Lehrer sucks at the PBS public teat.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
That’s the main argument of MSM defenders—that without them there will be no original, informational news-gathering and investigative reporting and that the blogs and talk radio just hash out the stories and issues of the day after the fact.
We can all think of the notable exceptions; Michael Yon in Iraq for instance. Many of the more notable bloggers and talk radio mavens do occasional shoe-leather reporting and researching, conduct interviews and attend events, etc. but how much does that really add up to?
Canned advertisements from the pharmaceutical industry using their own footage to report some new “breakthrough therapy” is not news.
“Slice of life” interviews with Joe Public are not news.
Reading off police reports from the daily blotter of fires, cantina shootings, and car wrecks is not news.
Reading sports scores is not news.
Making up people quoted in New York Times articles is not news.
Photoshopping images to increase the damage from Israeli missiles when returning fire is not news. It is enemy propaganda.
Jim, you’re toast. Pack your bags and tell your buddies in the Stalinist media that the game is over, YOU LOST.
It is NOT a journalist's duty to RESOLVE problems. They are to only report the day's events GOOD AND BAD.
... and taxpayers' money.
Funny how he doesn’t recognize this is part and parcel of today’s “News” organizations. Guess he never watches MSM on TV.
They are faced with a double whammy, and technology is behind both.
Whammy 1 - Due to technology their decades old monopoly has been broken revealing the bias that was always there but not always all that evident.
Whammy 2 - Due to growing up with new technology young people (and many old people too) prefer to get their information in whole different ways (some of this is a function of #1 above but some of it is not). People want blogs, podcasts, newscrawls, web news perhaps viewed from a mobile device, Tivo, and the list goes on and on and on.
They are facing a perfect storm and Lehrer is out on the deck of the sinking ship saying everything is dandy. OK fine, Jim, think what you want.
Reminds me of King Knute commanding the tide to stop.
In 1993 Leher was on a show hosted by Mary Matlin and Jane Mayer. He was hawking his latest novel. Mary asked how he got the idea for the plot line. He said he was walking up the stairs to the dem /rep debate with the questions under his arm when he thought to himself “Wouldn’t the other side like to see these questions!”. He snikered when he said it.
No one batted an eye. My question would have been, who does he consider the ‘other’ side? And did he give the questions to his side before hand?
Well Lehrer is certainly right about the importance of news stories... particularly when they are fake or fraudulent... “this is Dan Rather reporting from Kinkos”.
NOT YOUR JOB!