MY KIND OF SCANDAL. The outraged anti-Bushies can't understand why many liberal bloggers - including Media Log - are not going ballistic over the latest on Jeff Gannon. Well, let me try to explain: we like the idea of gay hookers attending White House press briefings, and think there should be more of them. (Gay hookers in the White House, that is, not press briefings.) Two theories: a) there's nothing better than hypocrisy exposed, especially when it comes to the moral-values crowd; and b) there's no need for me to get all hot and bothered, because Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Cal Thomas, or whoever is going to erupt soon enough, at least after he's stopped looking at the pictures.
And by all means let's hear more about the Valerie Plame connection. Was the White House really whispering sweet nothings about this into Gannon's ear? Sorry, I just can't get serious about this. So the only place I can think to send you is Wonkette. She's got the goods, the links, and - in this case - precisely the right attitude. Click here, here, and here.
-Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix
I have a better idea Dan. Now that the Washington Post and the New York Times are on the details of the story, how about you and the rest of the half-assed, gum rubber-spined, too-cool-for-school, bringing-up-the-rear-of-the-battle, and just plain lazy-assed sons of bitches dismissing this story set the sarcasm and snarkiness aside and start acting like you have a shred of Edward R. Murrow in your souls?
It wasn't Howard Kurtz, CJR, or Kevin Drum... but my old hometown hero Mr. Kennedy here who finally hit my very last raw nerve by adding to this lousy 'Who Gives a Fuck?-Gate' phenomina. He was so busy gleefully preening over the roles that two Democratic congressmen played giving a 'bipartisan' beard on the right's latest scalp (who happened to resign from CNN) to even look down his nose at the latest fraud commited on the American public. When he dained to look down that nose... he sniffed in indignation and dismissal at the real meat of the story... and also at the good guys he claims to be looking out for while he was at it. This man was someone who I used to admire very much, but lost me as a reader after finding all sorts of ways to continue ignoring the Gannon story in his Media Log, only to finally address the sad story by going for both the lazy and stupid angle at the exact same time. This is exactly why the gutsy grassroot muckrakers of the DailyKos HAVE to be so gutsy and go out and make the truth the news again. "I don't think its news, or important, so its not news or important... And here... let me spout the cheap cop-out take on the story as an excuse for why I won`t do my job." He dismissively added his name to the already long list of `media koolkids' who stepped over the line and spit on the people standing on the other side just to be in the pack... and why.... Because the real issue behind the issue is that the story originally came from a blog. And it has been my nagging at me that what made it worse was that that blog was a liberal one. After all, isn't he and his peers already looking at the world through a "progressive" lense?
A TOOL, NOT A REVOLUTION. Bloggers didn't force the resignation of Janet Cooke from the Washington Post. Stephen Glass did not depart from the New Republic under a hail of Little Green Footballs. Ditto for Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle at the Boston Globe, Jayson Blair at the New York Times, and Jack Kelley at USA Today.
Yes, the departure of all these miscreants might have occurred more quickly if bloggers had been deconstructing their work in real time. In particular, the Post might have been spared from actually having to return Cooke's Pulitzer. But the notion that the MSM (and hasn't that acronym grown tiresome already?) never took care of their own until the bloggers came along is ridiculous on its face.
The theme of the day is that the bloggers took down Eason Jordan just as they took down Dan Rather, and good God almighty, what have they wrought? Please. Jordan went down because he'd been on double secret probation since his outrageous 2003 op-ed in the New York Times, in which he admitted that CNN had played down the crimes of Saddam Hussein in part to maintain the network's access. After two members of Congress, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, went public with their anger over Jordan's suggestion at Davos that US troops had deliberately targeted journalists, Jordan's support crumbled in a matter of days.
As for Rather, the bloggers certainly played a role in calling attention to the likely phoniness of CBS's National Guard documents. But if the MSM hadn't been able to push the story forward, Mary Mapes would still be employed at the network.
On Sunday, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz had a thumbsucker on What It All Means, and today a troika does the same in the New York Times. Kurtz's is the more insightful, and not because he quotes me. The fact is that media scandals have been taking place for years, and they will continue to take place. Bloggers make a difference on the margins - speeding things up, pushing the story forward, unearthing tidbits that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Blogging's become an important check on mainstream news organizations - but it's not a revolution.
Yes, a tool.... A tool rapidly coming to be used differently by the left and the right, a strategic difference in use that bears no fruit of credibility to the journalistic powers that be, so is to be marginalized, desparaged, and downplayed. The truth is... the tool may or may not be a revolution, but as the last few weeks have proven, it can be wielded in a revolutionary way regardless. When the facts of this story finally do play themselves out, it will be clear that the engineers and safety inspectors of the public discourse volunteered to be asleep at the switch. The Rightwing echochamber noise boxes are basically just backing up the echo. The left has no echochamber, it can't get any sort of shred of fairness out of most corporate news coverage, and individuals in that community are so desperate for any balance in how the content of the news is chosen, packaged, and presented that they will virtually become investigative reporters. What an indictment on your trade, Mr. Kennedy. No, no. Don't get up. I quite understand that you're far too busy making sure that a 'progressive' voice is heard in media criticism... to do your job being that progressive voice fulltime. And don't forget, there are two Democratic congressmen who should get some credit -aside from the mean and nasty ol' rightwing echochamber- for that Eason scalp too!
The Cliché and the Real Beef
There is a new and hated reality in the news business of the 21rst century if you just listen for the little nuggets of truth hidden behind all the handwringing.... `I wonder if these people go to far' actually means `some schmoe with a computer, a modem, and lots of time is out there poaching on us journalists'. But not a single one of these folks has even bothered to ask 'why'? Its a very simple question that wouldn't take any semblence of effort to get an answer for. Only a relatively short time ago, when this irritating new reality really got under people's skin, the meme it sparked was a short cloudburst of widespread -but general- condemnation from the usual big media voices. A quick chorus of print and broadcast journalists, media critics, and pundits issuing rather blanket 'pooh-poohs' of relatively all bloggers, and the concept of blogging in general. If pressed for a source of this animus, the default line of reasoning fell to crying `journalistic poseurs and not a real source of news`. Blogging was a pain. Not really a threat, but more like a half-dozen angry horseflies at a big company picnic. An annoying, and occasionally painful when swarming in groups, little `untrained' creature who's sting was not fatal to "the integrity of journalism".
But basic arguments about blogging and `the proper standards of journalism' was never really the big issue on the table that quietly fueled and drove the unspoken criticism behind the 'broadly general' blogging criticism. Again, its people who ask questions for a living and claim that they are guardians of the truth don't ask the right questions and miss the point entirely. That big issue behind the 'surface issue' was really maintaining the careful mass control over just what is deemed `content worthy of coverage` and sent out to the American people everyday by a powerful few. The mere existence of blogging doesn't threaten that control anymore than the mere existence of a typewriter in some person's home threatens Ernest Hemingway's place in the pantheon of American writers. That's ture, it's a tool. The power to determine what is the news that you will get to hear about isn`t threatened by the existence of blogging. But it can occasionally forcefully intrude, if the story is important, and neglected, enough. Even in the age of the internet, where big media companies could just move their content online and have a digital 'New York Times' or 'Washington Post', the monopoly on controlling the news, determining what was in fact news, was not in question. It's news if we think its news. was still firmly in their grasp. The Gannon/Guckert muckrakers having to move heaven and earth to get basic coverage proves the rule.
Journalism as Public Relations
`Unqualified' people from the left (my focus because I could care less about what motivates the right, they are an echo and we are a choice, and it's rapidly the left that gets accused more and more of `crossing over the journalist's turf line') are beginning to tread on the `sacred ground' of investigative journalism not out of some misplaced and misguided need to create a `new media', but out of simple intellectual desperation. These days, if you are not apathetic or a rightwing ideologue, what passes for ' news' is anything but. The `Lois Lane' myth of the investigative reporter has long since been replaced by something insidious to those in search of the truth. Many big time journalists have become the passive enablers of Press Offices, Publicists, Press Agents and consultants from huge Public Relations firms replacing the news with buzz and bullshit. Every day you can turn on the television and see example after example of people who should know better just bouncing the bullet points from a bullet point sheet back at the camera. Journalists and their editors have rapidly stooped to just taking carefully crafted political talking points and memes from people paid to spin how people see the world around them.
With some notable exceptions, people aren't blogging for a living, they are parsing and doling out information on issues that they are willing to do massive amounts of research and reporting on... for free. Again, if I were a journalist, this would make me want to ask 'why?'. Why do all this work, using the tricks of a craft that you have no formal training for background in, anonymously and without reward, for nothing? Pressed with this new, and in some cases passionately despised, entity, journalists, media critics, and pundits were slow to take a solid position on bloggers and blogging other than 'these people are not journalists, and its bad if its intended to be the new news'. But what is almost completely left off the table is one of the biggest motivators for independent blogging of the news. The professional journalists, pundits, and critics have almost all helped perpetuate three non-news factors (that fly in the face of what journalism is supposed to be) poisoning news content; public relations, intellectual laziness, and absolute content control. Journalists and media personalities, especially those who have been particularly guilty of bashing bloggers for having an agenda, often regurgitate the talking points of the powerful and parrot the spin of the spokespeople they cover. If people aren't to undertake this difficult task because they are untrained and could blur the line between real and faux news.... what do you call a man or woman trained and educated in the principles of the craft, just sitting there with a five hundred dollar haircut blindly reading presspoints off a prompter for cash? Isn't that worse?
The Death of Curiosity and Blogging James Guckert
James `J.D.' Guckert, alias `Jeff Gannon of Talon News', sat completely surrounded by formally educated and professionally trained journalists in the White House press pool, as a complete unknown, for two entire years, pretending to be one of them. Nobody noticed. He took time away from pool reporters, who had worked their entire careers to gain access to the White House press pool, to throw obvious lifelines to whomever he was speaking. Nobody cared. The greater issue of Guckert and the media goes far beyond him being a `conservative reporter`, or asking scripted rightwing talking points as questions, or his working under a false identity, and goes straight to the heart of why bloggers are motivated to zealously cover the news, curiosity is dead in much of corporate journalism today. Who's he? Who cares. Reporters that have been lied to so many times that they are conditioned to respond to dishonestly and deception with a non-response are not journalists, they are merely enablers of dishonesty and deception. Many reporters like to claim that they are a part of a guild that is very very big on navel gazing and self-examination. I'm sorry, I just don't see it that way anymore. I did, but not one day more. Right now I believe that there might be lava rocks in my aquarium that are more earnest and self-reflective about the state of their affairs.
Members of the DailyKos, using the classing techniques of tenaciously gathering facts available in public records and gathering and organizing information typical of great investigative reporting broke the story. Setting aside all the information that was gathered and how is this; any one of those White House pool reporters could have done exactly the same thing, their job, but chose to ignore the stranger in their midst, because to them it wasn`t worth bothering about. There was a man, working under an alias, as a plant from a phony conservative spin and talking point factory that didn't exist before the Bush White House, AFTER the Armstrong Williams and company `Payola' affair... and nobody working in the news business cared. There is no greater example of why there are people out there, using the classic techniques of journalism to gather and organize information, doing it motivated by nothing but a need for the truth, than this utter failure to `do one's job.... Investigate and report the news'.
Because I Say So
In the aftermath of exposing the lies and deceptions related to the Guckert case, Aaron Brown, Anderson Cooper, Judy Woodruff, and Wolf Blitzer all grudgingly half-touched on the story, and all of them, in varying degrees, were completely dismissive of the story because either they didn't care, because of the stories origins in the blogosphere, or... very much in this case... because the story originated on the left end of the blogosphere. Howard Kurtz, a `media critic' for the Washington Post, went so far as to ignore the actual facts of the story and outright condemn the bloggers who broke the story themselves... as violating Guckert's `space' in revealing his many rapidly piling up deceptions. Now, I am not saying that bloggers are journalists... what I am saying that many of the bloggers who acted in the Guckert story were people who have been `driven to journalism' by the apathy and non-actions of those who are supposed to be the `guardians of the truth'. That is not in any way hidden from people who are supposed to investigate for motivation all the time as a part of the job. I say that the DailyKos muckrakers did, dare I say, a professional job. One worthy of someone geared for the job and actually working in the trade today. And another thing, if a real working journalist had done all the legwork for the Gannon/Guckert affair, would Kurtz have written what he wrote? Of course not.
Watching the lifecycle of the story in the press, I was struck by how much its evolution in the hands of the pundit class completely married and mirrored the stunning apathy in the DC press pool. At any time, this could have been broken wide open by a single man or woman with a single solitary spark of curiosity. Just a flicker. Only after the story broke, instead of outright apathy, the attitude of the pundits was even worse... again... that as a whole `this is not news, because I don't think its news'. A man with a shady business background and a false identity, writing for the conservative equivalent of a `news astroturfing' organization, is propped up with the White House`s full complicity isn`t news? The bloggers followed the story because they were right that the traditional corporate media wouldn`t. Howard Kurtz owes a lot of people an apology that will never be delivered. Here is the bigger question to ask Kurtz... if it is offensive to you that bloggers are acting like journalists and mucking about to get to the truth... why isn't someone pretending to be a credentialed journalist all that MUCH MORE offensive to your delicate and easily offended sense of propriety? Ah. Because you say so.
Media Double Standards on Leftwingers Blogging Up News.
One big thing that `Guckert' mess has pushed out again into harsh disinfecting sunlight this week is the incredible, and evolving, double standard between how rightwing blogs and leftwing blogs are treated in the farce that is the `Journalists Vs. bloggers' conflict. The venom that began `against blogging in general' has been tilting, more and more, exclusively towards the leftwing blogs. Right leaning blogs that are often filled with acidic invective are hailed as being reasonable by taking select actions out of context, while acidic invective on left leaning blogs are often the highlighted norm. The Guckert story was handled the way it was very much because of its place of origin, and Howard Kurtz`s overkill criticism of one side, while often ignoring the excesses of the other, (with the notable exception of the CNN Eason affair, where a paycheck as a CNN consultant needs to be watered like a lawn) is typical. The quick reflex is to remember the `Tang' affair and chock it all up to a straight echochamber echo, but I believe that what left leaning blogs and bloggers face is much worse than just something based on echochamber bias alone. It is in the difference between how the rightwing blogs are behaving, how the leftwing blogs are evolving, and individual pundits and personalities sense of being trespassed on by that evolution.
Rightwing blogs are pretty much an accessory, they always echo the echochamber and what passes for news on a rightwing blog is often provided by on outside source to be amplified... and therefore they don't really intrude on Fox News and its faux Fox wanna-bes, that`s not their job. The echochamber as a whole, basically, loves the media as is. It gets a great `liberal boogeyman' that isn't liberal, and while it gets rightwing talking points spat out as news, it gets a fake buggaboo to use to rally the faithful. Rightwing bloggers are not the ones going out and imposing themselves on traditional journalists turf to find an alternative news source out of self-preservation. Leftwing bloggers like the Kossacks who dug into Guckert's `deal' are people who have been put in a position where they cannot trust in the existence of objective news coverage. They know what passes for news is filtered and is filtered in a way that is not in any way shape or form `fair and balanced`, but completely stacked against them. They are people who are no longer just discussing the news on a blog, but investigating it deeply and attempting to change the news, because the right of this country has been completely allowed to swallow up or marginalize most of the big outlets for gaining news and information. Watergate would not have occurred in this media climate, nor would have Iran/Contra. The scary thing is, it is easy to imagine many, like Wolf Blitzer, saying on Watergate that `what is the big deal, here... so some clowns broke into the Democratic party offices in the Watergate building... some people say that that's politics.'
The Pettiness Game Will Get a Lot Worse Before it Gets Better
The progressive blogger has arrived at the point where he is or she is forced to take up digital pen and pad and go `muckraking' because of a betrayal of public trust. The problem is, the person who makes the decision to paint the blogger as `hack amateur partisan sleuth'... is the betrayer of that trust. Two things were particularly irritating to me in the last couple of weeks in that regard. The blatant disregard for accurately reporting the facts of this case now that they are out there being one. They are deadly serious, their implications on national security and access to the White House are frightening, and no one has been held accountable except the planted stooge exposed on the stage. And two, the stunning reality that so many people in the asking question business.... don't ask questions. Not the obvious ones. Nor the simple ones. Forget about the provacative ones. Its like finding out that the security service that you are depending on to protect your house and business from the wretched parasites of the world don't actually have anybody monitoring the security alarms. They just cash the check. Then, when you actually find out that the system is broken by coming home... or going in to work... and discovering that the window is smashed and your stuff is gone... they yell 'hey! who's the security professional here!' when you start asking for a reasonable explanation.
It boggles the mind to think about, but the rapidly increasing double standard between left and rightwing blogs, and how their various stories are treated post-break out by the corporate media, is happening because of something almost as outrageous as the news that is deemed `not news`... pettiness. It is, in my opinion, indignation born mostly out of sheer hubris and a completely overblown sense of personal affront that left leaning blogs are more and more likely to be condemned because they are more and more likely to intrude on journalists turf. If it is a 'journalistic crime', then it is an act of understandable desperation. What the offended media elite fail to grasp is that this trespass was not, and is not, out of some desire to launch 'a new leftwing news media' but because leftwing to centrist people are being alienated by apathy. People are desperately seeking uncomfortable truths and thorough investigations of outrages that the corporate news media refuses to notice, let alone cover. Instead of responding to the concern that the media is tilting far too rightward and away from serving as the `truthtellers' that journalists are supposed to be, or seeing that people are so desperate for news that they will launch their own journalistic investigations. The hostility we are seeing directed more and more towards left leaning bloggers and their blogs is only going to increase in the corporate media, aside -or in addition to- ideological biases, because journalists, pundits, and media critics are finding that left leaning bloggers are intruding more and more on turf that they consider 'theirs' exclusively.
The funny thing is... there is absolutely nobody who wants print and broadcast journalists to start doing their jobs again more than people like me who keep getting let down over an over again. That is why I honor the DailyKos crew, and am disgusted at the corporate newsies and their apologists like Dan Kennedy and Howard Kurtz.
There has been no comparison between the performance in the 'truth gathering' business between the two... and that should utterly humiliate a lot of very well known people. Please forgive my tone if I got out of line in places... tonight I just lost a local hero of mine.
I'm pissed that I was so wrong.