Liberal Media plays subtle game

[headscratcher4]

The Washington Post just fired Fromkin.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Froomkin_out_at_Washington_Post.html?showall

This, while in the last couple of months they hired Kristol to join Gerson and Krauthammer on the editorial page. This must all be part of a plot on the part of the Liberal Press to give NeoCons jobs while firing commentators who were right on things like torture and Iraq in order to lull the neoCons into a false sense of relevence.

This is a damn shame. Fromkin was one of the few true liberal voices there was at the Post. Now, its slavish editorial adherence to NeoCon blather will just be all the louder.

 

[Robster FCD]

More reason to not read WaPo. Their OpEd writers certainly don't.

 

[headscratcher4]

Today...three of the WP's columnists...Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Haydon plus regular Krauthammer. All critical of Obama's foriegn policy. All with great track-records. The Washington Post is editorially dead...

 

[Praktik]

Interesting and worthwhile comments from Froomkin:

"Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .

"Calling ********, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. Calling ******** has never been more vital to our democracy.

"It also resonates with readers and viewers a lot more than passionless stenography. I’m not sure why calling ******** has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s ********-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.

"If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling ******** more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.

"I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate ********-calling than a well-informed beat reporter - whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way"​

 

[Beerina]

I think many just aren't that bright, and have been trained by professors to just start heaving up every opinion they can dig up with quotes around it, and making sure "allegedly" gets put in front of every allegation to avoid being sued, even though they think it's to be nice and in alignment with a presumption of innocence.

So transcribers of others' opinions is their self-appointed job, nothing more.

 

[Random]

I think many just aren't that bright, and have been trained by professors to just start heaving up every opinion they can dig up with quotes around it, and making sure "allegedly" gets put in front of every allegation to avoid being sued, even though they think it's to be nice and in alignment with a presumption of innocence.

So transcribers of others' opinions is their self-appointed job, nothing more.

He said, she said journalism is really, really easy. You can crank out a couple of four hundred word stories a day without trying very hard.

Call up a person from one side and ask their opinion on something. Call up a person on the other side for “balance” and ask what they think. Write about what each person said. Skip out for an early lunch.

The best part is that once you have established yourself as a stenographer, you don’t even have to call people up. They will call you up with their opinions! Its fast and easy! None of that tedious fact-checking or research! You just write what other people tell you to write!

Of course, your readers are not really being informed of anything (Republicans are against Social Security, I had no idea!), and you might occasionally look stupid for spouting stuff that isn’t true (Everyone knew about Valerie Plame! Well, not me or anyone I actually talked to, but everyone else, right?).

 

[Praktik]

And don't forget, serving the agenda of "high level administration sources" not only helps out whoever is in the White House, it makes you look indispensable to your bosses, and "in the know" to your readers.

Anonymity? Its win-win-win!

THough I think we lose..

 

[GreyICE]

What's new? The Wall Street Journal provided an excellent paper for years while the opinion pages provided a screed worthy of Ann Coulter (and occasionally authored by the same).

It's a bit of a stretch to call WaPo excellent (or good, or mediocre, or... err... digression) but haven't you noticed editorial boards frequently don't read their own paper? WSJ was reasonably notorious for having OpEds that were factually contradicted by their own news.

 

[geni]

I think many just aren't that bright, and have been trained by professors to just start heaving up every opinion they can dig up with quotes around it, and making sure "allegedly" gets put in front of every allegation to avoid being sued, even though they think it's to be nice and in alignment with a presumption of innocence.

So transcribers of others' opinions is their self-appointed job, nothing more.

Nothing to do with IQ or even self apointed job.

In a modern news enviroment your average journalist may be expected to put together as many as 8 stories a day (local newspapers in particular have this issue).

The only way you can get this kind of total is to:

Rewrite wire stories. Perhaps phone a random person up and ask for comment to pad it.
Rewrite goverment press statements. Again if you have some spare time you can phone a couple of people for comment
Rewrite press releases. Businesses churn these out but so do an increaseing number of non profits.
Keep an eye on what stories other papers are running

Reporters jobs are to produce as much content for their organisations as posible at the lowest cost. Transcribers of others' opinions is not their self apointed job. It's the job given them by the people running the place who are simply responding to free market pressures.

 

[Brainster]

You know how it is, the kid looks great when he's knocking Bush, but when he's knocking Obama from the left suddenly he's a dope.

I might believe you guys read his column more than once in awhile if anybody other than Praktik had noticed that the guy's name is Froomkin, not Fromkin.

 

[Skeptic]

Interesting and worthwhile comments from Froomkin:

"Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .

"Calling ********, of course, used to be central to journalism as well as to comedy. And we happen to be in a period in our history in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. Calling ******** has never been more vital to our democracy.​

The problem is not the theory of this, but the practice. In theory, of course this is what a newspaperman should do. In reality, however, it means, nine times out of ten, "attack the right while adoring the left": showing the benighted, knuckle-dragging masses who are TOO STUPID to figure it out the awful, AWFUL truth about the Republicans who are feeding them such ********.

After 30 years of this sort of thing (trying to make everything into a new Watergate), people are tired of yet another journalist "calling ********" -- telling them how stupid and foolish they are for supporting someone the journalist didn't like.

They increasingly turn off such "******** calling" reporters, so naturally this means less of them.​

 

[headscratcher4]

You know how it is, the kid looks great when he's knocking Bush, but when he's knocking Obama from the left suddenly he's a dope.

I might believe you guys read his column more than once in awhile if anybody other than Praktik had noticed that the guy's name is Froomkin, not Fromkin.

My inability to spell is notorious, that fact that I can't spell doesn't mean I don't read Froomkin...the fact that he's been knocking Obama from the left is all the more reason I read him, though I find I disagree with him more than I did about Bush.

What is going on here, really, is more of a traditional Washington insider game...especially when it comes the the MSM. The Post editorial board has been drifting NeoCon right over the past ten years. It has become a great bastion of NeoCon thinking now with Kristol, Krauthammer and Gerson as regular columnists. It is a very small fraternity of insiders and their world views are all pretty much the same...that is why the sacking of Froomkin hurts...he dared to be different.

I do not worry for Foomkin. He will land on his feet. I just won't be reading the Post's editorial page anymore, as between the old foogies like Will and Broader and Cohen and the NeoCon everything bad-down the memory hole of Gerson, Krauthammer and Kristol, there isn't anything interesting. Froomkin could be unpredictable...look ath the names I just mentioned and I'm pretty sure that you can figure out what each is going to say on any given day before reading their material...