A letter from the New Media to the Old Media

[Mythsaje]

Dear Corporate Media:

When we want to wade through bullshit, we'll go cow-tipping.

In the meantime, we're just going to laugh at your antics. If you were actually good at your jobs, you would have seen the change coming. People are sick of the GOP and everyone who's been covering for them. And, yes, that includes you.

What? The "liberal media" covering for the GOP?

You people joined in the great Clinton hunt like a pack of baying dogs at the end of the Republican leash. You scrabbled for ANYTHING you could use against him. You helped the GOP paint him as a "far left" liberal when he was nothing of the kind. Clinton was mainstream and Main Street...a man of the people, which is why he's STILL loved by a great many people, and cheered even while they were impeaching him.

You sat idly by while this administration lied to us. Oh, wait, maybe you weren't so idle. You actually CHEERED this insane fucking war. "March On Baghdad" complete with martial music and whirling graphics, splashed across our TV screens. You WANTED the war, which is probably why you didn't bother to ask the relevant questions when it was time. Like "what happens when Saddam is gone?" Or "if he had WMDs, why didn't he use them to protect himself?" Or "Why didn't Bush 41 send his troops all the way to Baghdad back during Desert Storm?"

But you didn't. You didn't ask why prominent Dems were sent Anthrax, and by what agency. You didn't ask why no one has ever been charged with the crime.

You didn't ask why a secular dictator would have anything to do with a nutball radical muslim terrorist who hated his guts. You let a majority of Americans continue believing that Iraq was tied to Osama Bin Forgotten and his 40 suicide bombers. You didn't bother to remind anyone that nearly ALL of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. You also didn't bother to tell us that one of the only jets allowed to fly after the attacks was the one taking members of Bin Laden's family BACK to Saudi Arabia.

Why is that, anyway?

For the last several years, you didn't even bother investigating anything. You just took the press releases from the administration and pretended THEY were the news. You invited GOP cheerleaders on your "news" programs and let them yammer at the cameras, occasionally tossing in the most inept and inarticulate Democratic spokespeople you could find as a kind of foil for their nonsense.

And you called that journalism.

There was a time when eager young reporters would go to any length to chase down corruption, when the newspapers and the television journalists would throw caution to the wind and barrel through opposition to get to the meat of a story. Now you're willing to trade relevance for "access." You climb in bed with the Administration and wonder why your ass hurts in the morning.

You openly revile the New Media that rose up to fill the void you vacated. You parrot GOP talking points that call them the propaganda arm of the "far left," without even QUESTIONING what the fuck they mean by "far left."

I hate to tell you this, but the "Far Left" is a fucking corpse. It's a dead thing the GOP animates every so often to scare people, and to smear those who dare disagree with its twisted ideology. There hasn't been a truly relevant leftist movement in this country for decades. We only look "far" left because the whole goddam dialogue has swung so far to the right.

Opposing this administration and its Republican ideology doesn't make one radical or "far" anything. Wanting to see an America that has a chance to grow stronger by giving all its citizens access to healthcare isn't radical. Wanting to see an America that provides its citizens the chance to make ends meet by simply holding down a job isn't radical. Wanting to see an America that repudiates torture, and rejects open-ended spying on its own citizens, and unlimited and unlawful detention without the right of Habeas Corpus isn't radical.

But you all seemed to have been able to spit this out at us with a straight face and many of us can't help but wonder why. Is it because media deregulation has put the lot of you under the command of only a few powerful oligarchs? Is it because you're all owned, lock, stock, and smoking barrel by such luminaries as Rupert Murdoch?

And don't think you can make yourself look more relevant by playing hardball with the Democrats. It might fool the few remaining "conservatives" out there, but I wouldn't bet on it.

For the next couple of years the Democrats are going to be looking into the malfeasance of the President, his lackeys, and the rubber-stamp Congress that came before it. If there's even a shred of true journalistic integrity left in your tiny little souls, you'll let them show what they find to the American people so they can make the right decision come 2008.

But don't worry. Even if you don't, there are plenty of New Media outlets who're more than happy to do your job for you. If you're not going to practice journalism anymore, there are plenty of eager citizens who are happy to take on the task in your place.

Become relevant, or become history.

It's your choice.

[Chipper Chat]

1. K & R

Perhaps Keith Olbermann is the pied piper that can lead the "librul meetia" back to something akin to true & honest journalism.
We can only hope (as should networks and advertisers!)
:kick: :thumbsup:
GREAT POST!

[Royal Sloan 09]

2. Nice work

it's true, the Corporate Media, will not cover anything unless they are told what to write. The party needs its water carriers and plenty of them, it's a big job catapulting the propaganda.

[dweller]

3. K.

R!

dp

[beltanefauve]

4. Well done, Mythsaje

kicked and recommended!

[Guaranteed]

5. You said it. Dead on, every word. nt

[madokie]

6. Thats the best read I've read in a while

[ixion]

7. kicked and recommended

nice op/ed! :bounce: :applause:

[dbt]

8. Well spoken. K & R!

I was amused and outraged by the guest analyst on Olbermann last night who referred to the Media "bending over backwards" to accomodate the White House position on whether the Late Clusterfuck is a civil war or not.

Where the FUCK was all this bending when Clinton was in the White House? It didn't matter a damn what the President or his staff wanted back THEN--but bu$h automatically gets the benefit of the doubt EVERY TIME?

This was--and continues to be--Whoring of the highest order.

:argh:
dbt
Remember New Orleans

[Toots]

9. Well the choir has been preached to

Hope the letter went to other sources as well. :shrug: A lot of good it will do..If you paid their paycheck they might listen...

[raccoon]

10. K&R. Great post! nt

[Morgana LaFey]

11. Nice rant

and there's something else I've been mulling over real recently about the New Media:

It's democratic. Egalitarian. Everyone can play. Anyone can play.* If you don't have your own blog, you can comment on someone else's. YOUR comments, insights, and analysis gets as much real estate as any one else's, and are printed on a first-come, first-served basis. YOUR comments are worth as much as they are worth, no more and no less. If they're honest, accurate, reflect reality, and cogent, that'll get sorted out in the process. People eventually get it, in their hearts, when they're being lied to or conned. They (speaking collectively) get it in cybespace just as surely as they eventually got it about Bush and the GOP and turned them OUT this year. The internet facilitates all this, big time. EVERYONE potentially has a voice on the internet. It's Town Hall writ large.

"Real" journalists (cough, sputter), like to complain that there's no fact checking or other restraints on what gets published on the internet, as if their criticism really means that an unsuspecting audience should exercise extreme caution and for the most part just ignore the internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is the corporate media who no longer fact checks. It is the corporate media who treat pure rumors as news -- who can take the Swift Boating charges and broadcast them, as Ted Koppel did, under the excuse that the fact that someone making these (totally unfounded) charges is NEWS. No, Ted, it's GOSSIP. Pity you no longer could recognize the difference.

* Everyone and anyone can play as long as they have a computer or access to a computer. We should concern ourselves with making sure many, many more people do. The more internet access (esp. for politically interested citizens), the more democracy. Pretty good deal, if you ask me, but also the reason TPTB want to find ways to tamp it down. We must not let them, no matter what.

[tbyg52]

20. You said it!

And what's going on right now? "They" are trying to get control of the internet.

[troubleinwinter]

12. Interesting phone call yesterday.

A DUer & I were talking on the phone, and she told me that while watching election returns on TV, as it became apparent that Dems were kicking ass, Brian Williams said, "Well, I guess this means we'll have to be talking about the Downing Street Memo now."

An outright admission that media is and has been well aware of it, they just refused to "talk about it".

[tavalon]

14. Yup

No surprise here. Well, a small amount of surprise that anyone in that discredited media would actually talk about the refusal to report the news.

[tavalon]

13. I'm kicking this one because I think it belongs at the top of the list

on the Greatest page. Since I already recommended it, I'm pushing it to the top of GD for the evening crowd.

Three cheers for our New Media, many of whom are gracing this fine website.

[blm]

22. I'm joining you in another kick

the post is just too good to lose.

[Lugnut]

15. K&R

:kick:

[dalaigh lllama]

16. They're already becoming history

The only in-depth reporting and analysis seems to be mainly online. k & r

[Arugula Latte]

17. I think their time has come and gone. Too late, MSM. Buh-bye!!

The old media have sucked royally for a good decade now. I now only take in their crap occasionally, and then mainly to check the bullshit corporate/GOP line against the truth that can be uncovered on the Internet (which features, oh, you know, REAL reporting -- often by non-U.S. reporters).

Memo to CNN, MSNBC, and the network "news" departments: YOU.SUCK. I won't even dignify Fox by adding it to the list of media outlets that suck profoundly. It's in a league of its own.

[Beam Me Up]

18. I ain't buyn' what they are selln'

I stopped watching TV when they put the Chimpanzee in the White House. Corporate WHORE media. I really do think the American people should revoke the licenses of the broadcasting media. The airwaves belong to US, not them. They should be responsible to US, not their board chairs, not the government, not even their sponsors -- whose commercials these eyes no longer see.

[VenusRising]

19. Nicely stated!!

:applause:

[blm]

21. This belongs on every website - a HUGE K&R, Myth........extremely well done.

.