"So, on the one hand, it's good to keep in mind that for someone who hasn't 'grown up' with blogs, and who hasn't learned to navigate the backroads to the good stuff, the first impression, that it's a bunch of idiots screaming at each other, is pretty accurate."
Seems to me that much the same can readily be said of t.v. "news" channels, talk radio....
How much hashing things out really goes on, though? Maybe up close on the good blogs it's evident that's happening somewhere but from 10,000 feet it pretty much looks like Red vs. Blue with flaming catapults. My experience, though almost certainly limited, has been that blogs very easily slot into one type or another and then emphasize their type by being voices for personal extremism more than any sort of quest for common ground. There are a lot more "TalkBot X for the other side is a moron!!1!" posts out there than there are "TalkBot X for the other side may have a valid point and I am reconsidering my judgements!!1!"
CNN is really not setting us a good example of what to aim for. It's gotten appreciatively worse in the last two years.
And I find myself in uneasy agreement with ogged's post. I even think I've been in the kind of class position that he's describing; during my "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" phase of grad school I had a lot of contempt for a LOT of people. (I'm in the "confront the gaping maw of indifference" phase now, or a little past it, and the contempt has taken more specific and appropriate targets.) A lot of journalists seem to be stuck on "panicky contempt."
anti-democratic prejudice in your press corp is not a good thing
More and more, this seems like the real story in l'affaire Plame. It's all fun and games and cloak-and-dagger manoeuvering in the corridors of Versailles until some idiot lets in that rude Mr. Fitxpatrick.
I don't see disdain in the press too much; I see fear. Not of replacement, but of constant correction. See DeLong's broadsides at specific individuals and institutions.
Part of the problem is that jounalists have gone from being ink stained wretches to "professionals" who want to change the world. They know they're smarter than the rest of the world and have a degree from jounalism school to prove it. And if the facts don't back up the pre-ordained story line, either make up new facts or leave out the inconvenient parts, because in the end we know what's best.
CNN is really not setting us a good example of what to aim for. It's gotten appreciatively worse in the last two years.
What are you talking about? Just this morning Sanjay Gupta read the warning labels off two kinds of birth control. Methinks someone's a little jaded.
7: I have to admit that I'm more sympathetic to Red complaints about the press now that I've seen how crap they can be.
Yeah, it's funny. I'm glad that the right wing has come to agree with me about the utter shittiness of the big media in this country, but the idea that they are somehow on the side of liberalism is just full-on bozogoose crazy.
What are you talking about?
Scott, man, they took away the chairs. Wolf Blitzer's zepplin of a head now floats untrammelled over the entire studio set. It's a real problem.
Well, not absolutely crazy. Part of the problem arguing this is that conservatives are right about who reporters are -- overwhelmingly, they're highly educated urban professionals, and that's a group that runs liberal. And you see some effects of that in the media: more comfort, culturally, with liberalish social positions, and more alienation from conservative-culture-war positions. That really is kind of true.
But saying that the media is systematically favoring Democrats over Republicans politically is complete crack-smoking craziness.
I think a lot of the tiresome "blogs vs. journalism" stuff comes from the fact that journalism became a profession, with all the good and bad that that entails. E.g., most journalists did not grow up poor or even working-class, and most do not have firsthand military experience.
Prime example: This column from Dan Froomkin. I think it's a lousy article because it's superficial and self-contradictory, but it's also a good illustration of how journalism sometimes perceives itself. E.g. the assumptions about journalists' duty to be combative:
* Don't assume anything administration officials tell you is true. In fact, you are probably better off assuming anything they tell you is a lie.
* Demand proof for their every assertion. Assume the proof is a lie. Demand that they prove that their proof is accurate.
conservatives are right about who reporters are
But wrong about who the owners of the media and the editors are. The bias in media is toward scandal, snark, and bland conventional wisdom, not toward any sort of ideologically identifiable stance.
Hence the infatuation with the mythical "average American," as if any such thing existed.
Oh, all I'm saying is that if 'liberal media' means that media people will treat a hipster from Williamsburg who makes collages interpreting and deconstructing gender roles like an interesting guy who one might run into at a party, while treating a snake handler from Tennessee like a circus freak, I think that's kind of true. At any level past that, it breaks down.
Some of this arises because journalism is like sociobiology -- doing it badly is easy and fun and irresistible to amateurs. Doing it well is hard, and time-consuming, and demands craft skills. Often, in both cases, the public prefers the bad sort to the good sort; this has something to do with the decay of democracy because this preference has no (immediate, personal) cost when you don't have to take decisions based on it. Journalists at a national level will always despise the public because it contains more consumers of television news than readers of the Economist. So will decision makers, for the same reasons. Add into that the use of information as social currency, which is part of all politics, and the natural self-regard of the powerful: the case for despising the people becomes self-evident.
[I don't mean the Economist is always right. But it does set off from the position that the world is complex and you have to be clever and well-informed to understand it. This is true and important, even if no one is in fact as clever as the Economist takes itself to be.]
not toward any sort of ideologically identifiable stance.
See, I largely agree with what you said, but that to me IS an ideological stance. Bias towards writing about hissy fits or he said/she said political "debate" promotes an ideology.
That ideology may lurch in one direction of the political spectrum or another (E.g., the NYT public editor had a great column on how the Times was covering gay marriage; on the side you could probably cite any article on global warming from the last 20 years because the plausible denialists were so often given equal weight). But it usually doesn't move very fast or very far.
7 gets it right - the press, too, was once seen as a pack of ignorant, vituperative upstarts. Now that they're ensconced as the Fourth Estate, they have standards and pretensions. But the press is ultimately just people disseminating information, so no essential differences from blogs (except economic organization).
I think that the print media have lost a lot of their power to frame the news and declare what the range of permissible opinion is, and this is happening at the same time that newspapers have become less viable at the business end (advertising) pertly because of internet competition.
A lot of media people got to where they are after 10-15 years of hard work and no fun, and they feel entitled. Then the minute they arrive, the prize is devalued.
I don't think that it's very ideological. Media people tend to be jellified center-leftists and unfriendly to anyone to their left, but that isn't the main problem. (Though they do know what it's forbidden for them to say, and they see these other people allowed to say it.)
Part of the problem is that jounalists have gone from being ink stained wretches to "professionals" who want to change the world.
Actually, I think it's the other way around - journalism used to be a profession, in that it was a career path commensurate with being a lawyer or a doctor. Now, when journalists are making one-third (or less) of what their contemporaries from Swarthmore (or wherever) are making, there's a lot more of the "ink-stained wretches" in the trenches who only get their jollies from being the fourth estate. It's the same reason why staff members on the hill are so insufferable, as well.
More generally, isn't Ogged overstating the case for the blogosphere? IMHO, it's a cocktail party with a paper trail. Sure, occasionally you'll come across posters who have a fascinating (useful/interesting)story to tell, but most of the time its blowhards (myself included) who are talking to hear themselves speak.
The disdain is surely a defensive reaction to a large extent. Bloggers are hostile and contemptuous towards the media, and have been since before the media took notice of them. It is unsurprising. It's noteworthy however that wingnut criticism aren't met with the same barely veiled hostility.
When that disdainful tone turns up, their always talkinga bout lefty bloggers, implicitly or explicitly.
22: Are you arguing that journalists should be paid more? If you are talking about local newspaper reporters, maybe, but I doubt it. If you are talking about the major talking heads in the major newspapers, major news magazines, and major television shows, then you are insane. Their pay rate is one reason we get such wacko coverage on the national level.
If you are talking about the major talking heads in the major newspapers, major news magazines, and major television shows, then you are insane.
I'm not, because those people don't report - they entertain. Do you think Anderson Cooper gets the big bucks because of his investigative reporting?
Although I"ll cop the insanity plea anytime...
4: Where's w-lfs-n? "Appreciably".
13 I think that Froomkin is right. I'm getting into my discomfort zone here again. I don't think that the idea that people should be less partisan and just listen to one another has made sense at all since Gingrich too over in 1994. We really have no choice about whether or not to be imn a nasty fight, and our government is very nearly a criminal conspiracy.
"Liberal" has been redefined to mean something like "an ducated, irreligious, hedonistic person of culture with expensive elite tastes." Media people are that, but they aren't liberals and they still tend to trash Democrats, especially Old Democrats (e.g. Jesse Jackson and labor.).
John Emerson is right in 21. It is a professionalism thing. It is like when some academics get pissy about wikipedia.
In the old days journalists were often or usually bright train-on-the-job neighborhood guy types, or guys from second-rank schools. They were never respected like MDs, and very seldom earned as much.
Now there's the J-school track, and successful people make a lot more. Their arrogance comes from that. It hasn't led to superior journalism; the opposite. If journalism had been sharper from 1994 on, the blogosphere might never have become as important. I don't think that it was technologically inevitable.
The best internet journalists are as good as the best print journalists: Josh Micah Marshall, Yglesias, Greenwald, and a few others. And the advocacy people are extremely sharp too: Hamsher, Aravosis, and a lot more. There are really a lot of utter morons and frauds in the print opinion media.
The anxiety about, and contempt for, the blogosphere is virtually identical to the anxiety about and contempt for c18 coffee houses and print pamphlets. Because dude, anybody can say anything! And they do! And good god, the stuff that's inside other people's heads! It's not, to purloin a phrase, "fit to print"!
I mean, it's not as if the NYT, with that motto, hasn't put you on notice how they feel about the news.
One thing I always end up saying: management gets what it wants. Media people aren't stupid on their own. People always say I'm conspiracy theorizing, but management manages things. If the NYT or Wapo is bad, it's because Sulzberger or Graham wants it bad. Up and coming young people are good at figuring out what's wanted. (Look at who rises in the system: Kristol who's wrong about everything. Wonkett the assfucking lady. Not any of the dozens of smart liberals, for example Yglesias. Recently Yglesias wrote something which I think indicates that he now realizes that his intelligence and liberalism will cost him).
I think that's fair. Another way of putting it is that management knows just as much as we do about all the incompetence and inaccuracy -- where heads aren't rolling, it's because the people who own the media are happy.
20, 29: I think the issue is less content than rhetoric. God knows mainstream media is just as obsessed with trivial shit as blogs are. But mainstream media (with the help, I think, of stupid rules about four-letter words and conservative squawking about "mainstream" values) has gotten to the point where how you say something matters more than what you say. It's unseemly to present only "one side" of an issue, even if there's really only one side that has any legitimacy. It's better to spread misinformation than to actually "censor" lies. Talking about the scandalous behavior of low people is great, as long as you do so in polite tut-tut language; talking about the scandalous behavior of powerful people is absolutely beyond the pale.
9, 10: The Right complaint against the media has rarely been inaccuracy, or even bias per se - it's a failure to toe the conservative line. You see this all the time where righties will deny that a patently fluffy interview with a R, or a hostile one with a D, shows any flaw in his claims of Liberal Media Bias. Why not? Because any media figure who fails to reinforce the prejudices of conservatives is, ipso facto, a Liberal.
A great example of this is Chris Matthews. I guarantee that 95% of righties would peg him as a Liberal, but he did more than any other TV newsperson to A. promote impeachment of Clinton and B. defeat Al Gore. But that's not good enough for righties - they want fealty. Lefties just want Chris Matthews to stop lying about our politicians and calling them weird, unAmerican girlymen (or, in HRC's case, Dukakis in a dress).
Here's a story from Fox News complaining about exactly what 34 says: that the media reported the Senate filibuster from the Democrats' point of view instead of the Republicans'.
We're through the looking glass now: Either the media reports events from the Republican point of view; or they report it from the Democratic point of view and Fox News immediately releases a story about this fact, from the Republican point of view. Heads I win, tails you lose.
I have discerned the conspiracy behind the conspiracy. The Edwards campaign, in secret consultation with moderate/classical liberal bloggers not to be name here, hired Amanda and Shakes with the intention of firing them after a week.
The goal was to intimidate and terrify the left blogosphere into obedience and quiescence. The new standard is Bowdlerized language, and no content that would offend anyone, anywhere, anytime. We must broaden our appeal, and however unlikely, Edwards cannot afford to pointlessly throw away the vote of a Donahue or Malkin. He might get it. It's possible.
All blogs must become like ObsWi. When Charles Bird says Democrats are traitors to be shot, liberals, in the spirit of comity, must blindfold themselves. The process liberals can be handy by guiding the obstreperous ones to the back of the shed, thereby proving their fealty. It is always the powerless complainers that are the dangerous ones, anyway
36: why don't you do me a favor and read what I actually wrote about Marcotte, or ask hil what she thinks, or be quiet?
I agree with ogged's post and a lot of comments...that said, I wouldn't talk about the media like a single entity, any more than they should talk about an amorphous blogsophere. Cable news is as full of "faulty logic, dubious facts, poor argumentation, strident ideology, rampant falsehoods, characters of ill repute and many other things harmful to one's mental well being" as some blogs and lacks the redeeming qualities of many others.
Whereas when you look at good print sources etc. they do some things better than even the best weblogs--actual reporting involving interviews with people who wouldn't return bloggers' calls, getting handed tips by government sources, traveling to war zones and getting shot at, or simply conducting interviews abroad. There are lots of great reporters out there.
But there are other functions that the best bloggers do better than your average daily. First, I'll take hilzoy over anyone on the Washington Post editorial page--but even if you're talking about news stories: If you want an explanation of economic policies you're better off with Brad DeLong than the Washington Post. If you want to follow legal debates about executive power, you're much better off reading Balkinization than any newspaper. And if you want straight up political coverage of what's going on in Congress or on the campaign trail, I think you're better off reading, say, Yglesias or Marshall or a number of others than any daily coverage. Some people would argue that you lose something by reading political coverage by people you already agree with rather than an "objective" observer. But the press's collective decision that it's biased to engage the merits of a political debate and the mentality that it's all a game costs a lot more.
Some people would argue that you lose something by reading political coverage by people you already agree with rather than an "objective" observer.
People who say this are, on the whole, morons.
37 was entirely too defensive, imagining references that were not even implied.
But nevertheless typical.
Speaking of savages: "Michael Savage, the nation's third-most listened to radio talk-show host, says he may leave his top rated show to make a bid for the GOP nomination for president."
Be reasonably civil.
No profanity. For the record, 'hell', 'damn' and 'pissed' are not considered 'profanity' for the purposes of this rule; also for the record, the more offensive racial slurs and epithets will be deemed to 'profanity' for the purposes of this rule
Don't disrupt or destroy meaningful conversation for its own sake.
Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake.
Like Tac, we don't ban for ideological reasons
So what, bob? I find the rules there irritating, too, but it's their house. Is there some magical force field keeping you from starting your own blog which requires vituperation in any comment?
"36: why don't you do me a favor and read what I actually wrote about Marcotte, or ask hil what she thinks, or be quiet? " ...Katherine
This begs deconstruction
Starting at the end:"Shut the fuck up, you ignorant wretch"
42: Obsidian Wings Posting Rules
Yeah, those worked out great.
The process liberals can be handy by guiding the obstreperous ones to the back of the shed, thereby proving their fealty.
Dude, Bob, you're accusing the liberal posters at ObWi of some sort of metaphorical murder. I can understand Katherine's not taking that altogether well.
46: judging by bob's reaction I guess he actually wasn't, but that is how I read it and I think it was an understandable mistake.
43:The point is about the bounds of legitimate discourse, and how those bounds are being enforced by making an example of Marcotte.
31
"... If the NYT or Wapo is bad, it's because Sulzberger or Graham wants it bad ..."
I doubt this is what Sulzberger wanted.
It would probably be unkind to Bob to say not to worry about what he says, given that I think his heart's in the right place and he's just kind of like that, but you know what I mean. (Sorry, Bob, but you're not really aiming for the 'paragon of sanity' look, right?)
Bob, a lot of us seem to fine Marcotte a shitty blogger. Some of us also seem to think that Edwards' people would have shown good judgment by choosing someone less of an easy target for the Malkin mouth breather brigade. Nonetheless, the general consensus seems to be that the Edwards campaign would prove to be incredible tools if they fired her on the basis of an anti-Semite's whole-cloth accusation of anti-Catholic bias and an inability to stop working blue on what is effectively her personal site. Why you gotta hate on Katherine for this? ObWi's decorum rules don't seem to have anything to do with the matter at hand, seriously.
39
You do lose something. If you want the odds on who is going to win the next election just reading partisan coverage is not the best choice.
46:It was an explicit reference to a Tim Burke comment in the previous thread, which although accusing me of violence by name, I note did not get the reaction I am getting here.
"Whether or not you get Bob McManus approving of your choices? Much easier! Just shoot a couple of counter-revolutionaries behind the shed." ...Tim Burke
I guess it's ok if you are a liberal
46:"Why you gotta hate on Katherine for this?"
I was hating on Katherine? I didn't even know she was here, I made no explicit reference to her in any way, and got a personalalized response telling me to shut the fuck up.
Once the fight was started, I did not quietly go away like a good dog. Bad dog, me.
"that it's a bunch of idiots screaming at each other, is pretty accurate." ...ogged. top post
"couple of them value democracy in the abstract, but when they see it in action--and really, vehement, varyingly smart and informed people hashing things out just is democracy" ...ogged again
Somehow, as an example of one ideal of discourse, an ideal not completely distant from the MSM ideal, I do think the ObsWi posting rules are relevant.
Bob, I like having you around just fine -- someone's got to be the furthest out there. But this:
All blogs must become like ObsWi. When Charles Bird says Democrats are traitors to be shot, liberals, in the spirit of comity, must blindfold themselves. The process liberals can be handy by guiding the obstreperous ones to the back of the shed, thereby proving their fealty. It is always the powerless complainers that are the dangerous ones, anyway
called the liberals at ObWi, which Katherine was the founding liberal of, collaborators in helping conservatives (I assume metaphorically) murder other liberals. That's really really harsh and unfair; it's a good blog, and whatever you think about the success of the posting rules, good stuff gets said there.
You can say over-the-top stuff all you like, but it's going to piss people off sometimes.
Never you mind, LB, we must wave our little revolutionary flags bravely as we await the Fourth World War, and we will do it all in our comment boxes, because we are just so terribly radical.
Yeah, it seems completely clear to me there was an honest miscommunication here and we can move on...I think my misreading was understandable but otoh I obviously shouldn't have jumped to conclusions and I have a track record of misunderstanding what mcmanus means. sorry for the contribution to derailing the thread.
In all fairness to Bob, "I have discerned the conspiracy behind the conspiracy" is a pretty strong cue that what's following is at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek or humorously exaggerated. Admittedly there can be times when it's hard to tell if that's what he's doing, but this time not so much.
Sometimes I think Bob is Rodney Dangerfield-meets-Zack de la Rocha for the blogging world.
59: You have an exaggerated sense of your own capacities if you think that could have derailed a thread around here. Unfogged threads have no rails and should be thought of as poorly trained llama caravans rather than trains.
56:"collaborators in helping conservatives (I assume metaphorically) murder other liberals. That's really really harsh and unfair"
But that Burke was automatically assumed to be speaking tounge-in-cheek, or metaphorically, or whatever doesn't matter cause he was talking about Bob.
I'm not arguing that this is fair, but you go over-the-top all the time, while most other people don't. I think people assume that you don't mind similarly over-the-top rhetoric aimed your way. The ObWi management and ex-management, on the other hand, runs to the fairly measured in tone, and so gets understandably tense at the wilder stuff.
And Katherine's apologized for taking it the wrong way, anyway.
Bob, I don't think you're any more likely to shoot collaborators or assist in same than I am...the reason for the different reaction is most likely that you're thicker skinned than I am. So you didn't say anything, I did, and others reacted accordingly.
p.s. Lenin still sucks though.
"I'll be calm and rational when you take your foot off my neck." ...was the old feminist line.
But in point of fact, inside the archness and irony, there is indeeed a very vicious point I hoped to make in 36 about bourgeious liberals enforcing the various oppressive structures against radicals and revolutionaries. Cheney and Bush don't give a fuck about the law or the rules of civility. Tim Burke and Katherine and Hilzoy depend on it for their very identity.
Quietly and calmly, the reasonable arguments for why Marcotte was not the wisest choice were made by the liberals, while the right used the hyperbole and character assassination permitted them.
Yeah, lackeys and running dogs was in there, and I hoped to have earned your defensive rage, Offense was entirely intended.
Bye.
okay, now I'm just totally confused.
Make that Rodney Dangerfield-meets-Zack de la Rocha-meets-The Fish-Slapping Dance.
70: re 50: I laugh at myself at what I say a lot. I even laugh at others for taking me seriously or imagining me malicious. People here know I have attacked hilzoy and Katherine, and defended Tacitus and Paul Cella.
That could mean I hate everyone without distinction or prejudice. It could mean I take most of what goes on in comment threads unseriously.
I am not much into meaning. Against interpretation, ya know.
Howard Beale said all that really needs to be said.
Okay I will pose it as a question: How should someone who wants to drive the discourse out of rationalism and civility behave?
Anyone ever read Stoppard? I should google, cause I have brainlock "Travesties"? The one with Joyce ( of course I love it), Lenin, and Tristan Tzara, structured around "The Importance of Being Earnest"?
Not that I have a clue what Stoppard ws trying to say.
How should someone who wants to drive the discourse out of rationalism and civility behave?
Well, they shouldn't have pants on, for starters. After that, there are many possible directions to go.
Search this thread for instances of the name "Stacey." Watch and learn, grasshopper.
72: I like the play.
An impromptu poet of Hibernia,
Once rhymed himself into a hernia,
He grew quite adept,
At the practice except,
For occasional anticlimaxes.
Okay I will pose it as a question: How should someone who wants to drive the discourse out of rationalism and civility behave?
Make the case to people whose identities are so entangled with rationalism. Or pray for an unbelievably bad set of outcomes here, like the Depression. Or some localized combination of the two.
73:True story from the 70s. My shrink, after looking at me for a while, asked me:"What is the opposite of despair?"
I says:"Laughter" (Tzara, Joyce)
He says: "What about hope?" (Lenin)
I says:"It's funny that I never thought about hope."