News we can't use (Media are lazy, gullible neocons, according to the author)

The Brattleboro Reformer ^ | January 29, 2009 | Joyce Marcel

[2ndDivisionVet]

On National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" the other evening, I caught a story about President Barack Obama and the news media. The gist of it was that while Obama has promised to run an open and transparent administration, and while he's already loosened the stranglehold that former President George W. Bush put on the Freedom of Information Act, the traditional press was feeling excluded.

"I just also want to be sure the president and the people who work for him are being subject to people who are trained as journalists and who are asking the questions that perhaps some of the people watching things from out there in the country are not able to ask," said Bill Nichols, the managing editor of the online site Politico.com.

This would be the trained press, Mr. Nichols, that bought -- hook, line and sinker, I must say -- the president as a great leader after 9/11; the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq; the "mission accomplished" speech on the aircraft carrier; the "Valerie Plame is a spy" leak; the ones who never challenged Bush at all until Cindy Sheehan's unbelievable guts and rage forced them to reexamine themselves; who never once protested over Bush's treatment of one of their own, Helen Thomas; and who bought into all the other lies, deceptions, obfuscations and secrets of the Bush administration years?

Would they be the same ones who covered the recent campaign as if they worked for People Magazine -- Muslims as terrorists, terrorist fist bumps, the invincibility of Hillary Clinton, illegitimate babies in Alaska, the Clintonista PUMAs (Party Unity My Ass) who would vote for McCain before they voted for that other guy, and all the rest of it --until serious people wanted to vomit?

And in the end, it was those serious people, millions of them wanting not only a change in government but a change in the quality of their information, who flocked to the Internet, to Daily Kos and Nate Silver's statistics on FiveThirtyEight.com, to find out what was really happening. And these people knew months before Election Day that Obama had it in the bag.

Has it gotten any better since? Does the name Milorad "Rod" R. Blagojevich mean anything to you? Another example: on Inauguration Day, CBS's Katie Couric talked about how the cold affected cellos, and why Yo Yo Ma would be using one made out of sturdier material than wood to play for the president. Two days later, I read that the concert had been prerecorded, and he could have been playing on a cardboard cutout for all it mattered.

Not to slam Couric above all the others, but it certainly brought me back to the time she was covering the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and a helium balloon escaped. It knocked down a lamp post and injured some people, so when it came time for it to appear on camera, CBS shunted in footage from an earlier year. Couric didn't say a word. Then she wondered why no one took her seriously when she became an anchor.

The mainstream media, with its conventional wisdom, its fear of losing access, the lie of "objectivity" ("And why do the Jews deserve to die, Mr. Hitler?"), and its willingness to be a conductor for any propaganda the government decides to pass out, has got a long way to go before the American people can once again take it seriously.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said, "And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter." Still, if Jefferson was alive, he'd be vomiting, too.

There are serious journalists out there. We wouldn't know about the Bush administration's intention to attack Iraq without Seymour M. Hersh's reports in The New Yorker, or about Abu Ghraib, without Hersh and that 60 Minutes II news report. We wouldn't know about black site prisons if it weren't for Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, or about how wounded veterans were being treated shabbily at Walter Reed Army Medical Center if it wasn't for Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille. Priest has two Pulitzers for her work, and she deserves them.

Amy Goodman has none, and she broadcasts every single day, sometimes risking her freedom and/or her life to do so.

There is much more to be reported upon. The great journalist I.F. Stone used to avoid press briefings and staged events. Instead, he'd spend his time in the archives and record rooms, pouring over documents. He got his scoops the old-fashioned way -- with hard work and without a hair stylist.

Newspapers, magazines and television networks are enduring hard times today. There are many reasons: the greed of their owners, who tied themselves to Wall Street; the shrinking economy and the accompanying loss of ads; the ease and availability of breaking news and commentary on the Internet. Washington and statehouse bureaus are being cut. The only place for foreign news is on the BBC.

The way we get our news is changing, and new ideas of how to deliver it are being created as I write. But one thing is certain: journalism will never die. It is a calling for those who practice it, and it fills our desperate need to know what's happening in our complex world.

It will take time, money and courage before we come up with a new model, but we must and we will. Thomas Jefferson was right, and we must make him proud.

***********

Joyce Marcel is a journalist whose first collection of columns, "A Thousand Words or Less," can be ordered from her Web site, joycemarcel.com. She can be reached at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I'm thinking she lives in a parallel universe, where Mr. Spock has a goatee and the world is square.

[Juan Medén]

He got the lazy and gullible part right.

[edcoil]

Don’t forget political.

[kcvl]

In 1965 she married scenic designer Jerry Marcel and moved to Palo Alto, Calif., where he spent three years doing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Stanford University. Throughout their time in the Bay Area, the couple designed costumes and scenery for opera companies, Shakespearean productions, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. When Joyce was not working in the theater, she worked as a topless dancer.

in 1997, Joyce began covering Vermont and western Massachusetts for The Boston Globe. In 1999, her story on the pleasures of liquidation shopping ran in The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and was turned into a segment on WCVB-TV Boston's magazine show, "Chronicle." She became a frequent contributor to the magazine.

Joyce is married to Randolph T. Holhut, who has been a reporter, photographer and editor in New England for more than 25 years. He is currently the night and editorial page editor of the Reformer.

[freedumb2003]

Yep --

Muslims as terrorists, terrorist fist bumps, the invincibility of Hillary Clinton, illegitimate babies in Alaska, the Clintonista PUMAs (Party Unity My Ass) who would vote for McCain before they voted for that other guy, and all the rest of it

HUH? Who was she reading and listening to? Out of the gate, the msm was carrying the new fuhrer's water.

[JimSEA]

I.F. Stone

A committed leftist, Zionist turned Palestinian advocate, a man who changed his name to be taken seriously (was Feinstein - changed to Stone), actively wrote against everything America did in the Cold War. Yeah a real objective journalist.

[redpoll]

I’m going to stick up for Joyce here, not for her insights (which are banal), but for her points about the media simply not doing its job. For all the lefty angst she’s outlined here about not investigating the so-called Bush-era scandals, there’s an equally appalling lack of investigation into the left, Obama, and their front groups and organizations in the “mainstream media.” Yes, we have Rush and David Horowitz and several others, but a robust press asking the gritty questions about the malpractice by the left and their allies just doesn’t exist. She’s upset that the press didn’t go after Bush hard enough, which is somewhat absurd, but she hits the target when she talks about the press being a shadow what it is supposed to be.

[kitkat]

Among many other things Joyce has wrong is:

***the “mission accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier;***

The aircraft carrier had accomplished its mission. The ship put up its usual sign to indicate IT had accomplished its mission. The socialist media pretended to think that it was put up to refer to Pres. Bush’s WOT.

[Jack Hammer]

Who, what, when, where, why, how. In the first paragraph if not the first sentence. It’s no surprise that no one’s reading the MSM anymore; they’re all wannabe authors in line for the Nobel Prize in Literature. That, and they’re fundamentally dishonest and tilted far, FAR to the Left.

Here’s a hint, Joyce: you may think you’tre writing the great American novel - or documentary - but Mr. and Mrs. America haven’t got time for your cr*p, and want just the facts - and d*mned few of those.

[FreedBird]

Arrogant and stupid people on the left side. MSM is part of the left side or dark side.

[FreedBird]

MSM was not too lazy when it came to ramming Obama propaganda down our throats.

[y6162]

“I.F. Stone “

I.F. Stone was revealed to be a Soviet agent. Big surprise.

[y6162]

“Cindy Sheehan’s unbelievable guts and rage forced them to reexamine themselves...”

Cindy Sheehan was a media hogging witch who exploited her son’s death. Despicable. The left dumped her after her 15 minutes was up.

[GeronL]

she lives in a bubble. not quite clear bubble. where the thoughts and emanations from the rear come right back and stick around. she lives in a bubble.

[GatorGirl]

There is not enough Kool Aid in the world to make me agree with even one word this creature spews forth upon the page.

Just.Wow!