We've talked a lot about the press round these parts. From the insidious Judith Miller and the New York Times' flagrant beating of war drums to the berating of the blogosphere by Howie Kurtz and other yeyhoos, the "mainstream media" (MSM) has performed miserably on so many occasions it is impossible to keep track any longer. Let's face it: newspapers suck in this country. Today, they are owned by corporate oligarchs who bend decidedly rightward, who have no respect for the journalistic enterprise or the quest for the truth, and who are willing to sacrifice millions of people to the meat grinder of a profit machine they stoke.
No self respecting fish would be caught dead in today's newspaper. As for us, I think it's now safe to say: the Internet IS our free press.
Join me below the electronic fold for a little more rant, some interesting links, and some news about what Patrick Fitzgerald is busy doing today.
Now, don't start defending newspapers. I didn't say we could do without news. Or commentary. Or investigative journalism. Or cartoons. Or letters to the editor. I said we could do without newspapers. Because today's crop -- from your local rag (probably owned by a conglomerate) to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the rest of the "big boys" -- is nothing but advertising broadsheets with some disinformation thrown in to please the powers that be.
Tell me honestly: where's the first place you go every day to find out what's happening? For me, it's the internet (Daily Kos specifically. I can't think of a story with import that was missed by the amazing reporters and commentators here and I am not just blowing smoke up your arse). I've been doing this for two years now. And I ain't going back to newspapers. Ever. Right now, it's because they suck. And if they stopped sucking, they'd still be a waste of good trees.
Newspapers were terrific back in the day. Not because they were so much better per se, but there were a slew of them, lots of competing voices, Benjamin Franklin published many himself. They gave rise to amazing voices -- hell, newspapers gave us Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and James Thurber and other remarkable thinkers and writers. Sure, crusty old codgers like Colonel McCormick got in the game (Chicago Daily Tribune) and he was a cantankerous authoritarian asshole. But everybody knew it. No matter, because there were lots of competing voices. And just about anybody could start a newspaper, it was not that difficult and not that expensive, either.
Back in the day, it was like -- well -- it was like the web is today.
I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here's Karen Kwiatkowski ** with her interesting take (from an interview with David Swanson, a great read, see link below):
SWANSON: What do you make of Allison Hantschel's [editor's note: Allison is the blogger at www.first-draft.com] thoughts on the blogosphere and the media's role in Iran War propaganda?
KWIATKOWSKI: The great promise of the internet may be that it brings us back to the future, so to speak. In the 1700s, de Toqueville was amazed with our American obsession with information, our abundance of little newspapers, everyone a reporter, everyone with an opinion to share, and many interested parties reading and debating these opinions and observations. This energy struck him as uniquely American, and today, this energy is global, and it is embodied in the internet, in the blogosphere specifically. The blogosphere is that rough, raw and personal reporting, complete with elements of gossip and imagination. Mainstream media is establishment media, the kings' notices to the serfs. I think Allison's investigation into how well or how poorly the truth was reported in the run-up to Iraq, within the blogosphere and by the mainstream media, is not only important, but points us into a new place that may in fact lead us to fewer wars rather than more wars. http://www.davidswanson.org/...
Indeed. Today, I am going to get some pretty amazing facts and information about the Waxman hearings, and the U.S. attorneys scandal, and who knows what else. Surely someone here will provide the exact length in inches telling just how far Alberto Gonzales' head has proceeded up his own ass. I'll get commentary and correctives and terrific analysis from a hundred voices.
When I googled Howard Kurtzman, I found his recent take on current events:
One Hot Tamale in Mexico
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 15, 2007; 7:58 AM
It reminded me of many of Bill Clinton's foreign trips.
The 42nd president would visit heads of state around the world, and at the inevitable joint news conference, when he wanted to talk about geopolitics, reporters would pepper him with questions about Whitewater or fundraising or Paula or Monica or some other scandal back home.
The 43rd president had that experience in Mexico yesterday. Standing with the country's new leader, Felipe Calderon, anxious to talk up his week in Latin America, Bush found himself having to defend Alberto Gonzales and the firing of a bunch of U.S. attorneys. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Someone pays to have this kind of shit delivered to his door? Wow, a Bill Clinton flashback. How very special, Howie.
Yesterday, Kos let us know what Time's Jay Carney was up to:
While the mocking reporter, Time magazine's Washington bureau chief Jay Carney, was busy dumping, via Times Swampland blog, on the story of U.S. Attorneys being fired across the country, Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo, and two of his reporters at his offshoot site, TPMuckracker.com, Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, were busy reporting, using a variety of sources that had been largely untapped by the mainstream press.
To be fair, Carney wasn't dismissing the story out of hand, but his snark hardly masked his belief that Marshall & Co. were out on a partisan limb, hyping a story that just wasn't there. http://www.dailykos.com/...
To be fair, Carney sucks, too. Oh, I know. "We have Dana Priest doing that great story on Walter Reed," you'll say. Yeah -- we have a few people still producing some of the safer stories -- a day late and a few juicy paragraphs short, usually. Any journalist worth his or her salt should be looking for a way to transition to the internet yesterday.
The owners? Here's a nice bit of info for you regarding the former owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, Conrad Black:
(Regarding) Black's legendary attitude toward journalists ... He has described journalists as "ignorant, lazy, opinionated, intellectually dishonest and inadequately supervised hacks" (Chicago Tribune, 3/6/94), and has referred to investigative reporters as "swarming, grunting jackals." He suggested that those journalists who are critical of newspaper ownership in Canada should seek "whatever therapy is necessary to overcome the trauma of past abrasions and learn to distinguish the friends of the craft from its enemies." During a 36-hour strike of the editorial personnel of his London Daily Telegraph in 1989, Black's management put out two editions of the paper --debunking, Black wrote in his autobiography, "one of the greatest myths of the industry: that journalists are essential to producing a newspaper."
Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, describes a typical takeover by Black's Hollinger this way: "They fire half the staff, they get rid of the environment reporters and the social affairs and the education and health reporters, and they replace them with businesspeople -- or they don't replace them at all.... Anyone not singing that very right-wing Newt Gingrich type of...line is soon let go." http://www.fair.org/...
Here's the place to tell you what Patrick Fitzgerald is doing: prosecuting Conrad on charges of fraud, racketeering, tax violations, obstruction of justice, and money laundering. Jury selection continues today. Mentioned as potential witnesses for or against Black are former Pentagon official and fellow neoconservative Richard Perle, Illinois Republican powerhouse and former governor James Thompson, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger. They were members of Hollinger's board of directors who were supposed to oversee payments to Black and his associates. Well, surprise, surprise. ***
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Is it any wonder newspapers have lost their relevance? It's all over but the crying. Or the obituary writing. Can a newspaper write its own?
Maybe it's time we wrote the obit. I'm tired of trying to hold newspapers (and their pundits) to account, tired of reading about their screw-ups, sick of swallowing their shallow analyses, bored of pointing out their corporate GOP shilling, loathe to correct their facts, and sick to death of providing them any attention at all.
Culturally, they're toast because the internet is where it's happening (that's why they protest their own importance so frequently). Politically, they're dead because instead of broadcasting a panoply of research and analysis they cater to the thin, brittle interests of the ownership class. Environmentally, they're obsolete in paper form, because of the wasted trees, the toxic chemicals, and the gas burned to cart newspapers around town. Practically speaking, newspapers don't do well as "internet versions" because they bring the same biases, sorry management, stockholder interests, lousy wages, lightweight intellects, and outdated methodologies to an environment that is way too nimble and fast for them to negotiate.
I guess I could have made this a one-line diary:
Your daily newspaper is Republican. The internet is Democratic. What will you choose?
//
** Kwiatkowski is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq.
*** By the way, an interesting side note about Conrad Black and another of our illustrious newspaper hacks, George Will. Black paid Will handsomely to write a flattering column, which Will did without disclosing the payment to his editors or his readers. http://www.commondreams.org/...