Tuesday, May 10
From our favourite pathetic hack rag, the New York Times:
Bloggers often invoke these journalistic standards in criticizing the MSMYou're the one claiming to have journalistic standards, buster.
and insist on harsh punishment when they are violated.Nope. We insist on the truth. Remember that?
The blogs that demanded Dan Rather's ousterWhich were?
accused him of old-school offenses: not sufficiently checking the facts about President Bush's National Guard service, refusing to admit and correct errors, and having undisclosed political views that shaded the journalism.Bullshit.
There are only two possibilities: Either Rather was duped by an obvious fake, in which case he is too stupid to be on television (quite the achievement, that); or he perpetrated or was party to an obvious fake, in which case he's a lying weasel and too stupid to be on television.
Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, resigned this year after a blogmob attacked him for a reported statement at the World Economic Forum at Davos that the military had aimed at journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them.Yeah. I wonder why he chose to resign?
Their complaint was even more basic than in Mr. Rather's case: they were upset that Mr. Jordan said something they believed to be untrue.Well, upset that Eason was spouting anti-American propoganda at an international convention, yes.
But what the blogs asked for was the tapes made of the convention, so that we could determine whether the reports of what Eason said were accurate. Instead, he resigned.
But Mr. Rather's and Mr. Jordan's misdeeds would most likely not have landed them in trouble in the world of bloggers, where few rules apply.Look, bub:
One, no-one's paying us. Well, in the case of the big lefty bloggers, most of them are getting paid, but you don't have a beef with them, do you?
Two, any blogger trying to present the pathetic "Bush memos" as fact would be torn to shreds exactly the same way CBS was. Bloggers are equal opportunity piranhas.
Three, you're the ones claiming to have these lofty journalistic standards. Dickhead.
Many bloggers make little effort to check their information, and think nothing of posting a personal attack without calling the target first - or calling the target at all.And many bloggers do check their information. And many, many journalists don't.
They rarely have procedures for running a correction.Bullshit.
Bloggers run corrections all the time. And we don't bury them on page Q-17 either. Right there on the front page, strike out the wrong facts, add "Oops, looks like I screwed the pooch on this one, apologies to Mr Eastwood. And to the Association of Left-Handed Moose-Hunters too."
The wall between their editorial content and advertising is often nonexistent.Eh? It's, like, fifteen pixels! Any more and it wouldn't fit on an 800x600 screen!
(WonketteAlways bloody Wonkette with you.
a wittySnort.
and well-read Washington blog, posts a weekly shout-out inside its editorial text to its advertisers, including partisan ones like Democrats.org.)And?
And bloggers rarely disclose whether they are receiving money from the people or causes they write about.And bloggers rarely do receive money from the people or causes they write about... Except on the left. But that's not what you're complaining about, is it?
Think I'm being too hard on this pathetic partisan hack? Let's look at the blogs he mentions:
Arianna Huffington's planned bloglike object
FishbowlDC
Drudge "I am not a blogger" Report
Daily "Screw 'em" Kos
Joshua Marshall
Wankette
Wankette again
Many bloggers who criticize the MSM's ethics, however, are in the anomalous position of holding themselves to lower standards, or no standards at all.Would that be the bloggers you list above, or do you have someone else in mind? Do you have an example?
Look, bub, whether we have standards or not doesn't matter, because our readers have standards. If we bullshit our readers the way you do yours, they'll know, and they'll go somewhere else.
There are 8 million blogs on the naked Internet, and no matter what your readership may be today, you're just one of them.
That may well change. Ana Marie Cox, who edits WonketteWonkette.
notes that blogs are still "a very young medium," and that "things have yet to be worked out." Before long, leading blogs could have ethics guidelines and prominently posted corrections policies.Leading blogs - at least, the ones that have earned that place, like Instapundit and Powerline - don't need ethics guidelines and prominently posted corrections policies because they have ethics and they make corrections. Because, unlike a certain newspaper of record, their reputations are at stake with everything they write, and their reputations are their lives - as far as blogging goes.
Bloggers may need to institutionalize ethics policies to avoid charges of hypocrisy.Sh'yeah, right.
One, bloggers aren't institutions. They're just people with a web page.
Two, you miserable hacks will accuse us of hypocrisy no matter what.
But the real reason for an ethical upgrade is that it is the right way to do journalism, online or offline.Well, that's good to know.
So why don't you follow your own rules?
Oh, and does this mean that bloggers are journalists now? Can't have it both ways.
As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves.Which completely misses the point.
In the (non-crazed-lefty) blogosphere's quest to reform the media, all we have ever asked for is accurate reporting.
That's it. Tell the goddam truth. Stop distorting stories, stop the use of weasel words, stop omitting inconvenient facts that undermine your worldview. Stop pretending to be neutral and objective when, well, this.
Stop, in a word, being journalists, and go back to being reporters.
Of course, that would deprive us bloggers of the club with which we have been beating you so severely - your own words - and force us to go out and find honest work, but hey, them's the breaks.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:48 PM
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