I'm feeling guilty tonight. I was mean to an old-media friend. I was supposed to see her, and didn't, in the city, and had a weird exchange with her on the phone. All my fault. A newspaper she works for has just cut back pages and she was lamenting this and I had no sympathy. I said, "I could care less." Not very nice. Then I said, "You're getting paid." She said, "You could be paid too if you wanted to." Then I thought about all the things I could say about mainstream media and the ideas I care about, and didn't say anything.
I felt awful about it later. It was so mean, when a person was hurting. My resentment toward the old media came flaring up. I wonder if my friendship isn't over because of this. We became friends through a different media; and my friend only reads old media. She says things about the internet like, "But how can you check anything? You know that thing about Sarah Palin believing Africa was a country was an internet fabrication that then got on the news." There's no answering that of course, except to say that there's always been fabrication, and people are smart, and figure reliable sites out, and actually this is a more accurate medium in the end, and I care more about accuracy on this blog than all the factcheckers in the world could make me care about in the past and, more important, feel no compunction about correcting myself as prominently as my error.
At bottom, our difference is over reading habits. Old media people insist that there is a greater virtue to paper reading habits. I used to think so myself, but really, it's a bogus argument. Books aren't going away, newspapers aren't going away, completely, but people are going to get their information in different ways. Darted into them, in a sense, by blogs and aggregators. Less mediated, and the mediators will be more open about point of view. It's still the mind getting information.
I realize I've made the leap myself. I get more from a computer screen than I do from the paper, because it's My information, ideas I care about, and now I have to admit I am actually hoping that the old media deliquesce, and that advertising moves, and content providers can be paid for their service.
Why should you feel guilty about upsetting a more successful american jewish mass media lickspittle? The people you should feel guilty about upsetting are the general population, who are incessantly brainwashed by these american jewish mass media while being robbed blind and often sent to their deaths through pointless wars or deliberately imposed poverty and ill health.
Phil and Rowan are two harsh men.
Your friend is wrong about the Palin story being a hoax. How ironic!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
An unnamed McCain campaign figure saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent was not the hoax. That is, as far as anyone can tell, true.
The hoax was the claim that the identity of the campaign official was Martin Eisenstadt.
"Could care less?" Phil, are you a fucking retard? It's "couldn't care less."
journalist is harsh, too.
Phil,
Without you and this blog, the news coverage of the most important issue of our time would be seriously diminished. You are the man, and your old media friend should show you more respect.
Here's a typical example of the dominant Jewish-American "Fuck you, let's go make some money" attitude, as reported by Greg Palast: Trial balloons lofted in the WaPo suggest Obama is about to select Joel Klein as Secretary of Education. Klein is a top notch anti-trust lawyer. What he isn't is an educator. Klein is as qualified to run the Department of Education as Dick Cheney is to dance in Swan Lake. I have seen Klein fumble about the stage as Chancellor of the New York City school system. Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed management of New York's schools by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is one of those businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make school districts operate like businesses. Klein has indeed run city schools like a business – if the business is General Motors. Klein has flopped. Half the city's kids don't graduate. Klein is out of control. Not knowing a damn thing about education, rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays high-priced consultants to tell him what to do. He's blown $300m on consultant "accountability" projects plus $80m for an IBM computer data storage system that doesn't work. What the heck was the $80m junk computer software for? Testing. Klein is test crazy. The madly expensive testing program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the classroom. Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined. Scores would have fallen lower, notes author Jane Hirschmann, but Klein "moved the cut line," that is, lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein cheats on the tests. Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially Republican pundits. The NYT's David Brooks is championing Klein, hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies in place…
Information comes from multiple sources anyway. Conversation (F2F is best in my opinion), meetings, print media, film, demonstration, TV.
Some of it is intentionally biased. Some of it is negligently biased. Some of it is partially true. NONE is completely true. That is our ethical job to weigh the sources of our information.
In ALL media, its important to distinguish what is lie from speculation from candor from objective authority.
Blogs are insufficient to accomplish that in my mind. The fact-checking and legal and public accountability for established non-anonymous sources is CRITICAL to enable individuals to ascertain truth and weight.
Blogs are opinion. Opinion is important, but it is incomplete and insufficient.
Blogs are the non-geographic parallel to the press environment at the turn of the 19th century, in which a city like New York had what 20 daily papers.
Blogs are globalist. If they are global rumorist and listened to, they are a curse on humanity. If they are global information, then they are an asset, a limited asset for its anonymity.
Which media does a better job of being a rigorous check on the government, the reason it is constitutionally protected?
Looking at the track record, I'd say it is the new media, the internet.
The old media no longer does facts in the sense that it, now just a handful of newspapers owned by a very few, and to boot corporations waist-deep in the military-industrial-service complex; they are revealed over time, each time, by their pattern of omissions of facts (and diverse opinions) on the most important
macro issues domestic and pertaining to the foreign.
The old media works in a fog of their own making, not revealing
sources (so we can consider also the source) as to do so keep them from getting any "scoops" about government mishaps. This is combined with the fact that for eight years the government has
reclassified nearly everything even the most mundane government records–everything is a secret and will remain so
forever (until revelation know longer matters to the perps), the timeline for any war on terror in a world increasingly desperate due to lop-sided power scenarios in key regions.
There are more facts and ideas to be found on the internet than every dreamed of by what passes for a free press in current USA–
that's why we ended up in Iraq.
What is better for the sifter of truth, constant omission of facts and politically explosive opinions by the old media, or a plethora of voices beholden to no moneybags in the internet?
Further, which lends itself to truth-seeking development, the hot-link and Google, or the most important print news on lineal newspaper page A18?
Wow Rowan, your tone sure seems to have gotten nasty lately. All that hatred is going to burn you up…
Hehe, I tried that line on SOG some time back to test his wingnut cultural literacy. Alas he failed : the correct response, per the amusing film 'Red Dawn', is 'keeps me warm'.
I understand the respect some have for the institution of newspapers and so forth, but I lost my patience when they blacklisted ron paul. i mean, come on the guy raises 20 million in a month and no one is the least bit curious as to why or who?
so let them die I say. or let others take their place. I'm not paying to read neoconservative columnists and wrap ups of stuff i already know.
Welcome back Nurse Ratchet…er…Richard Witty. Boy, how we all missed that soothing elevator music here in the Cukoo’s nest. How’s the fit on that neck brace?
Those Ron :Paul people are still out there. Nobody is tapping them–yet. If the current economic and foreign policy crisis (re the war on
terror n esp Iran) doesn't bring their solicitation, nothing will, ever until a real Red Dawn of some sort to come in the unipolar world.
In a sense they were the agents of their own demise. People would support truth-telling watchdogs…but not echo chambers of MSM propaganda fed to them by the partners of their incestuous relationships.
Much like auto execs, they're producing products that people don't want or can ill afford.
And btw, a true friend is someone who will tell you what you need to hear, and not just want to hear.
i am glad you said it.
watch friends online