This is my first diary. It's a bit sad that it's going to be motivated by disgust. I have bile rising up my throat, and you will too, should you read the following. I can't help myself - this is vile.
Lars Larson, sorry excuse for a journalist, scored an interview with Sarah Palin. Larson has a local radio talk show in Portland, Oregon. The link is to Jeff Mapes's blog post (The Oregonian).
Firstly, I don't understand how my Portland, my beautiful, blue, progressive, environmentally conscious, openly-gay mayor-electing Portland allows this piece of slime to survive (Larson).
His first seven questions:
- "Do I have to ask you who won the debate last night?"
- "Is your family still glad you took on this job?"
- "What about the attacks on your family...What does that do to your heart?"
- "Do you think [Barack Obama] adequately answered that question" in the debate about his ties to onetime domestic terrorist William Ayers?
- "What scares you the most about the idea of Barack Obama as president?"
- "Do you think Barack Obama has ever held a gun in his hands, and do you think he cares about whether Americans have a right to own guns?"
- "Does that approach to taxes and government make Barack Obama a socialist?"
So Larson is merely a talk show host, a commentator, not a real journalist. I get that. His objective is purely entertainment, not educational, not informative. For that matter, all of the media organizations are corporate entities, and are profit-making enterprises. But regardless - I feel we've sunk to a new low in this country.
There no longer is a fourth estate, is there? We are lucky that a few liberal talk show hosts and newspapers still survive - I can imagine people like Olbermann and Maddow getting axed the instant their impact conflicts with their corporate parents, or if sufficient power and money is brought to bear on their employers.
What happens when the New York Times becomes a loss-making enterprise, when print media dies? What happens when all that's left is the blogosphere, and we're drowned out, reduced to talking into our echo chambers?
Much as I love the Kossack community, we're preaching to the choir here. How do we educate and inform the country as a whole if they no longer listen, if they lead such insular lives? I have a colleague who listens to Larson and is shaped in her views accordingly. She is never going to tune into any show I recommend, or read a blog I advocate.
"Fair and balanced" is now a crutch used to mask the ridiculous distortions to not antagnize viewers of all political stripes, whether nutjobs or wingnuts or the sane and the moderate. Hey, CNN - it's not about balancing TRUTH with UNTRUTH!! How can they confuse that with a journalistic standard???
[Fox section deleted for its unprintable nature]
I am far from a constitutional scholar - but one thing I have understood about the founding fathers and the constitution they wrote: above all, they aspired to construct a just society, an equal society, one in which power would not be abused. The checks and balances in our system of government, the separation of church and state, the freedoms enshrined in the bill of rights - depend on the freedom of the press. Democracy depends on a fourth estate that is objective, can speak truth to power, and understands the constitutional rights of individual people. Their constituents are the citizenry, not a healthy bottom line for their employers.