A bloggers response to Michael Skube

You may remember my rant about the Skube piece in the LA Times here. And now here is an "official" blogger response.

And this guy has 3 Pulitzers?

Suck on this, indeed.

He's such a wanker he has his own unit of measure named after him, a Friedman Unit is six months. Why are we still listening to him?

They can't even win their own arguments

Start here or if you want to just jump right into the idiocy, go here. The op-ed in the LA Times by Skube is yet another grenade lobbed by the Corporate Media^TM at the blogging community. Unfortunately, for them, it bounces off... something... and lands at their own feet, but luckily, for them, they were too stupid to even pull the pin.

So, we start at the beginning:

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The late Christopher Lasch once wrote that public affairs generally and journalism in particular suffered not from too little information but from entirely too much. What was needed, he argued, was robust debate.

Ok, let's ignore the little/much information problem and concentrate on debate:

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The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.

I would call that debate. So, already in the first two paragraphs Skube has contradicted his own argument. Journalism is really all about promoting debate and blogs are nothing more than debate. If both of those are true then blogs are a vital, in fact, the most vital part, of the media today. Well done sir. Moving on.

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And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. "No man but a blockhead," the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, "ever wrote but for money." Yet here are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free.

Unless you whore yourself you can not be a Very Serious Person^TM. Awesome argument. Next.

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Some [bloggers] reject the label "journalist," associating it with what they contemptuously call MSM (mainstream media); just as many, if not more, consider themselves a new kind of "citizen journalist" dedicated to broader democratization.

Is "citizen journalist" supposed to be an insult? Is broader democratization bad? Enquiring minds want to know. Next.

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To the contrary, he [Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos wrote, "we are representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we're selling."

Are you scared?

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There is at least some reason for activists like Moulitsas to see themselves as the new wave. Last year, the California 6th District Court of Appeal gave bloggers the legal victory they wanted when it ruled that they were protected under the state's reporter shield law. Other, more symbolic victories have come their way too. In 2004, bloggers were awarded press credentials to the Democratic National Convention. And earlier this month in Chicago, at a convention sponsored by Daily Kos, a procession of Democratic presidential hopefuls offered full salutes, knowing that bloggers are busy little bees in organizing political support and fundraising.

Oh, yes, you are scared. Boo! Next.

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"What democracy requires," Lasch wrote in "The Lost Art of Argument," "is vigorous public debate, not information. Of course, it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can only be generated by debate. We do not know what we need until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy."

I love it. So, according to the quote Skube supplies democracy requires debate prompted by the information provided by journalists. No shit Sherlock. Bloggers are saying that you Very Serious Journalists^TM aren't asking the right questions, or in most cases, any questions. you are absolutely right. Next.

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He [1960's NY Times reporter Claude Sitton] recounted the time in Philadelphia, Miss., when "a few rednecks -- drunk, shotguns in the back of their truck -- showed up at the Holiday Inn where Fleming and I were staying." The locals invited the big-city reporters -- Sitton from the Times, Fleming from Newsweek -- to come out and see the farm. "I told 'em, 'Look, you shoot us and there'll be a dozen more just like us in the morning. You going to shoot them too?' "

So, serious journalism is measured by how many death threats you get? Well then, shit, liberal bloggers are super journalists. See this earlier post about Ava, a 16 year blogger in Alabama. 'Nuff said. Next and finally.

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n our time, the Washington Post's reporting, in late 2005, of the CIA's secret overseas prisons and its painstaking reports this year on problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- both of which won Pulitzer Prizes -- were not exercises in armchair commentary.

Nor, apparently, are these exercises in Very Serious Reporting^TM and this really invalidates EVERYTHING he said previously about serious journalism. The Walter Reed stories did not win a Pulitzer in 2005... or ever. Wasn't even freaking nominated! I...I...I don't even know what to say.


Muhahahah! Wait, this op-ed is a plant, right? This is really some blogger pulling the wool over our eyes, right? Some blogger intentionally making the Corporate Media^TM look like stupid jackasses, right? No, really, ok. Well, good job anyway.

You know, maybe I just don't understand Skube's rapier wit and superior logic, after all, I'm just a stupid blogger, a "citizen journalist", one of the unclean masses. Or maybe I could write for the LA Times on my fucking coffee break. Just saying, Corporate Media^TM, if you want a fight at least stop punching yourselves in the face. Otherwise, we're just going to get bored, wander off and take your girl/boy.

About effing time!

You Must Read This! It's an editorial in the NY Times written by a group of non-commissioned officers in Iraq. For me, this is the first money quote:

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The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Why do I highlight this? Because it points out very distinctly the problems I have with the Corporate Media. To put it nicely the Corporate Media has been an ardent cheerleader in the Iraq Adventure^TM and since I'm not feeling nice I will also call it what it is. They have whored themselves out to this failed administration and time and time again have carried their water.

In the next money quote, this group goes after our failed administration:

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Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

And this:

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Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Have we seen any of the Serious People in Washington^TM say things like this? No. In fact they are all beating the drum (at least right now) of "The Surge^TM is working!" Which is wrong, not even nuanced wrong but just false. The Corporate media is not to be trusted with, well, much of anything really.

Finally, there is this:

clipped from www.nytimes.com

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation.

Why hasn't this aspect improved? Why haven't we made a priority of getting basic services online? It doesn't take a rocket scientist or even a college degree to see that while the Iraqi people were probably pretty happy to get rid of Hussein they probably also had a fairly rational expectation that getting rid of him would make their lives better not worse. But really no one should be surprised by this failed administration's ability to get anything done, if you are surprised I have one word for you... Katrina.

Write your congressman and senators. The time to impeach came about years ago and it is almost too late.

[UPDATE] I imagine those who don't understand my dislike for the Corporate Media will bring up the fact that I am quoting from an editorial in a Corporate Media newspaper. Yes, you are right and I'm not going to say that we need to get rid of the Corporate Media, they do things and have access to things that no blogger can do or has (yet). But here are the real problems: 1) Too little, too late. Where the fuck have they been for the past 8 years? 2) This editorial was not written by anyone from the Corporate Media.

More about the lawsuit against AT&T

I originally talked about AT&T and spying here but this is more about the actual lawsuits.

Hepting v. AT&T (yes, I am linking to Wikipedia, in a separate post I'll talk about the problems with wikipedia)
al-Haramain v. Bush (the first page of Google results do not contain ANY links to corporate media stories. Still trust the media?)

BTW, Wired magazine has been talking about TIA since 2002 and Wired thinks it's important.

Surge!!!

Effin' A, not even Faux News can spin this into a positive. But despite the obvious evidence, that they themselves report, will anyone be surprised when the corporate media (CM) cheerleads General David "I'm here to say whatever the White House wants me to" Petraeous's September "The Surge is Working^TM" report?

And 1 year (and 4 days) ago...

Thank you Sidarth for being called a racial epithet and recording it.

America might be much different without that incident.

And don't forget that it was the netroots that pushed the story. The corporate media was more than willing to ignore it.

More evidence that Joe Lieberman is an ass and the Washington Post bites.

I'll try to update this tonight but this combines two things that send me into a spittle-inducing rage so I had to get it up here quick before I lost all motor skills. Joe Lieberman is a schmuck and by giving him a platform the Washington Post validates his stupidity.

One Choice in Iraq - that's right Joe, it's called Get Out.

New Media vs. Old Media, Post 0

A couple nights ago I went out to dinner with my parents to celebrate my birthday and my Dad's. During the conversation I mentioned how much I enjoyed this blogging thing which led to a more general discussion of blogging and its effect. Ok, in reality it led to one of my usual rants about my disdain for the mainstream media (henceforth MSM). Mom objected to this rant for two reasons: first, on general grounds MSM is better than blogs; second, on a personal level I am depressingly negative.

This series, "New Media vs. Old Media" is my response to the first claim. Like the "Language Lessons" series this is a subject which I think about a lot and so hopefully will have a new post at least on a weekly basis. Some of the topics I plan to address are the "liberal media" myth, fact-checking, journalistic integrity, opinion vs. reporting, money and journalism, "civility", the importance of MSM, why MSM needs to survive, how MSM can survive, right wing blogs vs. left wing blogs, the mainstreaming of blogs, and more.

As to the second claim, well, I'll address it in a post that I am currently writing but haven't yet finished entitled "Negativity: the new Positivity".

Cheers.