PressThink: The Net Knows More Than You: An Open Letter to the People of CBS News

The Net Knows More Than You: An Open Letter to the People of CBS News

It's the anniversary of the big collapse at CBS over the National Guard Memos. "People of CBS News, you've had a year to think about it. How, if you are dedicated to truthtelling, could you have permitted the near destruction of your network's reputation for telling the truth? What explains your silence, September 9-20, 2004?"

I was asked to be the first guest blogger at Public Eye, the new blog that acts like an ombudsman (sort of) at CBS News. This ran there today under the title, “Outside Voices: Jay Rosen’s Open Letter To CBS.” Here is my slightly expanded version.

To: The People of CBS News
From: Jay Rosen
Re: The Internet and You

Welcome to the Internet, everyone. And I do mean everyone. According to Larry Kramer, the boss of CBS Digital, “all 1,500 people at CBS News now also contribute to CBSNews.com.” That means you’re all Web journalists now— by decree, as it were.

Kramer, after selling Markewatch.com to Dow Jones and making a bundle, told CJR Daily that what excited him about coming to CBS was running an online news operation “that is funded largely by television revenues.” Not having a cable network has become an advantage for CBS, because “with the advent of broadband on the Web, the Web is really a much more attractive place to get news, even news video, now.” In other words, the web site is your cable channel.

Things are looking up for you guys. Public Eye is part of that. The transparency revolution in network news has started, and CBS gets the credit for going first. But I want to make sure you understand it, and how we got here.

Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBSNews.com, says here that Public Eye is not a response to the “the National Guard memo disaster at ‘60 Minutes: Wednesday’ and the Thornburgh-Bocardi report on it that came out in January 2005.” That sounds like a party line to me, and I don’t know what good is served by it.

Reading the Signs

Exactly a year ago—during that flight from truthtelling that overcame your network when Sixty Minutes aired its doomed segment on President Bush’s National Guard service—I was frequently on the phone with reporters from the big national newspapers, who were calling for quotes and impressions. (I had been writing about the episode at my blog, PressThink.)

We—the reporters and I—knew the story was in grave trouble. And we could never figure out why the people running CBS News did not seem to know. After all, they were journalists, capable of reading the signs.

Let’s take September 14, 2004, a typical day in the scandal. There were no developments that confirmed CBS’s account, and many developments that undermined it. On that day:

Marcel Matley, the lead expert Sixty Minutes relied on to examine the disputed memos from Bush’s former commander, said he only checked the signature of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves, which he couldn’t do anyway, he said, because they were copies. (This had been predicted September 10th by blogger Wizbang, who looked up Matley and found he was a handwriting expert, without expertise in other forensic areas.)

Marian Carr Knox, clerk and typist for Killian, said the documents CBS had were not authentic. One figured she would know.

The Washington Post said it compared “memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush’s National Guard service” and found “dozens of inconsistencies,” naming “three areas of difference that are difficult to reconcile.” Meaning: it was hard to see any plausible defense.

The Post also quoted computer typesetting expert Joseph M. Newcomer, who said he was 100 percent sure the documents were fake, and that he had produced exact replicas of them on Microsoft word. (Bloggers, of course, had first found this could be done.)

Mary Mapes and her team at Sixty Minutes provided Dan Rather with talking points to use in defense of the doomed story. “The criticism comes from two main areas,” they wrote. “Partisans and the competitive response of other news organizations.” As if partisans couldn’t have their facts right. As if Marcel Matley and Marian Carr Knox were competitors. (See the Thornburgh Report, p. 189.)

And that night on the Evening News, John Roberts, speaking for all of you, said “CBS News continues to stand by its reporting.”

Why did he do it? How could he say it?

Part of the Same Ecosystem

“I had serious suspicions about the authenticity of the documents on the morning after they were aired,” said Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post on September 21st. “I find it difficult to believe that people in CBS did not develop similar doubts soon afterward.”

Me too: impossible to believe. But what happened to those doubts?

Within hours of the broadcast, the bloggers (some of them enemies of the network) were raising rude questions about the documents, running clever tests of their own, getting named experts to say there was something wrong here, while CBS was still refusing to say who its experts were. Nightline did the “serious suspicions” story that night (September 9th), and the Washington Post published one the next day.

As Jessie Walker of Reason magazine later wrote: “The professional media drew on the bloggers for ideas; the bloggers in turn linked to the professionals’ reports. The old media and the new media weren’t at loggerheads with each other… They complemented each other. They were part of the same ecosystem.”

Now the people of CBS News have officially joined that system, or been joined to it by Kramer’s strategy, and the broader thinking that’s been going on at the network since the retirement of Dan Rather from the anchor’s chair.

Why do people read blogs? On September 20th of last year I did a post called: “Did the President of CBS News Have Anyone in Charge of Reading the Internet and Sending Alerts?” (He didn’t.) This week is Public Eye’s debut. It puts Vaughn Ververs and his staff in charge of reading the Internet and sending alerts.

On January 10th of this year I suggested at my blog that CBS News “could publish on the Internet (as transcript and video) the full interviews from which each segment that airs is made. All interviews, every frame. Even the interviews that were not used.” The Web makes it doable and it would help with transparency, I said.

Six months later Larry Kramer told CJR Daily: “We’re going to be offering up what used to be considered just work product… there’s no reason we can’t allow our users to see the whole thirty-minute interview if they want.” The Web makes it possible and it would help with transparency, he said.

See how we complement each other?

Transparency Will Change You

“If you’re looking for a journalism professor to render absolute verdicts, this probably isn’t the place to be,” Vaughn wrote in his first post at Public Eye. Well, I’m a journalism professor, and here is my verdict: Transparency will absolutely change you, and it already has. If you don’t change with it, you will lose.

We sometimes forget that the sad events at CBS News a year ago began with an act of transparency. After broadcasting its report (called “For the Record”) Sixty Minutes put the Killian Memos on the Net. That’s how the whole thing started.

People of CBS News, the Net knows more than you. The chances are fairly high that a given producer at CBS would not know enough southern history to grasp what Senator Trent Lott was actually saying when he praised Strom Thurmond’s 1948 campaign for president. The chances of the blogosphere not knowing this background are zero.

“The sheer number of blogs, and the speed of response, make errors hard to sustain for very long,” writes Andrew Sullivan. “The collective mind is also a corrective mind.”

Now we are met in happier circumstances, launch week for Public Eye. Instead of an ombudsman, a weblog and staff to create a dialogue that acts like an ombudsman. Good idea. It worked well here, narrowing the differences between the National Review’s media blogger, Stephen Spruiell, and CBS News.

It didn’t work so well here. Tuesday, the CBS Evening News ended with an heart-warmer (a guy who loves ducks.) Public Eye jumps in with a question: “With such an overwhelming amount of news about Hurricane Katrina—most of it depressing—when and how does a broadcast decide that it’s time to include something unrelated and upbeat?” Listen to the answers Hillary Profita got:

PE spoke with Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, senior broadcast producer for the “Evening News,” about how the decision to include Blackstone’s piece came about.
“It is two weeks plus after the hurricane,” said Ciprian-Matthews, “and we felt like it was the right time to do something else. That kind of feature was uplifting and didn’t detract from hurricane coverage and it just felt like the right time to do that.”

The Old Opacity

It just felt right. Uplifting. Didn’t detract. That’s her answer. Todd Gitlin, a professor at Columbia University, is brought in: “They think, and they may be right, that there is a portion of the audience that badly wants these gestures of reassurance and would flee otherwise.” Ciprian-Matthews says no way…

“Yesterday, we weren’t thinking, should we do something so that we don’t lose audience? The day comes when you walk in and say, we’ll cover the big headlines, but let’s also go with something a little more uplifting. It was a good story and that’s why we did it, because it was a good, well done piece.”

Her non-reasons are not the new transparency, but the old opacity:

Q. Mr. County Executive, could you tell us how and why the decision was made to build a waste treatment plan near all these poor people’s homes?
A. A day comes when it just feels right to go with the decision we made, and that’s what we did, we went with it. We made it because it’s a good decision.

I don’t think Ciprian-Matthews is trying to snow us. That’s the scary part: she gave us the explanation that in her mind exists! Maybe in the newsroom that counts as “reason.” To the rest of the world it sounds empty and tautological. She would have been better of with no comment.

I’ve been listening to journalists say it for fifteen years: the public doesn’t understand how we work, we have to explain ourselves more. Public Eye, if it works, is going to reveal when there are no good explanations— or none that make sense beyond newsroom culture. Transparency, you see, does not automatically increase trust. It could raise the curtain on an explanatory show that flops. It’s not enough to be open. You also have to have something insightful to say.

People of CBS News, you’ve had a year to think about it. How, if you are dedicated to truthtelling, could you have permitted the near destruction of your network’s reputation for telling the truth, during the events I have discussed? What explains your silence, September 9th to 20th, 2004? Did you think you were helping CBS by suppressing the doubts and disbelief you must have felt? Did you learn anything from the experience?

You may think you’re past all that. You may think: it’s done, old news. But this is supposed to be a conversation, and I want to know, and I am not alone. So as I like to say at my own blog, if you have a thought hit the comment button. And congratulations, all of you, on making it to the Web.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links

You can check the comments at Public Eye to see if anyone from CBS News takes up my questions. Not that I expect it…

Jeff Jarvis picks up on that theme:

It’s a pity that the people of CBS News do not speak back.
I fear they’ll fear doing that — and also that they’ll look at the post and see that, unfortunately, trolls have moved into the comments and the discussion there is not deep. That is not helped by CBS’ inexplicable decision to put a 500-character limit on comments (this isn’t TV, folks: bits are not scarce) as well as its decision to shut off comments after 24 hours (time’s no longer scarce, either, guys). The discussion over at Jay’s blog, under the same essay, is much better: more substance, more intelligence, more relevance, more to chew on.

Jeff also says that I’ve “built a community of conversation — around what we used to think of as a reputation.” I don’t know. To me the conversation in comments is barely hanging on through the culture war static, while the proportion of witless and repetitive MSM-bashing swells. There’s witless and repetitive Bush bashing too.

I know what he meant and I thank him for the observation, but I have to disagree with Jarvis that there is any PressThink “community,” which to me implies shared values. It’s a public space with regular characters, and some great and passionate writers who will put a lot of thought into their posts. I am very grateful to them. To me, comment threads, which I watch over very carefully, are nine-tenths frustration and they usually fail. But then lots of people say they’re the best part of PressThink, so…

Public Eye debuted with a terrible comment system. (But at least it has one; this site doesn’t.) Here’s Dick Meyer, editorial director at CBSNews.com, trying to get a handle on problems with Public Eye’s set up:

Jeff Jarvis, early adviser to and tough critic of Public Eye, has remarked on the quantity and quality of the comments on Public Eye. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit we expected and probably hoped for more, but we were also warned that it takes time, lots of it. We’ve received plenty of brainy and contrarian comments, for sure. Some nice ones, too. And we’ve been swamped by useful criticism and tips, though a lot of it has come via e-mail not comments.
Still, we’d like a better conversation, more substantive, less knee-jerk MSM-bashing. Suggestions?

That’s CBS News asking for your suggestions… Also, Dick Meyer did drop into Buzzmachine’s comments.

And… Dick Meyer, editorial director, CBSNews.com, in comments here:

First of all, thanks for the Open Letter to CBS News that we posted on Friday. I was proud to have it on Public Eye and it helped get us off to a frisky start. I say that event though you essentially called me a liar in your piece… I also thought you were gratuitously snarky on the ducks piece, nasty about the senior producer who talked about it without articulating any actual argument as to why she deserved your personal and condescending scorn.

There’s more, so read it and my reply.

Jay Rosen at Dick Meyer’s Public Eye post asking for suggestions on their comment system: “You should have someone research it: current finding among students of the Web is that for large sites moderated threads are the only real answer. An unmoderated forum will always fail.”

Bill Quick, the proprietor at Daily Pundit, has an extremely intelligent response to this post. Here’s an excerpt:

Because, you see, the blog form is not a magic wand. It can be used to conceal, to make opaque (or to continue opacity) just as easily as it can be used to reveal. Blogs are just as transparent as the intentions of those who write them. To repeat what Jay asked earlier, “How, if they are dedicated to truthtelling….?” I think to this day, Jay assumes that CBS was, and is, dedicated to truthtelling. [But if] they were, they would have admitted that those documents were forged, and they would have moved heaven and earth to expose and tell the truth about how that came to happen.

Read the rest.

Profile of Public Eye editor Vaughn Ververs in Broadcasting & Cable magazine: CBS News Sentry Assumes Post.

Prior PressThink posts on CBS, Dan Rather and the Killian Memos:

A Short Letter to Dan Rather (Jan. 12, 2005)

After Trust Me Journalism Comes Openness: Rather Report Released (Jan. 10, 2005)

Does CBS News Have a Political Future in This State? (Sep. 24, 2004.)

Did the President of CBS News Have Anyone in Charge of Reading the Internet and Sending Alerts? (Sep. 20, 2005)

Rather’s Satisfaction: Mystifying Troubles at CBS (Sep. 18, 2004)

Stark Message for the Legacy Media (Sep. 14, 2004)

Weekend Notes With “Forgery” Swirling in the Air (Sep. 11, 2004)

Posted by Jay Rosen at September 16, 2005 1:07 PM Print

From http://underthenews.blogspot.com ...

I've been a newspaperman since I co-founded my junior high paper at the tender age of 12, about 36 years ago. My final decision to become an ink-stained wretch was made in the heady post-Watergate days, the apex of journalism's nobility and the calm before the anti-"Media" storm. Back then, it was still possible for a young reporter to think of himself as a kind of knight who could change the world with his typewriter.

Clearly, things have changed. The idealism of young journalists has lost its edge, the world doesn't care too much what we say anymore, and the typewriter is a dusty decoration on my credenza.

And now I -- and many like me -- have been demoted from "knight" to "MSM." This blogging acronym for "mainstream media" oozes a certain flippant disrespect, as if a life in journalism is not merely the least qualification for a blogger, but might even connote to Blogospherians an intolerable cowardice, arrogance or treachery. Many -- maybe most -- bloggers might just as well hang out a sign: "We don't want your kind 'round here."

I'm too new at blogging to understand the nuances. The blogosphere is certainly not a utopian society, free of prejudice, deception, crime, or other sins. It's merely an extension of the old-model society, like a neighborhood on the other side of the Monorail tracks. So I'm not particularly surprised that the "Old Guard" of the Information Age (the so-called MSMers) are held suspect by the New Guard (bloggers.)

But I'm curious about why. I hear regularly how the MSM lacks fairness (OK, and balance) but increasingly I believe that aggressive news-consumers aren't truly seeking reporting without bias ... they want reporting that reflects their own bias. "Fair" is a report that generally supports the reader/viewer's established opinions ... "unfair" is a report that allows for divergent viewpoints. Thus, the mainstream media, in striving to allow for differing views, cannot avoid being labeled as "unfair" ... and thus is demonized in the blogosphere (and apparently everywhere else that a person would be jealous of his opinions.) And in the Blogosphere, we are allowed to seek out the "fairest" opinions/reporting, i.e., the ones that fit our biases.

In my short blogging experience, I have sensed not just disdain for each other by both bloggers and MSMers, but a mutual paranoia that either might be the death of honest, accurate, important, genuine and noble information exchange. Personally, I believe more information is better than less, so I am not threatened by the Blogosphere, and I see its value in transmitting information that transcends the basic restrictions of mainstream media, namely space, time and mass audience.

I worry a little about the blogosphere's "Tower of Babel" and information-anxiety, but they don't keep me awake at night. Will the whole world soon turn to bloggers (and away from MSM) for information? It's doubtful. But to supplement their minimum daily requirement of knowledge and entertainment? Absolutely.

I really want to know, from non-MSM bloggers and MSMers alike, is the blogosphere a community that is made better or worse by your co-existence? Why should one side be viewed more or less skeptically than the other? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses in this diverse community, vis a vis MSM?

Talk to me, bloggers.

Posted by: Ron Franscell at September 16, 2005 3:11 PM | Permalink

You can believe CBS screwed up in some journalistic manner, getting the facts wrong and being too arrogant to admit it, even to themselves.
Or you can believe that CBS deliberately lied in order to throw a presidential election.

Which is true? "We did it because we're dumb." is probably better than "We did it because we're crooked."
But it will not reassure readers. Should it? CBS seems to think that having reassured us they aren't crooks is all that's necessary.

When it comes to choosing between the two, we may add two other pre-election happenings. One is the untended ammo dump story, al Kaka. We discover that CBS and the NYT had connived at holding the story--apparently no competitive pressure with this one--for a week in order to be too close to the election for a rebuttal to gain traction.
Shortly after the election, about fourteen seconds, this momentous lapse in US planning for Iraq became a non-story and has not been heard from since.

Ditto the flu vaccine shortage. By spring, the docs couldn't give the stuff away. But, since there had been word zero since the election, hardly anybody noticed.

Looking at the TANG story in the light of these two, among others, makes be doubt the "we're dumb" excuse.

Not that they aren't dumb. If Dan Rather had kept that old Selectric, Kerry might be president today.

So they're both dumb and crooked.

I don't see how they will ever change their reputation.
It is beyond the bounds of possibility that they will come all over honest all of a sudden. But that's the only thing that will do it, and only if they maintain it for years and years. Which they won't do in this universe.

They're screwed and they deserve it, having earned it fair and square.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 16, 2005 1:58 PM | Permalink

I noticed that the first comment pointed out a slight factual error in your piece. The comment has disappeared, and the error has been corrected. This may seem like a small point, but wouldn't it have been more transparent to respond to the first comment with another thanking the commenter for pointing out the inaccuracy and indicating that the error had been corrected?

Posted by: Not One Jot at September 16, 2005 2:02 PM | Permalink

The biggest word missing from this essay is "humility". It's not enough to say that others know more than mainstream journalists - at some level they realize that. What mainstream journalists have to achieve in their own minds is the humility to actually listen to others who know more when those journalists don't like what they are hearing.

In the computer industry there is a type of technical trainer who believes he or she can teach absolutely anything. Just give them a day or two to prepare, and they're go right out there and do the training class, even if they have zero experience in the subject matter.

I've seen these folks crash and burn in front of knowledgeable audiences. It doesn't seem to affect them. They're right back the next time, slinging the bull whenever they get in trouble with the material.

Fortunately, such trainers are a small percentage. Journalists, though, seem to be overwhelmingly afflicted with the same problem. They'll write about anything, whether they understand it or not, and have the arrogance to expect that others will just accept it. After all, they're journalists! They went to journalism school and everything!

A little bit of humility goes a long, long way. Actually listening to opposing facts, opinions, and sentiments could make journalists far more effective, and dramatically less error prone on the really big errors. It's easy to make little errors, and everyone understands that. But the big errors are the ones that count, and the only way to avoid them is to listen to the people that know enough to spot the errors. And I mean listening humbly, with an open mind, instead of defensively, as the canonical example of CBS News was done.

Posted by: Billy Hollis at September 16, 2005 2:02 PM | Permalink

Brings to mind these letters regarding the "real story" missed by CJR in Corey Pein's article attacking bloggers for uncovering CBS's failings.

Posted by: ss at September 16, 2005 2:54 PM | Permalink

I've asked this of news professionals many times, and have never gotten an answer.

Why has CBS not retracted the story? Everyone now knows it wasn't true. Why haven't they taken the formal, largely symbolic step of actually retracting? Even today, they only say they cannot verify that the documents are authentic, but they stand by the story anyway

Posted by: RRiley at September 16, 2005 3:09 PM | Permalink

Richard, i think you have a point, but there is a third option that CBS would be least likely to cop to of all. Supreme hubris. Yes, I think Rather and his minions were out to 'get' Bush, but that they utterly believed the story was there to be 'got'. Believing themselves beyond error, and also believing in this golden throne of the 4th estate they have concvinced themselves they sit upon, CBS decided to press the story out before the election 'for the good of the nation'. Needless to say whether a 40 year old story about the ins and outs of a few NG weekends really said anything about a sitting president is dubious at best. But thats what they had and thats what they ran with. In short, I dont think there was 'intent' here by CBS to run a false story and bring down a president. It was ungodly arrogance built upon disdain for the judgement of the American people, and above all the total abandonment of the journalistic principals they claimed to enshrine. The smug bastards played fast and loose with their trust and got smacked down for it.

Posted by: Mark Buehner at September 16, 2005 3:10 PM | Permalink

This article is entirely irrelevant - the "why" is of no consequence until the real crime is admitted. CBS tried to influence the election by publishing stuff they knew was likely false for maximum negative impact on one candidate, and ignored contentious stories about the other. A simple comparison of the skepticism level on the Guard memos and on the Swift Vets tells you all you need to know. CBS and most of the rest of the media are so full of liars that I personally do not care what their motivations are - and they are not only liars, but even worse they are sanctimonious hypocrites who pretend to be performing a public service while they lie. The author of this piece might as well wring his hands over the motivations of Yasser Arafat, who at least finally had the good taste to drop dead.

Posted by: Daver at September 16, 2005 3:21 PM | Permalink

Jay, did you notice that Public Eye closes its comments 24 hours after the post appears. You might want to give them a heads up about why that is not the smartest move.

I think your post there is great.

Posted by: JennyD at September 16, 2005 3:24 PM | Permalink

No Ron, the MSM really IS biased. They do it by filtering more so than one-sided reporting. I didn't realize how bad it was until after 9/11. Up til then I'd be resisting getting a computer in the house. I sit in front of one all day and I didn't was a "busman's holiday" type of environment at home. But with the news after 9/11 becoming somewhat repetitious and other people at work who DID have a computer at home having more insight than I did, even though I read several newspapers, I got curious and did some surfing over lunch. Within a week after 9/11 I had a computer at home and was finding out how much I'd been lied to over the years. Lies of omission. Often events were happening that just didn't show up on the MSM radar or other time when what DID show up was clearly one sided. Sorry, but reporters are not tasked to change the world, just report on it. Stop glorifying yourselves.

Posted by: rabidfox at September 16, 2005 3:33 PM | Permalink

Another good piece, Jay.
I echo what Jenny D says.. again. (We keep agreeing on things!)

I hope CBS takes your comments to heart.
Have you got reaction from it yet from CBS people?

Meanwhile I got fed up with an unrelated but annoying news meme - the one about Garrison Keillor - and will try to correct bad info with good info.

Posted by: Scott Butki at September 16, 2005 3:34 PM | Permalink

Jay, great letter. Hope you make a positive contribution.

Bloggers make way more errors than MSM -- but almost always correct them, when there are links to source documents.

MSM provides a huge amount of those source links, those interviews, those quotes about what the "facts" are. But Bloggers are fully able to do the analysis of what the facts mean.

Prior PressThink articles on the debate.
Should the MSM reporters merely provide the "facts", and NOT be part of the story?
OR -- should the reporters want to "make a difference", perhaps make the world a better place?

Most reporters want both -- but can't do both. Making a difference means supporting a policy. Policy support colors all the "facts" that are presented, and especially the ones NOT presented.

Also, facts are not value judgments.

Ron, your anti-Nixon Watergate knights were successful in getting him to resign; they were also successful in their other policy, getting the US to leave Vietnam. The fact is, after the US left, there was genocide. MSM knights changing the world -- supporting a policy of allowing genocide.

How many would have to die before the MSM, like Chronkite (most trusted man in America), would say leaving Vietnam is a bad policy?

Posted by: TomGrey at September 16, 2005 3:39 PM | Permalink

Ron Franscell: You really, really don't get it, do you? It's a little sad to see so many MSM-ers genuinely at a loss.

First of all, no one asked you to become a "knight" and to change the world. Doing so necessarily imposes your worldview on the rest of us and pardon us if we don't bow to your wisdom.

Your characterization of "fair" and "unfair" is completely ridiculous. If the MSM had made the slightest attempt over the past 30 years to check the leftward drift of their "hard news", we wouldn't even need an alternative media.

The fact is that the alternative media developed in response to your one-sided, condescending preening (not you, personally, that is).

Your comment about the mainstream media "striving to allow for differing views" is laughable. If you really believe that, you are much too gullible to be a reporter. If you are simply being disingenuous, then you are insulting our intelligence.

You're worried about the information "Tower of Babel" are you? And this is why -- all together now -- because the general population is too stupid to sort through the conflicting bullcrap and draw its own conclusions. We need of the help of the superior intellects of the journalism school graduates (a great number of whom, it has been noted, go into journalism in college because it doesn't require any math).

The blogosphere is the media of choice of most intelligent people of my generation because of the sheer volume of voices. We know the truth is in there somewhere. The MSM had credibility at one time, but aside from the aging-hippie lefties and their less intelligent progeny, I don't know anyone who believes them anymore.

And the very sad part is that you have only yourselves to blame.

Posted by: martak at September 16, 2005 3:46 PM | Permalink

Well. Ron. As neither let me tell you what I'm interested in seeing. Since neither of you do not exist except to inform the public. I find that most MSM and bloggers are self serving. However. There's always a however isn't there? The MSM has a greater histiory of bending the facts to serve your own purposes. I give you David Brinkleys coverage of the TET offensive as an example. Things seem to have gone down hill from there. Consider this, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has a better reputation for accuracy than the New York Times.
While it is true that many bloggers are just as self serving many of them make no claim to being objective so that the reader is under no impression they're being propagandized. The otheres are only interested in giving out the facts as they see them.Few, and in my opinion the best, are interested in making public the evidence that the rest of us can draw our own conclusions from They are, in short, a watchdog not only on your MSM but on each other as well.
There is no attempt on bloggers to talk down to their readers. The main reason I personally no longer watch most network news.
All any thinking person wants from the news is the facts without the interminable moralizing.Bloggers give that to their readers. MSM does not.
Information is the the single most valuable commodity in the new millenia. And the wonderful thing about the internet is that, that commodity is no longer under your control.
The choice of news has become even wider and varied, and having a choice is a good thing.

Rusty, out.

Posted by: Rusty at September 16, 2005 3:51 PM | Permalink

Many bloggers are just partisan ranters, but those people have little readership or influence outside their narrow spheres of sympathizers. Many of the comments made by Old Media folks about bloggers try to reduce the entire blogosphere to just these ranters. That is not accurate, and to the extent Old Media ignores that fact, it will remain clueless as to the nature and influence the more influential bloggers have.

Bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnson, the folks at Powerline (to mention some that had a major influence on the CBS Rathergate story) have wide influence and credibility because of their openness and transparency. And because they are open about criticism of themselves. Yes, they have points of view, but they are open about what those are, unlike MSM "news" types like Rather who still preposterously assert their objectivity, even as they demonstrate the opposite on a daily basis. And these bloggers are open to correction and criticism and actually publish it on their sites, right next to their own stories and assertions, so that readers can follow the debate and the facts as they are revealed. And they actually admit when they have been wrong and refer readers to corrections. On the better sites, the merely angry partisan sniping is largely filtered out, but the dialectical debate is open and transparent. The ones who don't allow this limit their credibility and therefore their influence. The ones who do are trusted and gain influence.

That is the Big Lesson for Old Media. Be open and honest. State your biases and allow the truth to come out, even when it contradicts your original stories or, God forbid, your worldview. Otherwise, you are not interesting to those of us who seek facts and responsible debate, and you become more like the partisan ranter type of blogger, interesting only to those who share your worldview, and influential to rapidly shrinking numbers.

A final point to TV Old Media types, including Fox News and all the cable channels. Dialectic is not about two colorful extremists shouting sound bites at each other, which is all that is currently available on TV "news." It's about open, reasoned minds having to defend their views with reason and facts. And perhaps even evolving their views as a result. Like Buckley's old "Firing Line" show. That actually happens in the blogosphere, but never on TV anymore.

Posted by: freetotem at September 16, 2005 3:52 PM | Permalink

Too little, and too late. You could argue that in the long term it's not too late, but not that it's not too little. CBS News is a name which will live in well-deserved infamy. Now "the people of CBS" can just spread their villanies further, through a new (for them) medium.

Remember that old saying from the early computer days, "To err is human, but to really foul things up takes a computer." That's all that CBS is up to - fouling things up on a bigger scale.

Posted by: big dirigible at September 16, 2005 4:03 PM | Permalink

I'm not in favor of network news stories about ducks. Of course, I don't watch network news anyway, so it's not like my opinion really matters about CBS.

Still, the choice to run a story about ducks hardly seems comparable to the choice to run and stand behind a story based on obviously forged documents. (Or whatever left- or right-friendly Media Scandal -- I'm not making a partisan point.) Transparency about duck coverage is a complete non-issue for me; I'm happy to let them handle that debate internally.

Incidentally, might I suggest that adding Todd Gitlin to the "transparency" mix is hardly moving the discussion of journalism outside of the old boys club...?

Posted by: JSinger at September 16, 2005 4:16 PM | Permalink

Jay, I'm not following your complaint about Ciprian-Matthews' explanation for running the duck story, unless it's that she didn't explicitly say that it was a judgement call. IMO, the lady did a good job of covering the thought process: It was two weeks into the story, they felt the time was ripe for a breather, and there was room for one without detracting from their hurricane coverage. Given the circumstances, I'd accept that explanation. (If the story had aired on September 1st, I would be more suspicious.)

Unless you want to argue that she's covering up some sinister conspiracy to get pictures of ducks on prime time news ;-)

------
BTW, I note that the comments to entries on the CBS blog become invisible after they're closed. Yea? Nay?

Posted by: Old Grouch at September 16, 2005 4:16 PM | Permalink

To Ron--

The problem with the MSM is not that it's biased. Of course it's biased. It can't help being biased because it's produced and presented by people, who naturally have biases.

The problem is that the MSM won't admit that it's biased. They feed us a cock-and-bull line about how "We at the Metropolis Daily Planet and at WXYZ-TV Channel 83 devote ourselves to giving you an objective look at the day's events."

What utter hogwash.

I think we'd all have a lot more respect for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR, and the big-city daily papers if they would just admit the obvious: they are de facto propaganda organs of the Democratic Party.

Bloggers, as a rule, admit they have an agenda, whether it's Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, anarchist, neo-Nazi, whatever. Why can't the MSM?

Posted by: Hale Adams at September 16, 2005 4:34 PM | Permalink

I've gotta say something about the ducks. I used to work at a mid-sized newspaper in the suburbs of a big city. And we got a new editor, and the editor said at one of the first news meetings that it would be really good to have a picture of an animal, like a pet, on Page One whenever possible. People like animals, people get depressed by bad news, thus the search for the perfect pet story was on.

Seriously.

Posted by: JennyD at September 16, 2005 4:50 PM | Permalink

Yes, the problem with the ducks is that it is a way of treating the audience like poor dumb rubes. Here are some happy thoughts! Smile! Turn that frown upside down! Usually this type of thing is relegated to second grade teachers, and it remains one of the most depressing features of the news landscape. I cannot even imagine how totally demoralizing it would be to go to work, as a journalist, and be told I need to find a lovable pet story for the front page.

The only thing it shows is the level of condescension. It's not just that they think their audience is a bunch of mood-swinging retards who need constant reassurance lest they burst into tears--for all I know, maybe that's true. It's that, in a search for uplift, the best they can do is a piece geared to the mental sophistication and curiosity of a small, witless child.

Posted by: Brian at September 16, 2005 5:25 PM | Permalink

Ron Franscell,

A few observations from a fairly liberal Democrat in Texas: for most members of the public, whatever their political persuasion, the most infuriating aspect of media hubris is journalists' tendency to pursue a meme of their choosing despite the obvious, overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Katrina coverage is an excellent example. The prevailing meme now-- on the covers of Newsweek and the Economist, across the nightly broadcasts and the cable networks-- is the "shaming" of "racist America." Well, I live in Texas, and as a liberal nonbeliever I can tell you that I have never been prouder of my countrymen.

The extraordinary compassion, generosity and competence shown by hundreds of thousands of Texans (and others) effectively destroy the myth of America as racist. And yet the Economist, after mentioning in passing Gov. Perry's superb performance, devotes four paragraphs to junk predictions of future racist behavior by Texans, introduced by a Cat 5 storm of journalistic bullshit including vapid opining about how "[In Texas] race is inevitably a factor" and "some Texans (including many in the Republican base) will feel [inclined to send these black victims back to NOLA]...."

It's hard to know which is more astonishing: that comfortable, middle-class white Texans would spontaneously open their homes and schools to some of the most desperate and yes, dangerous, families in this country, or that our political and media elites would persist in painting these heroic people as racists.

The cognitive dissonance here is breathtaking. Americans have already given over $800 million of their own money, built or given tens of thousands of homes and apartments, opened their schools and churches to these poor people, and yet the headlines, op-eds, newscasts and cover stories are covered with "America's Shame" and "Racism!" I know it's a cliche, but in this case the media and political elites really are living in a parallel universe.

How on earth could anyone allege racism about families and church groups that have opened their childrens' schools to kids coming from the worst gang neighborhoods in the country? How many of the Beltway and Manhattan Bloviators would open their own kids' schools to kids from NOLA's 9th Ward?

The effort to paint this as America's "shame" is utterly ridiculous. Also unforgiveable.

Does that help?

thibaud

Posted by: thibaud at September 16, 2005 5:27 PM | Permalink

Ron: You seem troubled by the concern that people will become voluntarily trapped in echo chambers as they seek and find minds of a kind with their own. It is certainly true that people will seek like-minded voices, but whether that is a problem is not so clear. The echo chamber of the MSM, where vast majorities of journalists are affirmed liberals and vote Democratic, doesn't seem to trouble you. Would it prove a categorically different or more dire concern for we simple-minded throngs below?

If you believe yes--that people can't know the "truth" or what's "good for them" when information passes through filters other than that of idealistic, liberal journalists--it only affirms your elitist snobbery, wholely at odds with democracy.

If, however, you believe that echo chambers are bad in any endeavor, then it raises the question of why you or the MSM don't find view-point diversity (e.g., liberal/conservative hiring balances) to be a priority in news offices across the country.

Facts are facts. "Truth" is sketchy. Liberal, conservative or whatever, we all know that a big hurricane happened on the Gulf Coast and that FEMA entered the scene after the storm hit. Didn't matter where I got my news. We all know there's a war in Iraq and that soldiers get killed there. The MSM's failing is in believing that, through good intentions and hard work, it can faithfully present the "true" implications or significance of these facts.

Did FEMA make unjustifiable mistakes? Is the Iraq war going poorly or appropriately apace? Affixing significance to one fact over another, or concluding whether some event or response is appropriate or justifiable, are inherently subjective and, ultimately, individual determinations. Each individual is free to make up his or her own mind based on the information he finds relevant, and seek affirmation from others.

The diversity of blogs allows people to do that. I don't have to "take their word for it." And if I discover that my favorite blogger is not worthy of my trust, I can go freely elsewhere. In the end, popular and compelling opinions will rise to the fore and help dictate policy. Perhaps the MSM can find a new consensus-building role for themselves in that conversation. But the days of the MSM's striving for enlightened consensus by fiat are over.

Posted by: ss at September 16, 2005 5:32 PM | Permalink

Martak's reply to Ron Franscell gets right to the essential point: What sort of arrogance leads someone to decide that a quick turn at journalism school, or working on his college newspaper, qualifies one as any sort of "knight" ready to fight for the common good? The MSM are laughable, and nearing obsolescence, because of the surpassing ignorance of reporters and editors. Having no formal training in military history or tactics, they are quick to pass judgment on every war they cover. Having no knowledge of economics, they do not hesitate to determine when the economy is underperforming or in assigning blame for its underperformance.

By contrast, the blogosphere consists in large measure of people who actually have expertise, and who are willing--eager, in fact--to share their insights and analyses with their readers. Obviously there are also lots of partisan hacks out there, but they're easy to identify and therefore to dismiss. They do not prevent me from finding the best bloggers, precisely because there are no space constraints on the internet. By contrast, every nitwit given space on the op-ed page of my local newspaper denies that space to someone who might have something to say.

So, Ron, no matter how much it may comfort you to think that I'd rather get my information from bloggers than from reporters simply because I want to prevent my biases from being challenged, the simple fact is that I prefer the blogosphere to the MSM out of a Jeffersonian preference for the free flow of ideas and information over a hierarchical transmission structure dominated by people of modest intelligence and inadequate knowledge.

Posted by: Sandy at September 16, 2005 5:36 PM | Permalink

Ron: From a non-newsie blogger, here's a bit of my take:

For most of th blogs and bloggers I give two hoots about, the issue isn't so much "fairness" as "trustworthiness." For many the blogosphere is seen as more trustworthy than MSM because when you go to a blog more often than not the direction from which they come is clear and openly acknowledged but so to is the source material upon which they have based their opinions. When the MSM operates in stereotypical fashion, advertising "all the news that fits" when really offering "all the news that fits [our ideology]," it is again, for me, not an issue of "fair" as much as an issue of "trust." To bring forth only the most recent example off the top of my head, when PM Talibani's expression of thanks and friendship to the US at a joint press conference with President Bush is completely ignored in favor of a Katrina gotcha question (that was routinely shortened to "Bush Takes Blame" in headlines throughout the world) how much confidence should I have in their journalistic standards?

It's a sad state of affairs, but I paid no attention at all to recent polls on the President's performance and reported anger over federal response because I have come to expect the MSM to exagerate anything that reflects poorly against the Administration. Their willingness to swallow up any "Bush bad" narrative (vis a vis Rathergate, early exit poll results in 2004, the impending doom in Iraqi elections, etc. etc. etc.) has led me to discount the majority of negative reporting they do in this regard. And that's sad because if they ever were right chances are I and many other like-minded individuals would just ignore it as more "Bush Derangement Syndrome" on behalf of the MSM. It's almost as if they were never told the story of the boy who cried "wolf."

As for the love-hate symbiotic relationship between MEM and blogosphere, it just that, symbiotic. No blogger that has matured past the adolescent "me He-Man strong" phase could possible do anything but agree that without the reporting source putting leather on pavement his (or her) little (or big) tush in the comfy chair wouldn't have much to write about. However, this understanding runs the risk of equating "news collection" with "media reporting," something the MSM does without thinking. In the new media, while big gatekeepers like CBS and CNN may suffer, there will always be a need for the people who actually do the work of gathering information, such as AP and its stringers. In an analogy, the CIA analysts depend upon the collecting agents for their life blood, but the agents can just as easilly make a living selling to the next higher bidder.

Hmm, I kind-of like where I'm going, so I may let it percolate and write it up myself later. That's part of the new media, too.

Posted by: submandave at September 16, 2005 5:48 PM | Permalink

Ron - an example of a particularly loathesome, yet standard, MSM technique, taken from the Economist article on Katrina. They launch their four paragraphs of speculation with the delightfully vapid sentence, "Race is inevitably a factor." What does this mean? How big a factor-- like casual racial discrimination at, say, a major British weekly, or more like a race riot?

Rather than give actual examples of racist behavior by Texans, they quote Barbara Bush's fatuous but race-neutral line. Nothing more. No evidence, zip, nada. Then they trot out the MSM journalist's favorite weasel words of all: references to "some" or "many", ie to unnamed, unspecified, unquantified subgroups of the journalist's devising: "some Texans (including many in the Republican base)..."

Again, what does this mean? How many racist Texans are denoted by "some" and "many"? Would this number be on the order of, say, 15,000? (This is the population of little Newton County, TX, which has mobilized to create shelters for 1,000 Katrina victims). Or perhaps 3,000? (This is the number of apartments purchased by the Dallas Baptist Association for Katrina families).

And then comes the icing on the MSM cake, the Economist's appeal to an academic authority, who supplies the quote that ties the thesis together: Richard Murray of the U. of Houston predicts that the above Texans "will feel that we've got enough minorities in this state already." Succeeding paragraphs then go further into the blue sky, with speculations about how taking in the refugees will inevitably create "tensions" in other states as well.

So there you have it, folks: even when there is massive, *actual* evidence of myriad acts of selflessness by hundreds of thousands of flesh-and-blood Texans and other Americans, the Economist glides over this to inform us at considerable length that we can expect to see race tensions very soon. Evidence? None. Logic? Nothing but a snippet of an assertion by an academic.

Fake, but accurate.

And this is supposedly quality journalism, from the Economist! Are you beginning to understand why intelligent Americans hold so many members of your profession in contempt?

Posted by: thibaud at September 16, 2005 6:04 PM | Permalink

Sir Knight

Methinks you have the wrong impression about your profession. Change the world? How about just reporting on it. You aren't the news. It's not about you. Unfortunately, many journalism schools probably agree with you.

Posted by: Swede at September 16, 2005 6:15 PM | Permalink

Ron: since leaving the MSM I've discovered how limited it is in really seeking solutions. Journalists aren't really participants in truth seeking or problem solving. That's because reporting is a one-way communication. The news gets printed, and that's it.

Better truths, better answers come out of a dialectic, out of conversations and a free-flow of ideas. That can't exist the way the media is currently structured.

I think historically that structure was more possible, when the news was basically pamphleteering and conversation in the town square. That time is gone, but the internet and weblogs have resurrected the possibility of the dialectic. I think it's a wonderful development, and I'll bet the dialogue becomes sharper over time as people learn once again to present claims and evidence, and then debate them.

So, reporters aren't knights. The people are in charge of the dialogue. As it should be.

Posted by: JennyD at September 16, 2005 6:33 PM | Permalink

... And that night on the Evening News, John Roberts, speaking for all of you, said “CBS News continues to stand by its reporting.” ...

Uhhh, are you sure John Roberts anchored CBS Evening News that night? I thought it was Dan Rather. You may have a little too much news in your diet there, Jay. Maybe you should take a walk or something. Otherwise, great post, and I hope you get answers to your questions.

Posted by: Bill Munger at September 16, 2005 7:17 PM | Permalink

I don't mean this to sound trollish, I'm honestly wondering: as many have decreed the "MSM" irrelevant/dying/dead/etc., is there intention or hope in your ideas of an improved or new entity to take its place? Many who disdain the MSM allow that it still does produce most of the "raw material". Or is the idea to criticize it and prove it wrong enough to wrangle it into shape? I just don't see where you intend things to lead -- the blogosphere at this point can't stand on its own, with zero material from the MSM - so what's the plan? Maybe it's being yelled loud enough that I'm just missing it, but I don't think I'm the only one...

Posted by: TG at September 16, 2005 7:46 PM | Permalink

Don Quixote inspires not anger, but bemused affection and in some, introspection and humility. Why not Ron?

As mass journalism has become more pervasively dominated by the elite - what used to be called the upper class (not many gumshoes with shiny Columbia degrees back in the day) - so too has the average reader become more reluctant to take at face value reporting such as that noted by Thibaud that, though well-intentioned perhaps, serve coincidentally to keep that reader in their place, much like an abusive husband consistenly belittles his wife to maintain control.

This need not be a conscious motivation of our jounalistic knights errant for the average reader to be nonetheless rightfully wary of this self-perpetuating dynamic.

Posted by: Bezuhov at September 16, 2005 8:14 PM | Permalink

And this is supposedly quality journalism, from the Economist! Are you beginning to understand why intelligent Americans hold so many members of your profession in contempt?
-- thibaud

Ummm, Thibaud -- Hel-lo ?
This is a red herring if ever I saw one. The Economist is a British publication, staffed by British editors and British reporters. As such, it reflects the typical supercilious attitudes toward both America and Americans held by the British intellectual elite.
It's a very long stretch to cite it as an example of why "intelligent Americans hold so many members of your profession in contempt."
Unless by the phrase "so many members of your profession," you mean the European press.
In which case your comments, while interesting, seem to have landed entirely in the wrong place.
I'm sure there's a thread somewhere about the distorted views of Texas held by journalists in England, or France, or Germany, or Italy. But this isn't it.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 16, 2005 9:02 PM | Permalink

Hale has it exactly right. We don't care that news organizations have a political position. What infuriates us about outfits like CBS is that they falsely claim to be an objective news source, when they are really more of an activist organization.

The problem is magnified by the fact that the great unwashed middle, that is to say, those people that do not really pay attention to current events, do not believe something is news, or even true, unless they see it on one of the networks.

Happily, new technologies and market forces are curing the problem.

And if the left should lose control of the media, it is hard to imagine them continuing to draw as many voters.

Posted by: fustian at September 16, 2005 9:21 PM | Permalink

"Uhhh, are you sure John Roberts anchored CBS Evening News that night? I thought it was Dan Rather. You may have a little too much news in your diet there, Jay."

In defense of Jay, I would hope and expect that he didn't just throw that line out off the top of his head. I'm sure he relied on a transcript or tape of the news that particular evening to make his point. Dan Rather didn't anchor the news every night without exception in that period (or in any other). I'd be careful about throwing around to many accusations without studying the original source materials yourself. Making assumptions (Dan Rather was the main CBS anchor therefore Dan Rather hosted that particular night) is the surest way to get yourself in trouble. Don't be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

And if Jay is wrong (which I wouldn't bet on), down with Jay! LOL

Posted by: kcom at September 16, 2005 9:26 PM | Permalink

This one amused me:

Last report I saw, students who pay $30,000-$40,000 (accounts vary) for one year of Columbia's graduate school of journalism typically end up starting out at some low-end Gannett newspaper or Clear Channel TV station in some place like East Cowflop, Idaho, for a starting salary of $21,000.
So much for that "shiny degree."
Truth is, the MSM journalists who more than anyone else in recent years have driven right-wingers absolutely batshit come from places like South Dakota State (Brokaw), East Texas Tech (Rather) and a rural high school in Canada (Jennings).
By contrast, at places like the Weekly Standard, the National Review and PowerLine, you can't swing a dead cat without whopping a Harvard graduate in the face.
So can we drop the pretense that the MSM is some sort of "elite," while the opposition is the salt-of-the-earth common folk?
All available evidence suggests the exact opposite.

Steve Lovelady
Managing Editor
CJR Daily
(and proud graduate of Worland, Wyo., high school.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 16, 2005 9:58 PM | Permalink

"Uhhh, are you sure John Roberts anchored CBS Evening News that night? I thought it was Dan Rather. You may have a little too much news in your diet there, Jay. Maybe you should take a walk or something." Link.

"Moreover, on the CBS Evening News on September 14, John Roberts reported that 'CBS News continues to stand by its reporting.'" Thornburgh report, p. 194.

You're wrong twice, Bill. It was Roberts who said it, not Rather, and I did not say, nor does the report say, that Roberts "anchored" the news that evening, only what he said on the newscast. You came up with "anchors."

And if you weren't so lazy and flippant, you could have put the quoted phrase and "John Roberts" into Google and found the story where he said it.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2005 11:11 PM | Permalink

"Jay, I'm not following your complaint about Ciprian-Matthews' explanation for running the duck story, unless it's that she didn't explicitly say that it was a judgement call. IMO, the lady did a good job of covering the thought process: It was two weeks into the story, they felt the time was ripe for a breather, and there was room for one without detracting from their hurricane coverage. Given the circumstances, I'd accept that explanation."

Well, for starters, I'd like to know why the audience needs to be uplifted, in her estimation.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2005 11:32 PM | Permalink

I'm honestly wondering: as many have decreed the "MSM" irrelevant/dying/dead/etc., is there intention or hope in your ideas of an improved or new entity to take its place? Many who disdain the MSM allow that it still does produce most of the "raw material".

As far as I'm concerned, the MSM is so corrupt that its total absence would be preferable to its present form.

This may well be on the cards, as the ubiquity of mobile phones that are also recording devices will mean that everyone is potentially a reporter on the spot. For my money, a completely untrained random person on the street is likely to be better than a trained journalist, since at least the bias will be randomised in that case.

The other possibility is that a much smaller, less influential, but more honest remnant of the MSM will remain to be used as a source for bloggers.

I think the future will see a combination of random distributed reporters, bloggers, and newsagency-type syndicated reporters making the news, with readers/viewers choosing their own preferred mix of sources.

Posted by: Evil Pundit at September 17, 2005 12:00 AM | Permalink

I think you're being a bit too generous re the MSM coverage. CBS's hoax was detected first on FreeRepublic, then picked up by blogs like Powerline and Little Green Footballs, and then picked up by Drudge. ABC was the first MSM buffalo to run with the story, and IIRC that was more than 36 hours later, once they realized the story couldn't be buried.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 12:12 AM | Permalink

"The famous MSM," as Peggy Noonan called it, has become a fictional character in the mind of the cultural right and an object to react against among the bloggers who lean that way-- a discourse star.

Pretty much anything can be said about "it." The MSM is in decline and very powerful. It's irrelevant, and it dominates. It's illegitimate but it still legitimates. It's been "proven" biased but here's more evidence. And on and on.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 12:23 AM | Permalink

Thibaud: "The Katrina coverage is an excellent example."

There's a video tape of a Blanco/Nagin interview after Hurrican IVAN hit last year. New Orleans experienced many of same failures then that Katrina caused, although to a lesser degree. In the interview, Blanco and Nagin admit to poor leadership and promise to retool their evac plan.

CNN will never run that video. But if Blanco/Nagin were Republican, it would be on 24/7.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 12:31 AM | Permalink

Nightline did the “serious suspicions” story that night (September 9th), and the Washington Post published one the next day.

Just to clarify, my recollection was that these reports were protective fluff pieces along the lines of "partisan fanatics question memo's authenticity".

ABC was the first MSM outlet to treat the story fairly.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 12:53 AM | Permalink

Wrong. You are thinking of the Boston Globe's coverage. The Post, if anything, took cues from the Net and its doubt-raising. But it doesn't fit the narrative so it drops out of memory. See Captains Quarters. Like I wrote, anything can be said about "the MSM." It isn't an empirical category at all. It's a resentment container.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 1:10 AM | Permalink

Fen,do you have any sourcing/attribution for either of your claims?

Jay, isn't part of the problem that if you ask 10 people to define MSM you'll probably get at least five different answers?
I mean is Rush "mainstream"? Fox?

Posted by: Scott Butki at September 17, 2005 1:20 AM | Permalink

Rosen seems obsessed with the fact that CBS reported a story using documents it could not authenticate. To me, the answer is obvious. Like most modern journalists, they don't check facts very closely. Hint: basis for invasion of Iraq. Hint: Effect of Bush tax cuts on deficit.

Rosen's instinct to make much of the blindingly obvious leaves him insensitive to the very slightly non-obvious. He does not seem to have any awareness that those brilliant right-wing bloggers made plenty of incorrect, unsubstantiated, even ridiculous claims in the course of effectively shouting CBS down.

Do they get any similar opprobrium for such brazen hypocrisy?

More important, Rosen doesn't have much to say about the fact that the documents may well have been inauthentic, yet the basic story-- that George Bush failed to complete his time in the Guard-- is very well-substantiated by the Guard records themselves.

Why would someone fabricate documents that said things that Commander Killian's secretary told 60 Minutes the original documents said-- but were also, in her judgment, inauthentic? This is a bit of the story that Rosen is not being upfront about.

Real journalists would ask the question of why fake documents that strongly resembled very real documents were passed to CBS. Bogus journalists navel-gaze.

Worse, they often use other journalists' navels.

Posted by: Charles at September 17, 2005 1:30 AM | Permalink

Wrong. You are thinking of the Boston Globe's coverage. The Post, if anything, took cues from the Net and its doubt-raising.

I stand corrected. And your are right, WaPo actually led the way for the rest of the MSM.

But it doesn't fit the narrative so it drops out of memory

LOL. I guess I deserve that. To be fair, hours seemed like days on the internet back then. From our perspective, we knew by Thursday AM that the docs were fake, and the Post's article didn't appear until Friday, which seemed like a lifetime.

But ABC does stand out in my memory, for something did out of character during all this. I remember being surprised that they weren't covering for CBS. Any recollection of what that might have been?

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 2:04 AM | Permalink

Ron - try reading instapundit.com and powerlineblog.com every day, immediately followed by a mainstream media organ. Take the supreme court confirmation hearings for example. We get the same bare facts in both cases, but the blog links to cutting edge constitutional theory discussion by lawyers and law professors. The mainstream media organ usually includes a couple token 'accepted-meme' quotes from one or two 'experts' looking for paid exposure opportunities, such as TV, and then a lot of ignorant journalist opinion to fill the rest of the paragraphs. The same thing happens with every area of expertise, from analysis of foreign and domestic polls, to military tactics and strategy, to technology or medical issues.

Perhaps we are tired of getting our news from people who don't actuall have any skills or knowledge?

Posted by: Marc Siegel at September 17, 2005 2:37 AM | Permalink

Scott: do you have any sourcing/attribution for either of your claims?

http://texasrainmaker.blogspot.com/2005/09/hurricane-exposes-flaws-in-louisiana.html

"Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans."

This was after Ivan. The similiarities are uncanny, right down to Blanco's apologies and promises to fix what went wrong.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 2:38 AM | Permalink

But ABC does stand out in my memory, for something did out of character during all this.

Jay, now I remember - ABC Nightline came out against CBS on Thursday night, while the Post was Friday's edition. Thats why I credited ABC as the first MSM [even though WaPo released snippets the same night].

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 3:23 AM | Permalink

Marc, that's a good point.

Sometimes I get the impression that journalists are actually proud of their ignorance of the subjects they cover.

It's as if they feel their privileged position exempts them from mortal concerns such as actually knowing what they're talking about.

Posted by: Evil Pundit at September 17, 2005 3:54 AM | Permalink

Jay... this is complete bullshit......

Knox said ONLY that she didn't type the memos....and that she had typed ones similar to them in the past. (It was never claimed that Knox typed them, and she certainly had no means of "unauthenticating" the documents....)

In other words, you're either a flat out liar, or simply a pawn of far-right wing spin in this case. Either way, you owe your readers a correction and an apology..... and you owe yourself a few hours of time to figure out how the hell you could get something so completely wrong.

Posted by: ami at September 17, 2005 4:35 AM | Permalink

No sensible person is suggesting that blogs will replace large, professionally managed (and paid) journalistic organizations like the New York TImes, CBS, or even Fox news.

While one can certainly imagine an increasing amount of original material coming from freelance blogger types, they're just never going to have either the time or inclination to chase down the story like professional journalists would.

And if they do, at some point, they're no longer bloggers really are they?

What many of us object to is a world in which a handful of left-leaning news organizations, falsely assuming the mantle of objectivity, are able to define what is and isn't news. They tilt the playing field, they set the tone, and they largely control the terms of the discussion.

At least they used to.

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 8:21 AM | Permalink

The fact that Bush-haters are still pushing the "fake but accurate," while MSM folks are unhappy, too, shows that the MSM still hasn't finished covering the story.

The Bush-haters claim that Bush cannot prove where he was, on duty (as the Vietnam war winded down), every day. This seems likely to be true; that there will gaps in proof of where he was. But lack of proof of attendance is not the same as proof of absence.

A similar issue is likely for the Swift Vets against Kerry, although Kerry's lie about Christmas in Cambodia is a bit less defended by the Bush-haters. It's also MUCH less mentioned in MSM.

Jay, you did fine defending yourself on John Roberts -- your quote clearly did NOT mention "anchor". Don't you hate it when somebody adds, or twists, your quote, and then attacks the twist?

But MSM folk do this a lot; "quote," and then 'meaning quote plus/minus' and this plus/minus is terrible because of the future.
The uncertain future, which is NOT a fact.

All the 'racism reporting' about the future is non-factual.

But Jay remains bothered by us MSM-bashers:
"Pretty much anything can be said about "it." The MSM is in decline and very powerful. It's irrelevant, and it dominates. It's illegitimate but it still legitimates. It's been "proven" biased but here's more evidence. And on and on."

What I'd like to say is that the outrage over Katrina had the MSM boring down on and being outraged by Dem Nagin, and on Dem Blanco, and on Rep Bush -- but I can't. They only seemed outraged by Bush.

Facts: NO had a plan, didn't follow it. LA had a plan, didn't follow it. FEMA's plan assumed that the locals had plans they were following -- bad assumption. The FEMA plan was not "robust". Brown should go.
Blanco should go.
Nagin should go -- even if he WAS being good against corruption.

Jay, I'd love to see you defend this (false?) statement about the MSM:
"The MSM attacks Democrats relentlessly and tries to hound them out of office."

I do NOT think any MSM-bashers are saying this. But they, we, I, do say it about MSM and Bush, Rumsfeld, and Brown. (And I agreed on booting Brown). Of course, if you add Rush as MSM, perhaps ...

I want a passionate MSM for the truth, against Bush AND against Kerry, against Reps AND against Dems. Against America's mistakes AND against those of the UN, the French, the Russians, the Chinese; of Amnesty, the Church, and the 1977 Save the Wetlands lawsuit which stopped construction of hurricane resistant barriers in NO. (see here)

In the meantime, I'll be watching more blogs who are honestly against junk, including those against MSM bias.

Posted by: TomGrey at September 17, 2005 8:23 AM | Permalink

ami: "you're either a flat out liar, or simply a pawn of far-right wing spin in this case. Either way, you owe your readers a correction and an apology..... and you owe yourself a few hours of time to figure out how the hell you could get something so completely wrong."

That's the second time I have been urged to take a break in this thread because I get things so wrong.

According to the Thornburgh report, ami, Knox said she typed all of Killian's documents, that she had not typed these and therefore they were not the real thing, but she had seen similar documents before and she believed the contents reflected Killian's views.

The initial CBS response was to note that Knox is not a documents expert, and to note that she confirmed the content. "The argument that content trumps authentication was at the heart of the CBS defense," the report says. Check it yourself, p. 194-95. This is what gave rise to the "fake but accurate" meme that the cultural right fell in love with and still adores, chanting its name on any occasion it can.

My view throug