Posted on 11/07/2008 8:23:28 PM PST by RobinMasters
We have seen it all the last two years: Weeping journalists on election night; a journalist openly promising to help make Obama successful ("Yeah, it is my job."); film takes of journalists cheering an Obama speech; the savaging of Sarah Palin and the hands-off treatment of Biden; soft-ball interviews and long puff-pieces on Obama as the young cool crusader;comparisons to JFK's Camelot, and on and on.
In the 3rd book of his history, Thucydides has some insightful thoughts about destroying institutions in times of zealotry—and then regretting their absence when there is a need for refuge for them. The mainstream press should have learned that lesson, once they blew up their credibility in the past election by morphing into the Team Obama press agency.
There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama's unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won't work. And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?
Not much—since they will have one of two non-choices: (1) either they will begin scrambling to offer supposed disinterested criticism, which will be met with the public's, "Why should we begin believing you now?" or "Why didn't you tell this before?", or (2), They can continue as state-sanctioned megaphones of the Obama administration in the manner that they did during the campaign. They will lose either way and remain without credibility.
In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
~~Marcus Tullius Cicero
Excellent post!
The media could try a third course of action. Strongly support the fairness doctrine and net neutrality; thereby eliminating competition.
That way, they can claim the monopoly of ideas, and it wouldn’t matter what they do then.
Whoops! Net neutrality has nothing to do with content. My bad.
I guess this is a silver lining.
The problem is they just give people what they want, and they don’t want objective, investigative journalism.
They want cutesy soundbites they can parrot as put-downs and to substitute for doing the work of actually thinking and coming up with their own ideas.
Being spoonfed is really popular.
The media hacks, reporters during this campaign cycle behaved like a real life version of the movie, “Network”.
They’re only writing their own obituary as newspaper subscriptions continue to decline and television news broadcasts are seen the propaganda arm of the democrat party.
Yeah, the NY Times stock price is at junk level, but they keep digging themselves deeper in the hole with the Republican hate articles, perhaps thinking that if they can be sycophantic enough to the Left that they will somehow curry favor and reward from the political elite. Maybe when Pinch sits with his staff of bankrupcy attorneys he will realize what a mistaken assumption this was.
If any ‘American’ newspaper is worthy of euthanasia it is the New York Times. I take no pleasure in her demise as I do believe in a free and robust press. However, as free as she has been by the blood of patriots, how ‘robust’ has she been over the long years? Good-bye and good riddance to the once ‘paper of record’.
With the banks, auto mfgs, insurance cos, etc...lining up at the public trough, why not the Media. Look at how fast the slimes have already trimmed the salaried pensions, next all private pensions will be getting a bailout.
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