No, thanks. I'll take Claude Rains.
Posted on 03/16/2010 5:21:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
Media: In changing times the old guard can either adapt or they can react bitterly. As the old world of elite journalists crumbles, the latter kind of outburst is predictable. But some outbursts are astonishingly clueless.
Take Howell Raines. No journalist was more elite — or more locked into a rigid world view that is also crumbling. In 2003 Raines left his post as executive editor of the New York Times in disgrace.
Raines retains admirers in the old world. Before his elevation to the newspaper's top position, he led its editorial page. Some still lionize him for bringing a liberal perspective to news coverage, indeed for insinuating a kind of advocacy journalism into news pages.
Under Raines' reign, a rookie reporter named Jayson Blair, remembered for his serial plagiarism, was given free rein. Under Raines' management, a pet reporter named Rick Bragg, rather than travel himself, sent stringers to collect quotes at a newsworthy location and falsely fixed the relevant dateline under his byline.
In the pre-blogger universe, such infractions were easier to hide. Raines' defenders will deny bloggers' influence, but people out in the Internet noticed things. The journalistic malpractice couldn't be ignored by the suits in Timesland. Raines was sacked.
But he never lost his preening rectitude. Last week the defrocked high priest of high-church journalism took to the pages of the Washington Post. His mission: to call for the excommunication of Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes.
Ailes' heresy — and we're not making this up — is that the super-successful Fox News Channel has not conformed to the standards established by the likes of, well, Raines.
Fox, he charges, "has sold a falsified image of the professional standards that developed in American newsrooms and university journalism departments in the last half of the 20th century."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Raines is a pathetic and corrupt character, and certainly not one of Alabama’s more exemplary natives.
I’m sure people are going to listen to the WP about this. From now on, Fox won’t have the top 24 shows anymore, and we are all going to watch MSNBC (far more fair and balanced), CNN, and read the Times.
Not.
No, thanks. I'll take Claude Rains.
He kinda looks like he could be Albert Finney’s not as good looking not talented enough to be in films alcoholic brother
To me, he looks like a sexually-frustrated, alcoholic, bitter old man.
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