http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2004/08/letter-to-mediadear-media-nothing.htmlSunday, August 22, 2004
A LETTER TO THE MEDIA
Dear Media,
Nothing cheers me up quite so much these days as reminding myself I am no longer an official member of The Media. Instead, I am reduced to the lowly ranks of the Non-Journalist Bloggers, where I may languish forever without becoming an invited guest on the Sunday talk shows, and thus never gazing upon the face of God.
For the past few days, I've listened to the press corps congratulating themselves on actually being slightly, perhaps even measurably less obsequious to the Bush campaign. And for that, I congratulate you, too. (Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, as it were.)
I do understand why you're finally doing this. The polls show an opening: You're mad at how easily the Bushies pushed you around for the past three and a half years, and now you've rewritten the script. Now is the time when the Newly Principled Independent Media (right on cue) rise as if one and bite the very hands that have thrown them a steady diet of leaked largesse.
Sometimes I'm envious, I admit. How on earth do you manage to do so little actual enterprise reporting for so much money? When I'm reduced to begging for $5 from my tapped-out readers, I wonder if I made the right decision. But then, I do still have my principles - the very thing that dictated leaving journalism in the first place.
As a group, I'm sorry to say, you're incredibly lazy and susceptible to flattery. (I used to be an editor. I know.) You're more interested in having the people you write about like you than you are in serving the public, and thus the Fourth Estate motto has morphed from "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" to "Go along to get along."
It's easier that way, I know. I remember when the county reporter was on vacation and I'd fill in, county officials were always quite annoyed that I had the audacity to ask tough questions. Not only that, I had this habit of checking everything they presented as fact. Usually, it wasn't.
They hated that.
Fortunately, it was only a temporary annoyance. Soon the regular reporter would be back, and meanwhile, the reporters from the other papers were just as agreeable as he was.
When we'd have an editorial meeting, I'd say things like, "Is it really appropriate for us to present puff pieces on demand so close to an election?" (Silly, I know.) Or, "If we accompany the police on raids, we're violating the rights of the suspects." What a party poop I was. After all, it's so much fun to ride in a police car with the lights and sirens going! Just not as much fun as Air Force One, right?
Anyway, because you're all so rusty with this principled-and-hardworking-journalist thing, there's a point I'd like to make: You can't really compare the Swift Boat Veterans ads with those MoveOn.org ads. Can you guess why?
It's because the content of the Moveon.org ads is what we call "factual" and the Swift Boat Veterans ads are what we call "lies." See the difference?
BIG CLUES
Moveon.org was founded several years ago and hews closely to its stated principles. It is funded primarily through small donations, and practices what we call "transparency." Can you say "transparency"? I knew you could! Can you use it in a sentence? That means that what you see is what you get. They really are a grassroots organization.
The Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth are, um, what we call "sneaky." (I'd say "opaque," but I don't want to make this too complicated.) They pretend to be non-partisan, they pretend they're not affiliated with the Bush-Cheney campaign, and they pretend to be offering eyewitness testimony when they're not.
Believe it or not, dear Media, we bloggers figured this all out pretty damned quick. See, we double- and even triple-check anything that comes from the Bush camp. That's because they're sneaky, too! Coincidence? I think not.
"What do bloggers know that we don't?" you may ask. "How come you knew there weren't any weapons of mass destruction - you with your dial-up modems and no summer homes on Nantucket! How could you?"
Glad you asked! (Better late than never.) We knew there was a strong possibility the Bush administration was being "sneaky" about their Iraq war claims because of what we call "the record". That means we go back and look at how often someone has told the truth, and how often they've lied. Did you know you can go on what they call "the Internet" and check things now? It's pretty darned amazing, and that's what we did.
With this information, we made what we called an "educated guess."
It's a little more complicated than rewriting a press release, true, and you're more likely to make Scotty "Flounder" McClellan mad if you do try it, but you will, at long last, actually be earning your paycheck.
Good luck! If you have any questions, you know where to find me.
Love,
Susie
P.S. We don't care that John Kerry thinks he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve. He was there on Tet - and no one disputes the fact that he was a helluva lot closer to Cambodia than George W. Bush ever got.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
