Today I had this story written about me regarding what I said at a Town Hall event in Burlington, Iowa by a reporter who wasn’t even at the event. Incidentally, I declined to be interviewed by this particular reporter yesterday for reasons which will soon be apparent.
In referring to me, she reported “he doesn’t like modern campaigning, isn’t interested in running for President, and will not be devastated” if he doesn’t win.
Below is a transcript of what I actually said in response to a question by a local Burlington resident which was the basis of the reporter’s story.
It is clear that there are those in the media who will exact a high price for candor and from those whom they consider to be insufficiently ambitious. But it is with increasing amazement that we see that those who are willing to slant or leave out important parts of a story to make their point.
More here at the Campaign Spot.
The original, corrupted story was in USA Today. It has now been picked up AP and a number of other fradulent outlets. There’s more information at the National Review here: tinyurl.com/2oo4pe
The media in the US, as is the case with their even more disgraceful counterparts in Canada, have decided not to report the news, but to wield power. Wield power if you like, MSM, but don’t try the fraud of positioning what you peddle as news. MSM, you just don’t get it do you? The blogosphere debunks you in seconds. Yet you persist, holding the public in the same regard you have for lemmings. MSM, you insult us, daily.
The MSM does not want Fred on the Republican ticket. Why not? Because he is electable, and they know it.
“There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand they would never appear in print. I am paid $150 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an ‘independent press’! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
— John Swinton, New York Times editor
What has really changed except an increase in the weekly salary?
Regrettably, Drudge has a link to this bogus piece of news on his site. Please email them to get it down. I did.
The stupidest of cheap MSM tactics in this day and age of electronically recorded events is lifting pieces out of context, how dumb can you get.
I think a lot these dumb print hacks actually live in a universe where they still think no one will notice.
On the one hand, good investigative journalism is a valuable thing. It’s like a private detective who ferrets out corruption and publishes the results. On the other hand, big publishers suffer from the same aspirations for oligarchic power that big government, big business, big labour, big religion, big science, big art, &c do.
When investigative journalism sponsored by big media is successful, it increases the power of the big media (for good reason), yet in so doing it also increases their ability to misbehave in a crony racketeering fashion, as Swinton describes in the quote Redux referenced.
As Shaken mentioned, the new digital citizen media (in some ways like citizens band radio once was, but now on a large global scale) introduces an out-of-band forcing into the existing systems. We have now entered a situation where citizens can be effective investigative journalists, and in particular, we can investigate big media reporting and their claimed investigative journalism.
In this Thompson case, for example, we have the actual transcript, and we have the actual media reports. In this case that’s all we need to be able to investigate the journalism involved. And we have the ability to publish the results in a current-events fashion without going through the channels controlled by the media being investigated. As Larry Wall said about the run-up to the phenomenon now know as the Internet: “Usenet is essentially Letters to the Editor without the editor. Editors don’t appreciate this, for some reason.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers”. Yet Jefferson also said, “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”
It is this education function that is being improved by the phenomenon of the Internet. Oh it’s messy, and it will continue to be so, nevertheless I have learned here over the last decade a lot about the proclivities of big media that I previously didn’t grok (I’m a slow learner). I doubt I’m the only one.
It’s been less than ten years that the web has enabled us to discover dishonesty like this and simple sloppy reporting quickly enough to do something about it (the first instance that immediately comes to mind was revealing the Texas Air National Guard documents as a fraud). How much of it went on before then?
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about, Jim, how much of it went on before? It’s not like it’s a grand conspiracy theory, yet I now wonder how many supposedly well-informed decisions I’ve made in the past after being duped by the fourth estate.
I have no doubt the shysters are even now working to close this loophole in their facade, but this time things may have already gone too far. It may be too late to put the cat back in Pandora’s box. Or it might not, but as Sir Winston said, “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”
If the MSM was to be run like a true business then the nonsense such as produced by this journalist (sic) would get her ass fired. But it hasn’t, and it won’t.
In a true business this kind of repeated activity would then get the shareholders bailing and the stock price cratering, but that won’t… oh, wait a minute…
Turning attention toward Fred Thompson’s remarks in question, I must say that the more of this guy I hear, the more I like. His candor is refreshing.
Here’s another thing about the Internet that is now coming into effect. When there is a good big-media publication, we can draw attention to it outside of the traditional limitations of the bad media. For example, here’s Charlie Rose’s one-hour interview with Fred Thompson:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjUEBskp4L0
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zptB25jQp30
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi0IPHA4pP8
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poo-HwPHvS8
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToUKc8KpSeA
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3oKaSW_9tc
You can access Charlie’s other US presidential candidate interviews there. My point is that Mr. Rose’s interview is the real thing. It’s literal. It’s not a bunch of sound bites edited from vast quantities of otherwise counterbalancing footage left on the cutting-room floor by those with an agenda; it’s not some silly “debate” strung along by gratuitous gotcha “questions”.
One of the few remaining good legacies of the big media is the in-depth live interview, and those should be studied, yet even there we are now finding an intermediate layer of things like Glenn Reynold’s podcast interviews.
The key thing, it seems to me, is that we now have a significantly greater ability to go to the source. The transcript. The video. The report. We are less constrained by having to view the source through the filter of big media’s various agenda, whatever they may be.
I have a theory: The Canadian Liberal media really really LIKE having a weak, disorganized eager to suck up to them Liberal party in power.
That way those oh so smarmy smarter than everyo9ne else journalists and “opinionistas” from the Parliamentary Press Gallery can retain their “rightful” role as the true unelected power mongers in this country. The Liberals make decisions based on opinion polls. The media use their power to “shape” opinion and VOILA!!! The Power of the Press.
And, you know what power does…and what those who want it back will do to get back in the driver’s seat. All you have to do is listen to the likes of Oliver, Fife, Newman, Travers, etc. to realize that they truly believe that THEY are the masters of us all- wined, dined and sucked up to OR ELSE.
To Whit – half of the fancy lounges and steak houses in Ottawa have had to close their doors because the Conservatives just don’t play that game. The PPG may even have to buy their own drinks these days. And no big taxpayer funded fancy parties.
All you had to do to realize this is true is watch the various year end in review interviews – especially today’s Jane Taber Liberal love in where Bob Fife gushed over IGGY!!! A neophite who is absolutely green about parliament as the next great Liberal hope. Or Bob Rae, who they all agreed will win the by election and be a great Liberal star. Just like, get this, GOODALE!!! Fife gushed over him too today!!
Clutching at straws to get back their Liberal puppets.
This subject came up during Thompson’s interviews on Fox News Sunday and CNN’s Late Edition today. Thompson did a good job of turning a non-story to his own advantage and getting some media exposure out of it. Podcasts of both interviews are available at iTunes, if anyone’s interested.
something else from ap of the msm.
winning at all costs in right wing america….
The opening line in the essay was: “My daddy died this year in Iraq.”
The girl’s mother had told Club Libby Lu officials that the girl’s father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, company spokeswoman Robyn Caulfield said. But the mother, Priscilla Ceballos, admitted later Friday that the essay and the military information she provided about her daughter’s father were untrue.
“We did the essay and that’s what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win,” Ceballos said in an interview Friday with KDFW-TV of Dallas. “But when (Caulfield) asked me if this essay is true, I said ‘No, this essay is not true.'”
The Associated Press was unable to find a phone number for Ceballos on Saturday.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Sounds like they have a CBC in the US. Is their corrupt and agenda driven broadcasting station funded by tax payer money?
I don’t recall the mother’s political affiliation being identified. (No, it isn’t “obvious” at all.)
My personal favorite is the “Green Helmet Guy”, that’s when the light came on for me…a little late perhaps but better late than not at all
Why does CBC give so much face-time to the NDP?
Does the freedom of information provide access to the Production PL (communications) tapes of CBC News & Shows? “Might prove interesting” There is a US hint in that paragraph!
Vitruvius:
“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about, Jim, how much of it went on before? It’s not like it’s a grand conspiracy theory, yet I now wonder how many supposedly well-informed decisions I’ve made in the past after being duped by the fourth estate.”
Perhaps the corporate media may not consider their pimping out of influence to be “non conspiratorial” but in the grander scheme of big politics and global deep politics they at least served as useful (willing) idiots in advancing the special interest agendas of well heeled owners and patrons.
If the internet has done anything for mankind it has provided freedom from this monopoly on public influence brokering and proven that there is no magic arcane intellectual art to simply relaying news and events accurately. It has also provided a wide variety of viewpoints on events so that now the corporate media opinion must truly compete ( and stand up to scrutiny) in a marketplace of ideas and instant unedited feedback.
The first glimmer of MSM influence peddling was when the Hurst chain was caught pimping for a Spanish-American conflict to suit the agneda of their owner and his friends in the military contracting industry. There have been many intances in Pre-Inet era where corporate 4th estate conglomerates have concentrated ownership as a matter of monopolizing the “influence for sale” market.
Radio/television was the brash new comer to 4th estate information hegemony,and unlike it’s self-righteous elder, the newspaper, it made no apology for being a crass commercial prostituting enterprise to “sell things”…from soap to vacuum cleaners to political candidates and gummint policy, the new media was there to turn a profit for whoever patronized her…public broadcasting was a reaction to “corporate” influence in broadcasting but fell prey to excessive partisan axe-grinding.
So we see the independent internet community today for what it is…truely a free market place of ideas detached from the pressure to please a sponsor, patron, partisan force or turn a profit.
There is a reason why the 4th estate condemns electronic citizen journalism and there is a reason why political/government forces want the freedom of cyberspace info flow shut down……it is because these 2 traditional institutional combines have had a monopoly on information flow to the public for centuries and they resent being scrutinized and found wanting.
Chris Muir address this in today’s Day by Day:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2007/12/31/#a004437
Hey great, Fred finally got out of bed early enough to say something almost interesting. Can I go back to sleep now?
Also, I believe the term is “journalistic malpractice”…
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/12/30/video-fred-on-iowa-and-journalistic-malpractice/
You can hardly ever trust anything you read in the NEW YORK SLIMES,WASHINGTON COMPOST or in SLIME or NEWSREEK magazines 90% of thier so called news are lies