James Fallows deserves a lot of credit for this:
I’ve heard angrily from a number of reporters in the last few days. They are objecting to my claims that mainstream journalism is “enabling” Senate dysfunction by describing it as dysfunction plain and simple, rather than as the result of deliberate and extremely effective Republican strategy. That strategy, over the past four-plus years, has been to apply the once-rare threat of a filibuster to virtually everything the Administration proposes. This means that when the Democrats can’t get 60 votes for something, which they almost never can, they can’t get nominations confirmed, bills enacted, or most of what they want done.
You can consider this strategy brilliant and nation-saving, if you are a Republican. You can consider it destructive and nation-wrecking, if you are a Democrat. You can view it as just what the Founders had in mind, as Justice Scalia asserted recently at an Atlantic forum. You can view it as another step down the road to collapse, since the Democrats would have no reason not to turn the same nihilist approach against the next Republican administration. Obviously I think it does more harm than good. You can even argue that it’s stimulated or justified by various tactics that Democrats have used.
But you shouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. That was my objection to a recent big Washington Post story on what is wrong with the Senate, which did not contain the word “filibuster.” And there is an example again this very day. I wish to Heaven that the item had appeared somewhere else, but it happens that it’s also in the Post. A story on what happened to Obama’s jobs-bill proposal in the Senate concentrates on the two Plains States Democrats, Ben Nelson and Jon Tester, who defected during the cloture vote — and not on the 100% Republican opposition to even bringing this bill up for consideration.
Let’s not pretend there aren’t job pressures here: all establishment journalists know that if they make an attempt to be accurate in their descriptions of American politics, they will be labeled as liberal and likely lose their jobs. And if they weren’t the kind of people who always made the “right” career calculations, they wouldn’t have a high-level establishment gig in the first place.
It really is that simple. I think it’s great that Fallows is calling elite establishment journalists out for being liars, but he should also admit that they will lose their jobs if they stop lying. This isn’t about personal choices, it’s about a system that promote propaganda.
The title refers to the fact that Fallows refers to the Washington Post as a “real paper”. It’s not, and it hasn’t been for years.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I missed this. Did anyone ask Mr “Original Intent” why they didn’t write a supermajority into the Constitution if that’s what they had in mind?
I haven’t read the Post as much as I used to in recent years, but my impression is they have some decent straight reporters, with a couple of exceptions. Their op/ed writers and pundits, of course, are a joke, with a couple of exceptions. I do find it interesting that they, and presumably the writer(s) of that Wa Po article Fallows refers to, are so sensitive to criticism.
Lit3Bolt
Royal court sycophants outraged at being called Royal court sycophants. News at 11.
JPL
Doug, I don’t want to ot but the NYTimes had this
For years fast food restaurants such as Godfathers and meat packers hired illegals but now they are inconvenient to the message. If I thought it likely to be printed I would have written a comment stating what no nooses?
jo6pac
Yep, repugs what a fun group the party of hate.
The Moar You Know
I want the Dems to dish out the same treatment to the next Republican president, hopefully we won’t see one of those for a while, but yeah, four fucking straight years of torpedoing everything Republicans want to do. You can’t let it slide when a bully beats you up, right?
Cat Lady
TotoFallows pulls the curtain back to reveal the fraud that is corporate controlled media. Good for him, but it’s too late.I posted this in the previous thread, but an OWS sign in Berlin said it best: If you don’t know what’s going on or what they’re talking about, turn off the news.
Journalism could have chosen a different path, but they chose… poorly.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@The Moar You Know:
Except you know that even if the press decides to be as stupidly myopic about such overuse as the filibuster (which you know they won’t), our ever sainted and glorious Blue Dogs will insist on crossing the isle enough to give the GOP every fucking thing they want. You know, in the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship.
Bago
Promotes, yo!
#freeinterneteditor
mattH
Nope. Don’t care. If he keeps it up, he only delegitimizes them when they don’t cover it like they should. If he admits that they will lose their jobs, they have an out; we can’t blame them if they only want to keep their jobs in this horrible economy. Better to make them squirm and squeal. The fact that he’s getting these complaints means it hurts, and unless it hurts, they won’t change.
Julia Grey
You think that if the country elects a Republican president we’ll have enough cooperative Dems in Congress to obstruct his agenda? HAHAHAHAHAHA.
jheartney
The “Real Paper” phrase is just in the headline, which Fallows probably didn’t write. Pretty good article, but ignores the fact that media consolidation is behind the lockstep march to a rightwing-friendly press. The reporters are the symptom, not the disease.
PeakVT
@Cat Lady: Journalism writ large didn’t choose, though, which is DougJ’s last point. Individual journalists choose poorly, but that’s because the owners of most media outlets have an opinion on most matters, and have hired accordingly.
TooManyJens
Good for Fallows, but I do have to quibble with this:
It’s not just Democrats.
jrg
Could you make your posts shorter, DougJ? Nancy Grace is lecturing her viewers on how it’s wrong to rape 11-year-olds, and I’d like to be able to read your posts during the commercial break. K Thanks!
cathyx
@jrg: But she showed her nipple on Dancing with the Stars. Doesn’t that count for child abuse?
hilts
All establishment journalists are whores of Babylon
Amir Khalid
@jrg:
It is? Wow, I never knew that. Just amazing, what one can learn in America from watching the television.
J. Michael Neal
@jrg: So, she’s at least in favor of the World War Uganda?
burnspbesq
@doug:
“all establishment journalists know that if they make an attempt to be accurate in their descriptions of American politics, they will be labeled as liberal and likely lose their jobs.”
just curious: can you point to a single documented instance of this ever happening?
Cat Lady
@burnspbesq:
Froomkin.
jrg
@Amir Khalid: I’m exaggerating a bit. There are several “news” shows on “news” networks these days (Nancy Grace being one of them), where they flog the hell out of someone who was accused of something reprehensible, while they completely fucking ignore shit like the ’08 financial crisis, or the march to Iraq… Or anything that matters. Because they might piss off a friend of someone who signs their pay check, or they might hurt reporter “access” (which really amounts to hurting a reporter’s ability to be a faithful stenographer).
When AI and expert systems really do hit mainstream usage, I pray that the first people they replace are reporters. Those people are fucking useless.
Comrade Javamanphil
Or they believe they are next in line to be admitted to the inner circle and if they just pimp for the money boys a little harder, they will be allowed into the cool parties and be set for life. Where you see fear, I see greed.
burnspbesq
ETA: your hypothesis has a hard time explaining a number of career trajectories, including but not limited to James Risen and Charlie Savage.
burnspbesq
@Cat Lady:
Unproven. There is a completely plausible alternative explanation for Froomkin’s demise: his traffic numbers turned to shit after the change of administration. He was a one-trick pony whose trick had a sell-by date of January 20, 2009.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/06/26/why-did-the-washington-post-sack-dan-froomkin/
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Lot’s of really nice action on the help the doggie thread.
Kyle
Propagandists with pretensions that they are still the Woodward-Bernstein ‘journalists’ they imagined they would be back in j-school, tend to get touchy when you point out that they’re really propagandists whose chief talent is corporate politics.
News is just another shitty big-corporate product.
Amir Khalid
@jrg:
I understood that, of course. I’ve been hearing of Nancy Grace off and on, in relation to certain high-profile cases. Isn’t she the self-appointed prosecutor/judge/jury who highlights criminal cases on her show, then picks a suspect and advocates their conviction? Viewers come away believing someone is guilty even after they are acquitted. Those pronouncements sound like she’s messing with people’s right to legal process. I wonder how she gets away with that.
Amir Khalid
@jrg:
I was a reporter. This is harsh.
Maude
@Amir Khalid:
She also writes novels.
Mike G
Let me guess that the bloodthirsty fuckers cheering this on are the same cro-magnon subset who believe Ronald Reagan was pants-wetting awesome for telling Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
General Stuck
It’s a fucking war of sorts, I keep saying, along with others. There no longer is really much pretense to that, and the US senate is but one example of the wingers using all of, and nothing but scorched earth tactics, for any reason or excuse to stop the US government from functioning to govern. The very definition of sedition.
Another example
Now, major figures in the GOP are openly calling for illegal voter suppression, like it was their fucking right.
Cat Lady
@burnspbesq:
Well, that was certainly their excuse.
Dougerhead
@burnspbesq:
Phil Donohue
Ashleigh Banfield
Keith Olbermann
That young Turks guy
The recent NPR purge
Where do you want me to stop?
I understand your shtick here, but step it up. Sometimes you’re a self-parody.
Dougerhead
@burnspbesq:
There’s a completely plausible alternative for everything.
Dougerhead
@burnspbesq:
Risen’s rise was long ago. For every Charlie Savage, I can give you ten Mark Halperins.
The fact you have exactly one recent example shows how absurd your posturing is here.
jwb
@General Stuck: That’s certainly appalling. But instructive as well, inasmuch as goopers really aren’t even trying to hide it any more, and it makes me wonder what happens if Obama wins re-election. Is that the point they try for the full coup d’etat?
piratedan
@burnspbesq: and on the Right, where there hasn’t been a novel thought/idea in the last 30 years how do we explain them retaining their jobs recycling the same tired bullshit in OpEd after OpEd?
Robert Waldmann
To me the amazing part of Fallows’s post is the first two quoted sentences. Evidently people argue in private that he is wrong. I don’t see why any sane person of normal intelligence would do that.
This is actually very on topic. You assert that journalists know they are not attempting to be accurate. But, if so, why would they write angry e-mails ? It is so obvious to you that Fallows is right that you assume that the political reporters know he is right and feel they can’t do things differently. But is seems they want to argue with him in private in a way which doesn’t help their careers at all.
I think they feel it is unprofessional to let the facts get in the way of balance — that it is improper for them to report plain facts which would lead readers to conclude that the Republican party is bad for the country.
General Stuck
@jwb:
Yup. I tend to be a gloves off kind of guy, so it is in a weird way comforting that the bullshit is bare naked what it is.
Dougerhead
@Robert Waldmann:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s blogging it’s that when elites are really pissed, it’s because they know they’ve been called on something where they really were wrong.
tomvox1
Meanwhile, Kevin Drum is too busy playing cutesy clever over at MJ to concede that Fallows is bang on the money;
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/reality-has-changed-reporting-should-change-too
.
The fucking bipartisan breakdown of the voting is 100% of Republicans against, you dumb shit.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Robert Waldmann:
Because facts have a liberal bias, and it gets in the way of ‘both sides same thing’. Otherwise, how can you be Fair and Balanced?
The fact that Objectivity has been pushed aside for “Balance” is one of the major tragedies of modern journalism.
General Stuck
All of these things, or tactics are not by accident. The relentless efforts to cow the press into compliance using the “liberal” charge is part and parcel to thought out blue prints for a GOP permanent majority, cooked up in the bowels of various well funded conservative think tanks in the 70’s and after. It is still effective, but the problem the wingnuts continue to have is after getting elected, their ideas don’t work for governing the country.
SiubhanDuinne
That’s true — but I, for one, would still like to see it listed Every. Single. Time in vote reports in newspapers. Complete with the ( R ) symbol after every Rethug’s name.
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s a minority position that the filibuster is unconstitutional for this very reason.
The Constitution only explicitly requires super majorities in the following cases: Treaty ratification, constitutional amendments, impeachments, expelling members, and overriding Presidential vetoes.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@General Stuck: Can you imagine the outcry if any nationally known Democrat said:
“Make a list… Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote against it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
There would be thundering calls for an investigation of election tampering. And of course it’s okay to misrepresent Grandmothers if you’re on the side of King John (IOKIYAR).
Dougerhead
I’m sorry for being this much of a dick, burnie, but how many times have I talked about Froomkin, Donohue, Banfield before?
eemom
@Dougerhead:
look, I agree that the emmessemm as an institution is worse than worthless, but I think you’re going overboard with the conspiracy attitude here. Those are vastly different situations on that list. And if it really were as black and white as you say — tell the truth, be branded a liberal and purged — how do you explain, say, Krugman or Meyerson? Or O’Donnell and Maddow (which you have to include if you’re gonna talk about Olbermann and Cenk)?
Dougerhead
@eemom:
Half of the rest of establishment media attacks Krugman 24/7. I think he got too big to fire.
EDIT: And I should add, to both you and burn, that I concede that it is not easy to fire opinion columnists under any circumstances.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dougerhead: I’d challenge you on Cenk Ugyur. He was replaced by Al Sharpton — who for all his stammering and awkwardness is as smooth as Cronkite by comparison and they’ve since hired Chris Hayes (if in a bewildering time-slot). Ugyur was fired because he was a lousy TV host, it was like watching the loudmouth at the corner of the bar on camera
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
dawgs
Dougerhead
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think he was threatening in a way that Sharpton isn’t. I could be wrong. It’s the one I’m least sure of.
J. Michael Neal
@tomvox1: Reading comprehension isn’t your strongsuit, is it?
eemom
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
also too, Olbermann WAS kind of an insufferably arrogant asshole.
I wasn’t thrilled with O’D at first, but I gotta say I’ve warmed up to him. I get the impression that he really does CARE about what’s going on — unlike Olbermann and Tweety and, increasingly, Maddow, for whom politics is just a vehicle for their egomania, imo.
Sharpton’s show is too early for me but he’s a good example too.
jrg
@Dougerhead: crickets.
eemom
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
oooh, I luvs me some Chris Hayes. SUCH a cutie. One just wants to eat him up.
He went to my and Elena’s high school, also too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@eemom: I think Maddow cares immensely. She gets a lot of grief for one off-the-cuff remark about gay marriage, but she’s done several segments listing Obama’s accomplishments, and when she does criticize him, she’s far more effective, I think, than the bombast of Ugyur or Olbermann– who I think also cares, just gets his ego fire up his caring (I am RIGHTEOUS and ENRAGED! Look upon me and LISTEN, DAMN YOU! MY SINCERE OUTRAGE MUST BE ACKNOWLEDGED!) . Maybe my own phlegmatic temperament influences my opinion
ETA: Martin Bashir is kind of fun to watch. It’s clear he doesn’t know, and is a little bewildered by, the rules of Broderism. I gather Dylan Ratigan is shifting into populist mode, but he’s another one I find hard to watch
J. Michael Neal
@Dougerhead: I have to take my place that you are way overstating your case. Once you’ve admitted both that you don’t have any inside knowledge and that there are plausible alternative explanations, you really have gone farther than you should in making definitive statements. At this point, you have a hypothesis but not much else. This becomes even more true when you have to come up with reasons that explain away the exceptions (like Krugman) that are substantially less plausible than the ones you are dismissing.
I would actually agree with you that, for a variety of reasons, liberals in the media are on a shorter leash. That doesn’t mean that your list of examples holds together at all. In addition to the others mentioned, it seems pretty clear that Olbermann was canned because he is a complete asshole that no one other than Dan Patrick likes to work with. Not only is this explanation plausible, it’s something that happened to Olbermann three times before in his career. There isn’t any conspiracy needed to explain it.
Dougerhead
@jrg:
I was probably more of a dick about it than strictly necessary, in fairness.
Dougerhead
@J. Michael Neal:
I don’t disagree that I engaged in hyperbole, but I think that “liberals are on a shorter leash” isn’t a full explanation. I’m talking mostly about straight reporters here and the professional pressures that they face. I don’t think it is at all difficult for a straight reporter to write in a way that is completely uninfluenced by his or her own political biases (it’s not, trust me), but I think it’s hard for anyone to write in a way that is completely uninfluenced by his or her own professional pressures.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bashir is a diamond in the rough. Highly underrated, but precisely because for whatever reason, no one knows he’s there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dougerhead: As with Senators, i don’t think we can dismiss the simple effect of peer pressure. Also, too, this discussion has me wondering what goes on in J-schools. Is David Broder held up as the same model of “non-partisan” journalism as he is by the working press? Do they teach that the doughy sanctimony of Monsignor Russert is dogged journalism? Are Friedman and Bobo held up as models on insight and moderation? If not, the punch they serve at the initiation ceremony must be laced with some powerful fucking drugs.
burnspbesq
@Dougerhead:
The case for Froomkin has a huge hole in it.
Donahue is ambiguous. Were bad ratings a pretext used to hide what you obviously consider “the real reason” he was let go, or were they the real reason? Only one person really knows, and neither you nor I are that person.
Banfield’s case is problematic, but it’s also illustrative of a common misconception that you share with a large number of other people on this and other left-leaning blogs. The conventional wisdom seems to be that journalism is some sort of holy calling that should be exempt from the rules that apply to every other workplace. That is false. Ratings, circulation, clicks, are no different than sales or billable hours or number of articles published in peer-reviewed journals or any other readily quantifiable measure of performance. If you don’t produce, it shouldnt surprise you when you get fired. And yes, there may be cases where it may appear to be a pretext for some other thing, but the low incidence of successful wrongful-termination litigation suggests, at minimum, that it’s hard to prove.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that there are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Dougerhead
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Could be peer pressure. I give them a little more credit than that, I don’t have as low an opinion of establishment journalists as many others do. People get scared when they think they might lose their jobs.
Dougerhead
@burnspbesq:
You should have worked on the OJ defense.
J. Michael Neal
@Dougerhead:
I agree with this, but if that’s your point, then you let your rhetoric get out of control in a way that “hyperbole” is inadequate to convey.
ETA: Given that, I should emphasize that you really need to stop digging. Burns was correct to call you on the statements you made. Let it go.
Dougerhead
@J. Michael Neal:
You really think establishment straight reporters don’t think they lose their jobs if they’re seen as liberal? The local journalists I know think this is definitely true at the national level. They believe it much more strongly than I do.
Dougerhead
@J. Michael Neal:
I stand by my belief that straight reporters (which is what Fallows was talking about) are afraid of being labeled liberal. I stand by it 100%. Neither of you has said a single thing to refute this and burns defense of the Banfield firing (she was a straight reporter) devolved into outright gibberish.
I’m not the one who needs to stop digging.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@burnspbesq:
Donahue had the highest ratings of any show on MSNBC at the time. He had better ratings than Chris Matthews.
Oh, but you’re an esquire and can quote Shakespeare. Sorry for questioning your great wisdom with these easily found facts.
eemom
@Dougerhead:
yes you are.
To make a categorical statement that people WILL lose their jobs if they tell the truth — regardless of the particular person, the particular medium, the politics of that particular workplace, other circumstances — is just a ridiculously paranoid statement.
We joke a lot about George Orwell, etc., but the fact is that as bad as things are these days, they REALLY are not yet so simple as to be reduced to the level of “Big Brother Is Watching.”
Dougerhead
@eemom:
You’re really just blabbering at this point.
J. Michael Neal
@Dougerhead:
How the hell would anyone refute a claim that ephemeral? I’m supposed to try to prove that reporters aren’t scared of being fired? How? I can’t read their minds. The thing is, you can’t, either.
*You* were the one who made a categorical statement about what is true. It isn’t someone else’s job to refute it. It’s your fucking job to support it. The way you’re bobbing and weaving right now, I’m no longer even sure what the hell you’re claiming at this point, because it keeps changing. As eemom pointed out accurately, what you are claiming now is not what you claimed in the original post, which is that they WILL be fired for expressing their views.
Burns said that there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the claims you are making. That makes refutation your job and no one else’s. Man up or shut up.
Joel
@burnspbesq: Relatively speaking, those guys are on the outside looking in. I would revise DougJ’s hypothesis to reporters wanting a seat at the big kid’s table.
cleek
@tomvox1:
Fallows showed up in comments there to defend his points
Dougerhead
@J. Michael Neal:
So you and burns are always right until conclusively proven wrong?
Do you realize how unbelievably arrogant an attitude that is?
Burns refuted none of my examples. With Banfield, he didn’t even really try, just quoted Shakespeare.
That wouldn’t work in a court room, it doesn’t work here.
I am stunned by your arrogance.
eemom
@Dougerhead:
No, actually I’m not.
I mean you make these brazen assertions, and when someone calls you out they’re “blabbering”? I thought you were, um, better than that.
eemom
@Dougerhead:
The way it works in a courtroom is that the accuser has the burden of proof. In this instance, you are the accuser.
In a civil case, you have to prove that your version of the facts is more likely true than not. In a criminal case, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Either way, when you have no evidence AT ALL, beyond speculation and innuendo — your case gets thrown out.
Dougerhead
@eemom:
Your “argument” is that because “big brother is watching” was a trope in an Orwell book, that I am paranoid for suggesting that reporters fear being labeled liberal.
How is that not blabbering? Read what you said again and tell me.
Joel
I wouldn’t dispute that conservatives/republicans have done one hell of a job intimidating left-leaning people into silence over the last decade. I think you’d have to be completely blind not to have noticed it. And you can’t just pin that on the media, although they had their part.
Dougerhead
I give up, I can’t argue with people who don’t believe establishment journalists are afraid of being called liberals. I’d rather go to Redstate and argue about evolution.
eemom
@Dougerhead:
no, that is not my “argument”. I was saying that your blanket assertion: “Reporters WILL be fired if they tell the truth”, is the functional equivalent of saying that we live under a dictatorship as omnipotent, simplistic, and brutally efficient as the one in 1984. Which we don’t, yet.
Dougerhead
@eemom:
Fair enough.
I give up in any case.
I’d rather defend the fossil record at this point.
piratedan
well lets look at history, shall we?
Olbermann, suspended and canned for doing a bad thing, like actually donating to a political campaign.
we come to find out later, Morning Joe does the same thang…. Olbermann apologizes, Scarborough mumbles. Olbermann fired/released from his contract, shown the door, Morning Joe keeps on trucking.
Same network (supposedly one of two that allows liberals to even have a say) different treatment for the said same violation.
Yes, Olbermann may be an insufferable egoist, but at the very least he’s pissed about the right things and not unwilling to call out the other side when they are lying or misrepresenting the facts. Not unheard of to call the current administration to task when he disagrees with them. He’s even a big enough “journalist” (like Maddow) to apologize when he does something wrong or reports something that is incorrect. Something that I have yet to see happen from the folks sporting the other viewpoint.
eemom
There is a rather huge difference between saying that reporters fear being labeled as liberals, and saying that reporters know they WILL be fired for telling the truth.
Which is what you asserted above. In the, like, post.
MikeJake
I wonder how many Americans truly understand how thoroughly the Senate has gone off the rails. They may know that the climate in DC is contentious and totally unproductive, but do they realize that this level of sustained intransigence by the Republicans is unprecedented? Probably not, and the Establishment Media deserves a lot of blame for that.
Remember a couple of years back on Bill Maher’s show when Jeremy Scahill basically called Chuck Todd out for being a hack, and Todd’s reaction after the show was not to dispute anything Scahill said, but to criticize him for making him look bad? His whine was pretty much “Low blow, dude!” Because Chuck Todd is operating under a different set of rules. Not the traditional journalistic rules of trying to uncover essential truths for the benefit of the public, but the Hack rules of “Let’s not rock the boat, and we’ll all have successful careers and get to hobnob with the rich and powerful.”
fasteddie9318
You know what you find out when you look at cable news ratings to make a point about why this or that talking head might have been canned? What an absolute train wreck CNN has become. American Mourning used to beat Mourning Blow, but then they decided to become the Wall Street “News” Network and bring on a bunch of carny huckster business “reporters” to helm the morning show, and now they’re firmly set in third place. But at least they’re making sure that Wall Street can have its point of view heard; I shudder to think what would happen if we could only access that important voice on one of the 25 or so other networks where it’s featured.
SFAW
I’m a-guessin’ you’ve made poorer decisions in your life.
Although establishment journos may in fact have that fear – on its face, it would seem to be a not-unreasonable bit of speculation – I guess my reading comprehension is lagging, or my ADD/laziness has ramped up, because I overlooked the part where you (or someone/anyone) surveyed the aforementioned estab journos, and lo-and-behold, they said they be a-skeered of being labeled Lieberal.
Now, I was sincere about the reading comprehension and ADD/laziness thing – if you already mentioned said survey, then I’m a lazy SOB, and apologize profusely.
But if there’s no such survey/data, then I respectfully suggest you give it a fucking rest.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@eemom: Yes, Doug. Please update your post to note that it’s a scurrilous lie to say that reporters will be fired automatically if they are seen as liberal, and that in truth being seen as liberal merely greatly increases the chances of being fired.
Thank you in advance.
Joel
@SFAW: Are you serious?
xian
glad eemom cleared up how rhetoric is policed in a court of law
William Hurley
I’d bet good money that many of the journalists Fallows is referring to are in the 95th percentile of income earners. Yet, even at this economic elevation, Fallows’ whiny scribes are merely employees. And I’ll bet that fact frosts their asses.
Sympathetically or not, imagine how terrified these over-paid scriveners must be. They’ve wedded themselves to a “to along to get along” career path that they implicitly if not explicitly know they’ll never escape.
Unfortunately, given the journalistic equivalent of gift horse of historical proportions – OWS gone global – they chose to stay “true” to the “get along” path by acting out their insecurities in a way that’s no different than Bloomberg’s gendarme. And in both cases, their bosses can remain fickle assholes longer than their retirement accounts can remain solvent.
SFAW
About what? Need a little more to go on, to be able to respond.
If you’re talking about the idea that someone making a contention about “X group of people feel Y about Topic Z” without having backup data – other than one’s own “Well, I feel this way, so they also must feel this way”, that is – might not provide one (Doug) with an impregnable position from with to attack your “foes” (i.e. burns, eemom), then yes I’m serious.
If you’re talking about my weasel-words about not seeing the data he used to back up his assertion: it was late, I was tired, my eyes were glazing over, so I allowed that I might not have done my “due diligence”, and was pre-apologizing in case Doug had laid it all out for me and I got lazy, then – yes, I was serious.
If you’re talking about my comment re: Doug giving it “a fucking rest” – yes, I was serious.
The way my tiny brain looks at it: I don’t have a problem with Doug making the contention that journos are a-skeered for their jobs, and therefore adopt the wingnut party line. In fact, I think there’s probably a lot of truth to that. But when burns and eemom had the temerity to suggest something along the lines of “Even though you believe it, this may not be so”, and Doug turns to attack mode, I gots a problem with that. Maybe Doug was tired, maybe there is a long-running feud that I don’t know about – just because I’ve commented here plenty in the past doesn’t mean I follow that crap – maybe burns or eemom called Doug names and I missed it; but Doug’s take-no-prisoners response to some relatively innocuous comments was (for me) over the top, and I felt that, were I not to comment, someone would be wrong on the intertubez.
But that raises another question: are YOU serious?
Sheesh
Hey complainers,
Establishment journos aren’t impenetrable, mysterious matter requiring CERN-level machinery to investigate. In fact they aren’t a really huge cloistered class, so why don’t you pick up the email and ask some, “are you afraid of being labeled liberal? Would you fear for your job?”. I bet that button is less than two feet from these words!
I mean, what I got from this is that Doug is insinuating that he knows some journalists and is extrapolating from known members of the class to the whole. Don’t you cool kids know some journalists too? Can’t you just tweet them or something?
bob h
You can view it as another step down the road to collapse, since the Democrats would have no reason not to turn the same nihilist approach against the next Republican administration.
Except that the Democrats’ higher respect for our instiutions will keep them from doing just that, which makes it a great tactic for the Republicans.
Sheesh
@bob h: Right. Adults in the room syndrome.
SFAW
Does he? And has he asked them? Or has this all been a case of “logic dictates X”.
Outside of “The local journalists I know think this is definitely true at the national level”, which is at least a level or two of separation, there tweren’t much presented here other than speculation and mentions of Phil Donahue et al. [And I think Ashleigh Banfield got whacked for a speech which her bosses apparently felt made them look bad (or at least exposed them to more screaming from the 27-percenters), not that it matters.]
SFAW
Yeah, fine, except the burden of proof, so to speak, falls on Doug, not on the “complainers”.
Sheesh
You caught on: “The local journalists I know think this is definitely true at the national level” is evidence that Doug is claiming to know some journalists. Now, why can’t the cool kids tweet their journalist friends again, or email their buddies at the Wapo? Oh right, because the hypothesis doesn’t matter, it’s not about curiosity; there’s only demanding evidence for SIWOTI’s sake, not for truth’s sake. Only the wrongness matters, not the rightness. Complainers don’t actually give a shit what the truth is it’s just “hawhaw do my homework!”
Speaking of 27%ers, here’s that number again in the latest polling(!):
Sheesh
Right, because burden of proof is what matters, you know, not actually bothering to find some shit out. All SIWOTI all the time, not I don’t know, I’ll go look.
Sheesh
(Boo, time to edit expired)
ETA on my above:
Oh, and if you haven’t gathered yet, my opinion on this “debate” such as it is, is that duelling anecdata would be preferable to shouts of ‘do my homework.’ Something like, “I hang out with cool kids, so I know some beltway journalists and they all say being labelled a liberal wouldn’t affect their careers at all!” That would be better than “You’re wrong. Burden of proof!” It’s just some weird unexplainable phenomenon that most graduates from j-school are registered dems but won’t self-ID as libs if they actually work for the MSM.
SFAW
Big fucking deal. I claim to know some people who are CEOs, but that doesn’t mean what they think about taxes applies to the rest of the business world. I claim to know some doctors, but that doesn’t mean what they think about Obamacare applies to their colleagues. And so on.
GMAFB. Doug made a contention, burns and eemom questioned the data on which he based that contention, Doug got bent out of shape that they (and J. Michael Neal, later on) would question his leap to the conclusion he graced us with. Although they can certainly choose to do so, it’s not up to the “complainers” to disprove Doug’s possibly-questionable claim. It’s up to Doug, if he decides he’s going to go after commenters, to come up with something better than “I know a coupla guys what might know what some other guys are thinking – now, I ain’t sure they do, but they’re both from Brooklyn, so they should – so you can take that to the bank!” At some level, that’s getting close to Michele-Bachmann-knew-someone-who-knew-someone-else-who-heard-that-Gardasil-causes-mental-retardation territory.
But since I’m no doubt a “complainer”, that’s my problem/fault.
And, not to belabor the point: I imagine it’s because burns and eemom care about the truth that they’re questioning Doug’s logical process.
But you keep on flaming the “complainers”, since you don’t seem to have much else to offer.
SFAW
What “shit” are we all going to find out? Why don’t YOU call some fucking reporters and report the results back to us, since you seem to have a lot of time to tell the rest of us how to do it?
Sheesh
It’s not personal, I’m not calling you out, or singling you out, SFAW.
Doug’s contention as far as I can tell is the culture MSM journos work in promotes this go along to get along lying/covering. He says he knows some journos.
No one else came along and said, “I know some journos they actually think this” or “Polls of journalists published here show this.” (Falsification) No one made the argument from parismony (career or peer pressure is less likely because it assumes x and y). No one asked “why did all these journalists vote dem in the last election but place balance above objectivity? Afraid for their jobs or do they really believe balance is paramount? (Competing hypothesis).
The esquires went straight to “Hey, I think you’re wrong. Do my homework.” Just claiming wrongness was more important than falsification. I think that’s boring because it’s an epistemically weak way to wrongify someone. Skepticism isn’t about assuming wrongness until evidence, that’s more like contrarianism. “Burden of proof” isn’t an good argument in this case, it’s a dodge or a stall.
I’m not trying to flame. Also, I know I’m boring too.
SFAW
No, THAT you’re not.
eemom
The reading comprehension enhanced among us will have noted that it was Doug who brought THE COURTROOM into this — and got the rules exactly backwards.
Sheesh
So the problem wasn’t all the comments up to and including the epistemic claim of 68… SIWOTI started exactly at 75. Got it!
In that case, great job shutting down Doug on a point not related to the OT! I bet he won’t be so wrong on the internet next time!
J
Why did Doug delete the Kevin Drum whine he had up earlier? The blog problems or did he rethink his petulance?