Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Can't Take the Heat
MSM is livid that the bloggers are beating them like a drum at their own job - at least the job they are supposed to be doing, which is straight reportage. So the lashing out by many of the mainstream media's cheerleading squad at the ruins of Easongate should be viewed for what it is: professional jealousy. (Easongate, in case you've been in exile the last couple of weeks, is the scandal surrounding CNN executive Eason Jordan's recent comments in Davos, Switzerland, that the US military intentionally targeted (for killing) jouralists in Iraq.)
Yesterday saw cable news and news talk shows lit up with panels discussing the role of bloggers in the trumping of MSM in basic reportage. Larry Kudlow on CNBC, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, and Jim Lehrer on PBS's Newshour all featured discussions. Here is a sample of the dialog from Kudlow's show (transcript here):
LK (Kudlow): It really had that sort of flavor. Hugh Hewitt, coming around to you. Now this is the counterattack. Somebody named Steve Lovelady, from the Columbia Journalism Review blogsite, was talking about "spittle-flecked morons", I guess that means, I don't know what that means.
HH (Hugh Hewitt): He went out of control, Larry.
LK: They're calling you, "lynchmob" and all this stuff. What is all that about?
HH: That's called jealousy in most books. In fact, the journalism done by the blogosphere, I've been a journalist for fifteen years, but the journalism done on the blogosphere over the last two weeks, has been much better than the journalism done by the Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, which did not mention the issue until Friday. It never appeared on CNN. It only appeared in Howard Kurtz's article in the Washington Post. But meanwhile, the bloggers, they're not amateurs like the Wall Street Journal called them today. They're very talented professionals like John and Glenn and myself. And we go after facts, and we interview primary witnesses, and we post the entire transcript. We did the good journalism here, and a lot of the screams you hear from the left, and the Columbia Journalism Review guy is just a lefty, are not criticisms of technique or professionalism. They are jealous outrage at having found that the control over the information flow has slipped irretrievably from their hands. Now there's some responsible people on the left. Glenn mentioned Jay Rosen. There's also for example Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.com. There are many good left/center-left bloggers. But the ones who are complaining about our demand to see the tape, the ones who are complaining about our original journalism, and good fact-checking, are the ones who are upset not about the story getting out, they're upset about the loss of control of the left-leaning media.
UPDATE: View the panel discussion on CNBC here.
Yesterday saw cable news and news talk shows lit up with panels discussing the role of bloggers in the trumping of MSM in basic reportage. Larry Kudlow on CNBC, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, and Jim Lehrer on PBS's Newshour all featured discussions. Here is a sample of the dialog from Kudlow's show (transcript here):
LK (Kudlow): It really had that sort of flavor. Hugh Hewitt, coming around to you. Now this is the counterattack. Somebody named Steve Lovelady, from the Columbia Journalism Review blogsite, was talking about "spittle-flecked morons", I guess that means, I don't know what that means.
HH (Hugh Hewitt): He went out of control, Larry.
LK: They're calling you, "lynchmob" and all this stuff. What is all that about?
HH: That's called jealousy in most books. In fact, the journalism done by the blogosphere, I've been a journalist for fifteen years, but the journalism done on the blogosphere over the last two weeks, has been much better than the journalism done by the Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, which did not mention the issue until Friday. It never appeared on CNN. It only appeared in Howard Kurtz's article in the Washington Post. But meanwhile, the bloggers, they're not amateurs like the Wall Street Journal called them today. They're very talented professionals like John and Glenn and myself. And we go after facts, and we interview primary witnesses, and we post the entire transcript. We did the good journalism here, and a lot of the screams you hear from the left, and the Columbia Journalism Review guy is just a lefty, are not criticisms of technique or professionalism. They are jealous outrage at having found that the control over the information flow has slipped irretrievably from their hands. Now there's some responsible people on the left. Glenn mentioned Jay Rosen. There's also for example Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.com. There are many good left/center-left bloggers. But the ones who are complaining about our demand to see the tape, the ones who are complaining about our original journalism, and good fact-checking, are the ones who are upset not about the story getting out, they're upset about the loss of control of the left-leaning media.
UPDATE: View the panel discussion on CNBC here.
# posted by mds : 9:19 AM
