like the best of the blogs. The newspapers produced geniuses like Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, both self-taught news writers. Twain may be the foremost American novelist of the 19th century, and Mencken is one of the greatest essayists in the English language. That was before anybody had a degree in journalism.

Dems have a unique hatred of the free exchange of ideas. Newspapers carry that water for them.

In the ME they'll kill you for disagreeing the the current orthodoxy -- same idea -- just carried to a different degree. In the same bed - anyone charmed?

Political correctness, an outgrowth of a desire to squelch free political speech, is the poison killing American newspapers. It's not the spelling...

8 posted on 08/22/2007 7:49:05 AM PDT by GOPJ
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To: sam_paine; abb; Milhous; george76; bert; Liz; Ernest_at_the_Beach; BIGLOOK; tubebender

This is a great 7 decade analysis of the worthless, lying and dangerous left wing mediots.

These mediots have written lies for decades that have allowed the slaughter of innocents in Russia, China, Viet Nam, Cuba, Eastern Europeis and the Middle East.

This is why so many of us want to see the end of today’s dinosaur fish wraps and phoney tv news and will shed zero tears as this mob disappears.


9 posted on 08/22/2007 8:29:09 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Donate to Vets For Freedom: http://www.vetsforfreedom.org/)
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To: GOPJ
Mencken is one of the greatest essayists in the English language.

I haven't yet read this article but the clips Freepers have commented on compell a careful reading. Mencken is a perfect contrast with today's Media Mob. My favorite quote of his applies perfectly to today's Democrats and many in the Media Mob:

“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

10 posted on 08/22/2007 9:22:33 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds ("You ask, 'What is our aim?' I can answer in one word: VICTORY - victory - at all costs...")
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To: ReleaseTheHounds
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

Great quote - thanks for sharing.

11 posted on 08/22/2007 9:37:26 AM PDT by GOPJ (It's not the spelling ------------- Groupthink is killing newspapers.)
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To: Grampa Dave

Thanks for the ping.


Their united outrage proved his point: They are a mob. Funny, because the Media Mob commonly describes itself in just those terms: as “sharks” looking for “blood in the water” to start a “feeding frenzy.” “What bleeds, leads.” Sounds like a classic lynch mob, doesn’t it? But the victims aren’t supposed to answer back. They must hemorrhage silently, while the drooling newshounds bay at the moon to celebrate yet another kill. Well, Mr. Rove didn’t play along this time.

In 1991, Supreme Court Justice-to-be Clarence Thomas struck back with the words “high-tech lynching” to describe the smears hurled at him by the liberal media to kill his chances at the Senate Judiciary Committee. For a few days the white Media Mob froze in its tracks.

During the Stalin era the New York Times sent Soviet boot-licker Walter Duranty to be its correspondent in Moscow, and after careful reconsideration of his genocide cover-up stories for the Times, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize, the Pinch Sulzberger mob decided that the NYT deserved to keep Duranty’s Pulitzer. (As indeed it does; nothing is more revealing than the prizes these frauds keep awarding themselves.)

But we don’t have to look all the way back to the 1930s. On any given day, any similarity between the headlines and the most important events of the day is purely coincidental; it’s all a matter of “editorial judgment.” My local liberal rag just had a page-one color cover of the earthquake tragedy in Peru, taking an estimated 500 lives. That is entirely appropriate. On the same day they blacked out the Al-Qaeda truck bombing of Iraqi Yazidi Kurds, which also took some 500 innocent lives. A natural tragedy receives page one treatment with color photos; a simultaneous mass murder by America’s most threatening and savage enemies is stashed away in a dark corner. Our entire national thought process has been twisted as a result.


12 posted on 08/22/2007 9:43:06 AM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: ReleaseTheHounds
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

Excellent point. Bump.  

13 posted on 08/22/2007 10:15:37 AM PDT by zeugma (If I eat right, don't smoke and exercise, I might live long enough to see the last Baby Boomer die.)
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To: Grampa Dave
.......so many of us want to see the end of today’s dinosaur fish wraps and phoney tv news and will shed zero tears as this mob disappears...........

Amen.

14 posted on 08/22/2007 11:04:13 AM PDT by Liz (It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. Voltaire)
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To: Liz; george76; abb; Milhous

These lying/dishonest mediots have lost it with most of the under 40 group.

Their Dixie Chick marketing plan has lost most republicans from ages 40 to 80.

Their biggest losses re customers may be the independent voters.

These lying/dishonest mediots are like dangerous poisonous snakes, rabid rats or dangerous bacteria. They serve no real positive purpose on this earth.


15 posted on 08/22/2007 11:44:14 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Donate to Vets For Freedom: http://www.vetsforfreedom.org/)
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To: Grampa Dave

Thanks for the stats.


16 posted on 08/22/2007 12:47:26 PM PDT by Liz (It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. Voltaire)
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To: Puzzleman

thanks, bfl


17 posted on 08/22/2007 2:37:32 PM PDT by neverdem (Call talk radio. We need a Constitutional Amendment for Congressional term limits. Let's Roll!)
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To: Puzzleman

http://beltwayblogroll.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/08/gross_generaliz.php

August 21, 2007
BELTWAY BLOGROLL

Gross Generalizations About Old And New Media
I spend a fair amount of my time here coming to the defense of blogs when journalists attack. Today a little role reversal is in order thanks to James Lewis at American Thinker, who in a rant against the press penned this gem about “The Media Mob”:

Like other unaccountable elites, they are monumentally fickle, self-indulgent, snobbish, vain, vulgar, entitled, incestuous, arrogant, ignorant, unprincipled, hysterical, and demagogic. They sound like a unified chorus for the same reasons that street mobs run as a group — because by and large, they don’t dare to stand alone.
Were a journalist to write something like that about blogs, the blogosphere would be up in rhetorical arms, and rightfully so. Journalists should be no less furious when bloggers engage in such unhinged, stereotypical blather. It is especially bizarre to hear Lewis, whether rightly or wrongly, bashing the media as a “mob” when bloggers pride themselves on their ability to “swarm.” There’s no difference between the two behaviors.

Two columns in The Washington Post precipitated Lewis’ insulting invective, but he didn’t limit his criticism to just two journalists. Instead, he tarred the entire media with the same broad brush. That’s exactly what journalists do to bloggers, and it’s unfair in either direction.

Many of the same adjectives that Lewis hurled at journalists — and plenty of others — have been aimed at bloggers by journalists. This week’s anti-blog screed in the Los Angeles Times is a perfect example. Here’s a nugget from journalism professor Michael Skube that adopted a tone as derisive as Lewis’ blog post:

One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt. Skepticism, restraint, a willingness to suspect judgment and to put oneself in the background — these would not seem to be a blogger’s trademarks.
Skube’s commentary undoubtedly is true of specific bloggers, but he clearly has contempt for the blogosphere as a whole. Ironically, Skube is now the legitimate subject of blogger scorn for engaging in shoddy journalism after admitting that he hadn’t even read some of the specific blogs named in his piece.

Sometimes the outrage about both journalists and bloggers is warranted, and sometimes it’s intentionally exaggerated to make a point. But too often, the criticisms cross the line into inexcusable bigotry. The critics become like the very people they revile.

It’s just plain wrong to demean an entire segment of the media, whether old or new, based on the flaws of a few practioners within it. The modern media world would be a far better place if the converging interests would crank the cynicism and animosity down a notch or three.

Oh, how I wish Jay Rosen, a more enlightened journalism professor than Skube, had been right back in January 2005 when he said “Bloggers vs. Journalists Is Over.” Alas, the rivalry is still going strong, and it has left both fighters with eyes swollen shut.

Posted by Danny | 11:18 AM


Comments
I was initially tempted to agree with the temperate-sounding argument made by Mr. Glover but it obscures the fact that the traditional media and blogosphere were/are not created equal. Blogs are generally, and many by definition, defined by their ideology. The MSM has presented itself for decades as objective and unaffected by individual political persuasion. Many have argued quite persuasively that this self-characterization is fraudulent. Until the MSM can show itself by end-product to be unbiased or openly admit the bias, then I believe the blogs have the high ground to take their shots.

John | 08.22.07 06:08 AM


18 posted on 08/22/2007 3:14:51 PM PDT by abb (The Dinosaur Media: A One-Way Medium in a Two-Way World)
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To: abb
This liberal's (note cited example of "good work") post appended to the end:
My biggest problem with bloggers is their lack of accountability. They ... don't respect original ownership whatsoever; at least newspapers pay for wire copy. And while some bloggers do good work, such as uncovering the shenanigans at Walter Reed hospital or exposing Mark Foley's dirty emails before the MSM would pay attention, the majority of these bloggers do little more than rant their opinion, over and over and over again, skewing the facts to fit their arguments.

You should see how they spin facts down here when it comes to immigration; they don't say anything new, they just bark a lot.

Media has its own problems alright, but at least the faults are outnumbered by legitimate hard work.

reminds me of a golden oldie:

There’s more bad news. The meteoric rise of a million bloggers in their pajamas is maddening. These parasitic information gatherers leech onto the news content that your edit staffs produce, pay nothing to print newspapers or to staff overseas bureaus, yet steal huge chunks of your readership daily. The news business still hasn’t found a solution to the increasingly partisan nature of media organizations or its inexorable drift toward sensationalism, entertainment and shouting-to-be-heard.

19 posted on 08/22/2007 6:59:55 PM PDT by Milhous (There are only two ways of telling the complete truth: anonymously and posthumously. - Thomas Sowell)
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To: an amused spectator; Puzzleman
From the article:

Our country used to have an intellectually varied media.

He's right about that of course, but then he tries to explain what happened thus:

The decline of quality media in America can be traced to two things, (1) professionalization of the news business, and (2) a former(?) technological monopoly in electronic and print media.

Since he's in the business, I would like to see the author apply some more brain power to the discussion about how and why the moonbat media came to prevail over their more "traditional" counterparts.

I believe his simplified explanation, probably accurate enough as far as it goes, still in all falls short of the mark. There's just got to be more to it IMO.

20 posted on 08/22/2007 8:12:17 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.)
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