I think it's just one of his many stupid opinions. The media is corporate owned. Isn't it just a bit naive to believe that ownership doesn't affect content?
but then again, sometimes the owner's priorities is to appear unbiased, or for the people, or to be seen as saints - because it's good for the company's reputation/marketability.
Former New York Times freelance reporter Natasha Lennard, who contributed to the paper’s reporting on Occupy Wall Street, then participated in a left-wing panel discussion of OWS tactics with protest participants and supporters, broke the chains of "objectivity" for good in a rather refreshing article posted Tuesday morning at left-wing Salon Magazine: “Why I quit the mainstream media – Journalism must break the chains of objectivity and report truth -- and the Occupy movement led me to do just that.” (Lennard has previously contributed to Salon.) She agreed with the "right-wing firebrands" who said "I have no place in the mainstream media."
I was in complete agreement when, last month, the triumvirate of right-wing firebrands Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart all condemned me for being more than just a journalist. They are correct, and I agree with every pundit who argues that I have no place in the mainstream media.
On Oct. 14, I appeared on a panel at the radical, feminist Blue Stockings bookstore in New York’s Lower East Side. Hosted by Jacobin Magazine, the discussion addressed left-wing politics and strategy. During the event, I criticized old-left styles of organizing and praised -- with some ardor -- the experimental nature of Occupy Wall Street. I also dropped “F-bombs” in abundance.
Stumbling out of the bookstore onto Allen Street after the debate, I hugged an old friend, who has been heavily committed to Occupy activities in New York. “I think I just watched you lose your job,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, with a smile.
Indeed, a video of her appearance was picked up by Big Government, “and the fallout led to the Times publicly stating that they had 'no plans' to use me for future OWS coverage.”
Lennard was far more defensive about the talk after it was first revealed. She responded with defensive posts on her Twitter account like this: “Not only am i not on NYT payroll; have only freelanced sporadically. And a debate in a bookshop is not an organizing mtg”
After announcing “it is also with some pride that I have stopped writing for publications that aim for journalistic objectivity,” Lennard made points on media objectivity that conservative media watchdogs could agree with.
Similarly, if the mainstream media prides itself on reporting the facts, I have found too many problems with what does or does not get to be a fact -- or what rises to the level of a fact they believe to be worth reporting -- to be part of such a machine. Going forward, I want to take responsibility for my voice and the facts that I choose and relay. I want them to instigate change.
Lennard let her far-left light shine in the last paragraph (I bleeped out her trademark vulgarity):
Breitbart, Beck and friends are correct in saying I’m more than just a journalist. They are wrong in saying I’m an activist – that means something specific, in my mind. But if by “more” they mean I am a journalist in agreement with those across the country who think “F*** this s***” when it comes to a system upholding inequality and alienation for all but a few, then they are right. This -- and my proclivity for dropping “F-bombs,” once again -- is the reason the mainstream media and I have parted ways.
_________________________________
Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
This post was brought to you by the evil overlords at mcdonalds.
I for one welcome our new cholesterol-riddled overlords!
That's only because you like cholesterol-riddled fat chicks (they're greasy enough for you to "sammitch" yourself in between)
Quote:
BTW, what ever happened to Chewy? I miss that walrus.
He's on Twitter all the time. He still peeks in, but I don't think has any interest in posting a lot...
He doesn't fit in here. He's like mature and has adult social skills or something. He also gets laid on a regular basis. I think he's been poking Meeko or Mocha.
He's poking Meeko and Mocha at the same time while Sammitch watches.In the same room Pro is handcuffed to a wall and Iggy and SoM take turns spanking Pro!
It is not exactly a state secret that the news media tend to lavish more coverage on perceived front-runners in presidential campaigns.
But CBS News’s political director, John Dickerson, made the mistake of saying basically that in an e-mail and accidentally sending it to the campaign of Representative Michele Bachmann.
In a slip of the finger that quickly ignited a furor among Mrs. Bachmann’s supporters, Mr. Dickerson e-mailed his colleagues that he would prefer to “get someone else” other than the Minnesota congresswoman for an online show after the CBS News/National Journal debate on Saturday night. The e-mail said that Mrs. Bachmann was “not going to get many questions” in the debate and that “she’s nearly off the charts” — an apparent reference to her low standing in many polls.
The problem was that Mrs. Bachmann’s communications director was copied in on the e-mail, and Mr. Dickerson hit “reply to all.” Oops.
The incident highlighted the tricky calculus media organizations must engage in when deciding which candidates to pay attention to, and which not, as they factor in criteria like standing in the polls, fund-raising and more nebulous things like momentum.
Aides to Mrs. Bachmann, who is polling in the single digits, seized on the e-mail as evidence of liberal bias by CBS News and used the episode to rally its supporters against a favorite Republican foe: the mainstream media.
“Last night, as Michele prepared her plans to debate on CBS, we received concrete evidence confirming what every conservative already knows — the liberal mainstream media elites are manipulating the Republican debates by purposely suppressing our conservative message,” Keith Nahigian, Mrs. Bachmann’s campaign manager, wrote in an e-mail to supporters.
The campaign also urged people to contact CBS News and Mr. Dickerson, whom it called a “well known liberal reporter,” through Twitter to vent their outrage. It even provided direct links to the Twitter accounts for both.
The incident was the latest clash between the news media and the Republican presidential candidates, who have attacked the press with renewed vigor and conviction over the course of the campaign.
Herman Cain has accused the media of bias in the reporting of claims of sexual harassment, news that came to light when Politico reported them two weeks ago. One of his advisers even went as far as to claim erroneously that one of the women accusing him had a son who wrote for the Web site.
Newt Gingrich has all but made media bashing a pillar of his campaign platform. He often uses the debates as opportunities to chide the press on its own turf. He has called out Fox’s Chris Wallace for asking “gotcha questions,” and accused news channels of using the debates to pit Republicans against one another. In a debate last week in Michigan, he criticized one query on health care from a moderator as “an absurd question,” a line that drew laughter from the audience. And on Saturday he flatly refused to answer one question posed by Major Garrett of National Journal.
Even when Mrs. Bachmann was riding high in the polls, her relationship with the press was strained, in particular over coverage of the Christian counseling practice of her husband, Marcus.
Mrs. Bachmann has gone from being a media fascination after winning the Ames, Iowa, straw poll this summer — she was featured in cover stories in The New Yorker and Newsweek, and frequently appeared on Sunday morning talk shows — to being largely an afterthought. A review of hundreds of election news stories from Oct. 3 to Nov. 6 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Mrs. Bachmann figured prominently in just 13 items.
The review found that Mr. Cain received the most press attention, with at least 297 stories in which he was a dominant subject; Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was second with 150 stories; Mitt Romney was third with 148. Representative Ron Paul of Texas and Mr. Gingrich trailed Mrs. Bachmann with eight and five stories.
Mrs. Bachmann might take some solace in the fact that the review found no stories in which Rick Santorum or Jon M. Huntsman Jr. were a dominant subject.
Mr. Paul’s campaign has also frequently complained that the press all but ignores him, despite his polling near the top of the Republican field in some Iowa surveys. Jesse Benton, Mr. Paul’s campaign manager, said Sunday that Mr. Dickerson’s e-mail had put into writing what he hears from media outlets on a regular basis.
“I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “We get that kind of stuff all the time.”
In the debate on Saturday night, which preliminary ratings show drew 5.3 million viewers, Mrs. Bachmann was not asked a question until 15 minutes into the hourlong broadcast. CBS asked the questions in order of each candidate’s standing in recent polls.
But her campaign also complained that she got relatively little time to talk compared with candidates like Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry, and they pointed to Mr. Dickerson’s statement in his e-mail that the congresswoman would not be asked many questions as an example of bias against her.
The campaign said it received the e-mail on Thursday and released it only after she got what it believed was an unfair shake in the debate.
In the e-mail, after a colleague wrote to Mr. Dickerson to inform him that Mrs. Bachmann’s staff could make her available to appear on the post-debate program, he wrote back, “Okay let’s keep it loose though since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else.”
In his mind, Mr. Dickerson said, the mistake was in being honest.
“This was the classic Washington gaffe,” he said. “I said what was true. But instead of saying it out loud, I hit reply to all.”
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
Well, at least now everyone believes they are on an even playing ground. Now we know, without a doubt, that CBS & MSNBC are Liberal, and FAUXNews is Conservative. Agreed?
Wondy, I don't think that really proves how liberal the press is. What I think it proves is that the media takes it upon themselves to pick the winners and losers. None of the other candidates will get any traction if they are ignored for being at the bottom of the polls. It has been and always will be Romney and whoever is hot at the time getting all the debate time because that is how they want it. Our "unbiased" media and corrupt political system have already picked who they are going to lead us to put on the ballot in 2012.
Wondy, I don't think that really proves how liberal the press is. What I think it proves is that the media takes it upon themselves to pick the winners and losers. None of the other candidates will get any traction if they are ignored for being at the bottom of the polls. It has been and always will be Romney and whoever is hot at the time getting all the debate time because that is how they want it. Our "unbiased" media and corrupt political system have already picked who they are going to lead us to put on the ballot in 2012.
Seriously, I agree with this. No doubt the media is sincerely biased (MSNBC/CBS=Liberal Bias, FAUXNews=Conservative Bias). But, in the end, they're just there to distract us from the Corporations placing who they want in office...
The part taped and not broadcast is so much more incriminating than what CNN aired. Although both are very self-incriminating. This reporter is telling these people what they believe, and using her own opinion as the story, rather than listening to anything they are saying.
A sharp contrast to the glowing coverage of the Occupy Wall Street coverage, where reporters are glowingly acting as spokespersons for OWS, giving it a more articulate and informed voice than it truly has, creating the story the way they want it to be, rather than reporting the guys pooping on police cars and so forth.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.