"Partisan" Bloggers vs, "Objective" Media: Anatomy of the Imbecilic "Haircut Story"

[BurtWorm]

By the brilliantly partisan Glenn Greenwald:


http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/03/politico/index.html

Even The Politico -- for which no story is too petty or Drudge-following -- seems embarrassed by its obsession. Thus, Simon claims in his article that he "was willing never to write about the haircuts again," and The Politico's front page headline claims: "Roger reluctantly takes another look at the haircut that will not die." In the article itself, Simon offers up this excuse for why he is writing his "newspaper's" eighth story in less than two weeks about John Edwards' hair:

This is bad: When you go to Google and enter "Edwards haircut," the first item that comes up is a story by Bill Wundram in The Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa. . . .

The article got 324 comments from readers. When people inside the Beltway are talking about your haircut, it doesn't matter much. When people in Iowa are talking about your haircut, you may have a problem.

So Simon uses the excuse that the item in the Iowa paper received 324 comments as proof that this is a huge story outside the Beltway, that there is this spontaneous groundswell of interest among salt-of-the-earth ordinary Iowans in John Edwards' hair. Therefore, he simply has to write about it.

But what Simon omits is that the reason the item in the Iowa paper received so many comments is because Matt Drudge linked to it, just as he linked to The Politico's story on this "issue." That fact was something that countless commenters to the Iowa item mentioned, including the sixth comment, followed by many others.

The Politico's Senior Political Columnist tries to claim that there is some sort of groundswell of interest in the Edwards/haircut story compelling him to write about it, when in reality, it is nothing more -- as usual -- than the fact that he and his colleague Matt Drudge and other similar types are chattering about it, and they mistake that chatter, which is all they know and understand, for what the "ordinary people" find important. And that, in turn, makes them chatter about it more and more, feeding that self-affirming, self-important, self-centered Beltway journalist cycle endlessly.

Earlier this week, I recorded a BloggingheadsTV session with The Politico's Ben Smith, who "broke" the "Edwards hair story," about some of the media issues I've been writing about generally and with regard to The Politico specifically. A technical error prevented its being recorded, and we will re-schedule shortly, but Smith offered up the defense which literally every mainstream journalist spouts when defending themselves from blogger criticism.

....


<Must read: discussion of the blogger v. "journalist" conflict that follows>

[BurtWorm]

1. Here are three of the principal criticisms (of "objective" journalism) made:

(1) Mainstream journalists pompously spout claims that are factually, objectively, demonstrably false -- and then, in their pomposity, refuse to acknowledge or correct their error.

Time's Managing Editor, Richard Stengel, tells viewers that Americans do not want Karl Rove questioned under oath even though all relevant polling data shows the exact opposite. Andrea Mitchell tells her viewers that Americans want Lewis Libby pardoned and that Nancy Pelosi now is just as unpopular as Denny Hastert was before the November elections even though those statements are the opposite of reality. None of that gets corrected, because it's spouted lazily or without the slightest concern for whether it's true.

Does that sound like a demand that journalists be more "partisan"?

(2) Journalists mindlessly pass on government statements without bothering to investigate if they are true. And they grant anonymity to government sources to do nothing but spew false government propaganda with impunity.

Hence, Jessica Lynch fought off evil Iraqi terrorists in a brave firefight. Saddam Hussein had aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons and extensive ties with Al Qaeda. The Government found bentonite in the anthrax used to attack the U.S. and that strongly suggests Saddam was behind the attacks.

No investigation is conducted to determine if the government claims are true. They are just passed along by journalists who claim that repeating what they are told is the essence of their job now. And even when it turns out that their sources deliberately lied to them in order to plant false claims with the journalists' viewers or readers, they continue to protect the identity of the sources and refuse to tell the American public who was behind the deliberate falsehood.

Does that sound like a demand that journalists be more "partisan"?

(3) National journalists wallow endlessly in vacuous, vapid, empty-headed, petty gossip, obsessed with meaningless chatter and snide, personality-based assaults more appropriate for a junior high clique than anything else. And they do so while ignoring the most substantive and consequential political matters.

One example illustrating this criticism would be a flamboyantly launched "new" online political magazine, run by the nation's most institutionally prestigious "political journalists," expending extraordinary amounts of time and energy writing about John Edwards' haircut, rather than covering any number of political scandals, matters concerning war, and a whole variety of other issues with profound impact on the lives of millions of people.

Does that sound like a demand that journalists be more "partisan"?

[BurtWorm]

2. kick

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

3. K & R

Thanks for posting this BurtWorm.

[BurtWorm]

4. You're welcome.

And thank you! :toast:

I hope others are reading it. Rarely do you see someone capture the essence of a fucked-upness as Greenwald does in this essay. (And does a lot of the time.)

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

5. Yeah, I know. Greenwald is doing an excellent job.

In the comments section I really loved the one where the poster compared F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" to the cabal. Its' very telling and I might actually go the library and check out and read "The Great Gatsby" all over again. It's been a while...

[BurtWorm]

6. kick

[BurtWorm]

7. kick

[Pryderi]

8. I cut mine with a Flowbee. Can I be president now?

[Zodiak]

9. kick

I believe that the media should be target #1 or #2 for the Democrats. The other being removing the madman and his band of scofflaws from the levers of power before they destroy our great nation.