When Jason Blair was canned for merely submitting work that he got by variously doing google searches or convincing underlings to do his work for him it seemed to be something horrible. But it seems to me that at least he got the facts right no matter how he came upon them. Sure its wrong but these days you can hardly blame the dude for hunkering down in his tony digs and eat take out while all the time pretending to be someplace else. Heck, its not even the first time recently if one remembers the reporter from India who managed to be in two places at the same time as well. The NYT staged a 'mea culpa' and fired a few folk who probably cashed in tons of stock options in the process and was "shocked, I'm shocked there was gambling going on here" (sorry, that was a review of an old movie). The fact remains the NYT has an interesting history to say the least. In the 1930s it won a pulitzer prize for its reporting of one Malcom Muggeridge. Given that one concludes based on the evidence that the same institutional proclivity has persisted to the modern age. For those of you who don't know Muggeridge was dead ringer for the apparently currently alive "comical ali" of recent Iraqi coverage from the NYT quoted as factual differing only in "beat" - ie he covered to the north west.12 responses total.
You just hate New York. I bet you were happy when 9/11 happened, sicko.
(re#1: yer mother wears army boots and yer dad likes it very much.)
Ummm...Mr. Nasby, do you think that things are systematically better elsewhere, do you hold the NYT to a higher standard, or what? It ain't news that humans are stupid and/or crooked a fair fraction of the time, and being in some place/race/station/whatever that thinks it's above that doesn't change the fact.
Funny how Jayson Blair is held up as discrediting 150 years of NYT reporting, how Maureen Dowd is excoriated for leaving a few words out of a GWB quote -- meanwhile, the far worse offenses committed by the media (INCLUDING the fabled New York Times) in blind pursuit of the Clintons are forgotten by everyone except Sid Blumenthal. In other words, it's perfectly okay for nationally prominent reporters and columnists to lie, make up quotes, ignore contrary evidence, and so on, as long as they're doing it to blast a Democrat. But how DARE they get a single word out of place when the political figure is a Republican. But, like I said, conservatives don't believe in symmetry. Presenting deliberate lies as news in order to bring down a Democratic president is holy, exhalted work. Saying anything the least bit unkind about GWB is simply treason.
(wow. that was out of left field.)
(Breath of fresh air, actually.)
(I'll remember that the next time mvpel steers an item toward guns.) (it's not even that I disagree with Larry's assessment [I do] or that it's too dependent on philosophical caricatures [it is] or that conservatives and Republicans are used as synonymous identifications [they aren't synonymous]. it's that Blair wasn't a commentator, he was a reporter. yet Larry seems to be all-too-quick to tar-and-feather both occupations with the same brush. commentators aren't fact-checkers. they're rarely researchers. reporters, on the other hand, are supposed to be both and, as writers, they're supposed to properly credit the works of others. what Blair did incorrectly only has the most tangential relationship to the virtual witchhunt of President Clinton [which was awfully easy to facilitate] and the virtual softballing of President Bush [which has more to do with the mood of the country than his party affiliation].) (of course, that's all only my opinion, which is only based on a bachelor's degree in political science and several years as a reporter. it's not necessarily more credible than anyone else's, but I happen to believe in knowing the credentials of someone who gives an assessment so as to properly consider the source, which is why I mention it.)
The press helps create the mood of the country. I think the softball treatment of Bush has a lot to do with the fact that the media conglomerates know which side their bread is buttered on.
re resp:4: Larry, sometimes, recently, you seem a lot less impartial than you used to be.
If republicrats are so upset with the treatment they're getting from the other side, why don't they take the high ground and put their money where their mouth is, instead of complaining their way into the mud pits with the opposition? I understand that many feel that they "must" play that game to get ahead, but complaining about it is unseemly.
Re 9. I have simply accepted the change in mood that the country brought
about by the administration in Washington.
"We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn
them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship," said Grover Norquist,
a leading Republican strategist, who heads a group called Americans
for Tax Reform.
"Bipartisanship is another name for date rape," Norquist, a onetime
adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said, citing an axiom
of House conservatives.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~1416067,00.html
Re 7. Y'know, I usually like reporters. They have a huge and important job that they usually tackle with good humor. I return their calls and answer their questions. But I have no illusions about the competence or honesty of most of them. I have been interviewed by reporters probably hundreds of times, under a wide variety of circumstances. Usually, the reporter has already made up his or her mind what is happening, and is only interested in quotes which could be used to support that conclusion. Or else the reporter is startlingly clueless about what is going on, and not interested in learning anything. I have been involved in politics and issues for more than thirty years, and been close to all kinds of newsworthy events. I'm pretty sure I have never seen a daily or weekly newspaper story of more than a couple of paragraphs, about something I knew about directly, which was completely right. Fact checking??? Ha. Only once in my ENTIRE LIFE have I gotten a call from a fact checker. It was for the late Brill's Content magazine. And that fact checker was not interested in any "not exactly"s, or any answers but "yes". It might as well have been a recording. Bias??? In 1999, I was a candidate for city council, and the Ann Arbor News was vehemently opposed to my candidacy (due to the fact that my winning would create a "super-majority" of Democrats on city council). And for some reason, none of the points I made in my campaign, none of the issues I raised, were ever mentioned in the AAN's coverage of my race. Well, some of the better things I said were attributed to my opponent. Instead, one answer I gave early in the campaign, supporting approval of the Ashley Mews project downtown, was exaggerated into alleged enthusiasm about all development, and just about every article about the race focused on this, as if my entire goal was to give away the store to developers. Does anyone here think that's a fair summary of my point of view on city issues? (It would have been ungracious to complain about this at the time, and arguably I'm better off never having had to serve on city council. I mention it only because you question my credentials to scoff at the quality of reporters' work.) Not that these problems are necessarily the fault of the individual journalist. Reporters, on the whole, are poorly educated, wretchedly paid, and given vastly more work to do than they could reasonably complete before deadline. And it shows in the appallingly bad work that they do.
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