He calls papers like The New York Times �a tablet of stone, it is a paper of great authority. And if you ever go to a New York Times editorial meeting, it�s a bit like a religious ceremony.� He talks about the effort and resource that goes into the front page. ��Believe us,� is the message. If it goes onto the front page of The New York Times it�s there because it�s important�. �You may not want to read it but it�s our opinion.� And this is a model that has existed again for a hundred years�.
�This is journalism as revelation: �We are the figures of authority. All these important people at the top speak to us. You can�t speak to because you�re too little�. We are the conduit and we tell you what�s important. It�s like this. Believe us.� And occasionally, the little people would write a letter�. And we�d print a few of these letters very graciously. But most of them we�d drop in the bin�. This was the paper I inherited in 1995, which had been printed since 1821�.�
Then came technology that enabled the conversation, first in the form of email. �This was a big challenge to journalists because they didn�t know quite how to respond and some journalists got quite huffy about this and said, �Look, push off, I�m the figure of authority here� Our job is to tell you what�s what. We don�t want to hear from you because frankly we�re the experts around here.�� Others, he said, found it valuable to improve their journalism.
But often, the people were ignored, so: �What happened next is that these people started talking to each other. They didn�t ask our permission to do this at all� And they started forming little groups of people who began critiquing newspapers� They went behind our back to our sources because, increasingly, the information that we were using was available on the internet�. A bit cheeky of the readers to do that�� (Remember my warning about irony, folks.)
He says it got to the point where he would come into the office and if the paper had made �a mistake about anything, dozens of people around the world had already spotted this and were challenging this. This was a different kind of audience. The old audience� were willing to take on trust your view of a wide range of information that we were saying is important. And these people are, to a much greater degree, self-selecting�� That is, they follow the news that interests them. �Now they�re not wrong, these people, because the internet now does an awful of information on an awful lot of subjects that�s better than newspapers. I shouldn�t be saying this, live, to the world outside. I should be keeping this as a secret.�
Who is “he”? Alan Rusbridger – editor of The Guardian.
Jarvis writes;
I recommend that every American journalist and news executive listen to this speech on newspapers in the age of blogs…
The mp3 file is too large for me to contemplate downloading over dialup, but it comes highly recommended.
Great post. There is so much information today that it is absolutely impossible for any individual to “keep up”. Forget it. Your life will be hell and your brain will explode. Most of it isn’t important anyway and much is released to confuse and control you.
The beauty of the Internet is that we can concentrate on just what we are interested in, what *we* think is important, without being hypnotized by the barrage of daily propaganda expelled by the main stream news media and advertising industry. The Internet is despised by those who want to rule through social engineering because they cannot control it like they can and do the MSM.
Blogs are the bane of the MSM and those who want to control the world. The Internet is the antithesis of mass control. This is why China and other dictatorships control and suppress the Internet. This is why the UN wants to do the same worldwide.
The Internet is changing the world in so many ways. Here’s just one example. It is now possible for an individual, yes, an individual like you and me, to set up a virtual R&D program and enlist the help of top scientists and research engineers worldwide, FOR NOTHING. These experts will consent, without understanding they do, to work in an environment of “need to know” similar to how NASA works. And you are the recipient of the results. This takes an understanding of how to use the Internet but it can easily be done. I know because I have done it.
In the meantime the mass audience of the mass media continue to tune out and tune in each evening to shows like The Simpsons, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Seinfeld, and watch their sports heros who are paid millions to toss balls into a hoop or kick balls though two sticks.
People always get what they deserve. Most will not be saved through any direct action of their own and will drift through their lives not knowing or caring about anything really important. They will continue to tune in to the MSM. They no longer matter, if they ever did. In the end it will take the action of a few strong men and women to really change the world and it will be through their understanding and use of the Internet, the World Wide Web and blogs.
John Crittenden: “In the meantime the mass audience of the mass media continue to tune out and tune in each evening to shows like The Simpsons, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Seinfeld, and watch their sports heros who are paid millions to toss balls into a hoop or kick balls though two sticks.”
First – the Simpsons continues to provide biting satire after many years. You can try to understand the zeitgeist whilst being totally removed from it, but it’s difficult. And sport has been a part of human culture for thousands of years; that our current technologies make it possible for sport to be omnipresent is no reason to sneer at people for enjoying them.
I do agree that the Net is changing many things, and the type of quasi-anonymous collaboration you mentioned is one of them. I work with Visual Basic every day, and I find the lack of complete and useful documentation frustrating, but there are collaborative websites where people, for no compensation at all, will answer my plaintive queries. I think we will see more of this, to the general benefit of all.
As for the MSM: they provide a filtering function and an interpretation function. The very act of choosing what they want to print is the filter, and as Rusbridger noted, they’ve become a bit arrogant in that area (“We are the conduit, and we will tell you what’s important.”)
As for interpretation: each newspaper has a voice which presupposes its values. I don’t expect to read the Toronto Sun to find support for welfare mothers, and I don’t expect to read the Toronto Star to find support for lowering the top marginal tax rates. I am devastated that the Globe and Mail, which I felt for years was a centrist, sensible publication unafraid to publish opposing points of view and let the reader make up his/her mind, had become another tool of the loopy left. I read the Post now, but I do so with the knowledge that it has spectacular biases as well; they’re just not as egregiously annoying as the Globe’s.
Kate, my god. You do all this stuff from a dial up?
-The Old Grey Info-Slut… the NYT/Jayson Blair Affair–
-The Access of Evil– CNN’s Duplicity
—
Dial-up??
Yup, dial-up.
… and SDA on dialup and away….. +
The virtues of ‘a pack not a herd'(Steyn’s Thoughts on the MSM vs the Communication Revolution)
Posted by finnigan2
On 03/31/2006 4:31:06 AM PST � 2 replies � 55+ views
Man Leans Magazine ^ | Mark Steyn
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but what happened to all the mom ‘n’ pop stores? Go to Anytown, U.S.A. — or Canada, or Belgium or Latvia — and it’s all Home Depot and Wal-Mart and Dunkin’ Donuts. And yet there is a curious exception to this trend: the media. If the New York Times and ABC and Knight Ridder are the equivalent of the Wal-Marts and Home Depots, they’re getting picked off five, 10, a hundred customers at a time by a gazillion mom ‘n’ pop outfits — the Drudge Report, Power Line, realclearpolitics.com and a myriad… +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1606703/posts
If it’s important, it goes on the front page, right?
WRONG.
The New York Times has a lot to explain for its war-time refusal (intentional or not) to give the Holocaust the attention it deserved. I’ve gone through the papers thoroughly on microfiche, and it’s disgusting that reports on the Holocaust were shoved onto the back pages of the paper. One report that mentioned the massive Nazi extermination program and listed the various horrible ways that Jews were killed was placed way back on page 6 in one July 1942 edition. I guess the death of a few million wasn’t important enough to make the front page.
That was one of the good occasions for the Times -usually, it just buried stories of the Holocaust on page 22.
Why just mention the Holocaust? What about the hundreds of millions killed by Stalin–oops, forgot that–he was an ally so we dare not mention the dead Ukranians.
As for the Simpsons–they are more news savvy that any MSM outlet.
“The Nation” Has A Little Lie… (Actually Too Many To Count – David Horowitz Alert)
Frontpagemag.com ^ | 03/31/06 | David Horowitz
Posted on 03/31/2006 2:04:42 AM PST by goldstategop
Long before Senator McCarthy enjoyed his hour of disreputable fame, another Joseph had discovered how to deal effectively with political rivals. Not only the inquisitive senator, but every political inquisitor since, has owed a primary debt to Comrade Stalin. It was Stalin�s sinister genius to realize that arguing a case was not the best way to prevail in a dispute. Engaging his opponents on the merits of their critique was not his choice. Instead, he arranged show trials to conflate them with Adolf Hitler and purge them from his party�s ranks. So why should it surprise me when the left-wing opponents of academic freedom avoid engaging the argument on its merits and instead focus their efforts on conflating me with Senator McCarthy?
…
Not to mention the 1940s. In a 1946 article about Stalin�s postwar purges (�The Soviets Clean House�) [1] Walter Duranty explained to The Nation�s progressive readers that �purge� meant �to cleanse� in Russian, and that a house cleaning was all Stalin intended. In Duranty�s memorable words, Stalin had launched �a general cleaning out of the cobwebs and mess which accumulate in any house when its occupants are so deeply preoccupied with something else that they have no time to keep it in order.� At the height of this house cleaning, Stalin was killing 20,000 Russian citizens a month. But according to The Nation (in 1946 as today) the main danger facing humanity was the incipient fascism of the West. [2]
From his opening sentence, Lingeman�s indictment is under way: �David Horowitz, the right-wing Savonarola, takes an unholy interest in higher education.� +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1606676/posts
Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun and Napoleon are having an average day in hell roasting away when Alexander decides to break the tedium with a game of �what if� between himself and the other despots.
Alexander starts it off by saying � If I only had machine guns, I could have conquered Asia �
Attila speaks up� �humph, I see you are still thinking small Alexander. If I had Abrams tanks I could have taken Europe, Asia and north Africa�
Finally Napoleon speaks: � I see you are both still hostage to the limited strategic thinking of your ages. If I had connections in the modern mainstream media, no one would have ever known I lost in Russia or Waterloo.
Give that man a cigar. But not Cubans: Danish. +
Tory MP Wants to Send Reporters to Jail for Distorting Facts
Josh Pringle
Friday, March 31, 2006
A Conservative MP suggests reporters who distort articles should be sent to jail.
Colin Mayes is blasting the media for its testy relationship with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
In a column circulated to newspapers in his B-C interior riding, Mayes said that maybe it’s time that reporters who twist or fabricate information be hauled off in handcuffs, adding it might help the public “get accurate and true information.” +
cfra.com
Colin may be correct in his assessment of the media distortions, but that is for the public to decide.
In a truly free society, you can publish anything you want, short of libel and slander.
Minimally, it has to have some connection to the facts at hand.
The public can decide whether the journalist is off their rocker.
As a case in point, the cartoonist who did the Jesus BJ cartoon, was undoubtedly offensive as were the Mohammed cartoons.
Each were trying to make some sort of ill-considered point. But if the cartoonist or journalist want to flop around like morons they should have the right to be stupid. That particular modality of communication will simply die on the vine. Hence declining circulation, etc., reduced viewership.
Some of the stuff that attempts to pass for journalism, is without doubt baiting for the purpose of being provocative and getting one out of the comfortable pew. Sometimes it is better to just let it pass, as it is just howling at the moon.
Bluff, Bluster, and Bullshit are the ususal methodologies that attempt to ignore or gloss over FACTS. Hence the dissatisfaction with a media that fell asleep and became a pious lot of choirmembers for the LIEberals instead of rooting out the ADSCAM rubbish which should be their job.
If the MSM is somewhat discomfitted that people on the Internet don’t believe their tripe; perhaps it is because we, the public, were ill served.
Freedom of the press, may be in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but they are also free to whither and die when they don’t at the very least spend some time making sure that they don’t just parrot the the left-lib political nostrums and platitudes endlessly. To be a journalist is to be paid to expose bullshit, whether it is left, right or center.
Give us more facts, less spin and the MSM might find the public giving them more creedence. Otherwise get lost, we can use the Internet and draw facts from alternate sources and draw our own picture. In short, the MSM have a right to become “Small Dead Animals”.
Colin Mayes put away your handcuffs.
Before suggesting that journalists should go to jail for printing wrong information, which is absurd by the way, what I’d like to see is politicians be criminally charged for committing criminal acts e.g. Adscam. Let’s put things into perspective here Colin Mayes. Besides, I haven’t decided what I dislike more-a lying journalist or a lying politician-we’d also be making the lawyers rich-they’d have a hay day defining a lie and distorting the truth.
A good listen.
I liked, in particular, hearing that they distinguish between news and commentary articles… and, in the absence of news, we get commentary. There are just to many sources of commentary articles now to leave it to MSN to provide it for us.
An easy example of another industry that has gone through a similar change is the travel booking industry. Travel agents are almost irrelevant now (pre-1995 – there was no choice).
Mayes is a gift that keeps on giving. I heart cpc backbenchers.
Who would make the decision on what is “distorted news?”
Vic Toews wants to put kids under the age of 18 in jail, Mayes wants to jail journalists. Maybe when the jails are full we’ll build a penal colony.
http://centreofcanada.blogspot.com/
Steve in bc:
Just like Scott Brison on the income trust email affair is a gift that keeps giving for the LIEberals.
Oh several billion in retirement investment capital is just pocket change. Insider trading nah..”Are you happy now?”
From Warren Kinsella blog March 8th:
http://www.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm
What does the below exchange mean, captured this morning on front page of the National Post? It means someone’s done like dinner, I think. (Hell, CTV’s David Akin is reporting the email may have been sent from a cabinet meeting.). And this IT thing is just getting started, remember: that’s why I have taken the position, since January 23, that this government’s lifespan is measured in years, not months:
From: Scott Brison
Sent: Nov. 22, 3:38 p.m., 2005
Subject: Test
Hi Dan
How is life? Do you have ‘s phone number?
Thanks
From:
Sent: Nov. 22, 3:45 p.m., 2005
Hey scott
Things are good, except for the government bringing the equity markets to a standstill. number is
From: Scott Brison
Sent: Nov. 22, 5:53 p.m., 2005
Thanks,
I think you will be happier very soon … this week probably
Best, S
NOV. 23
Following Mr. Goodale’s announcement
From:
Sent: Nov. 23, 8:26 p.m., 2005
Nice work
From: Scott Brison
Sent: Nov. 23, 2005
U happy?
From:
Sent: Nov. 23, 2005, 8:51 p.m.
I can’t express my joy properly
Yep, they sure delivered on “Peace, Order and Good Government”.
I can’t express my joy or anger properly either.
The Guardian keeps on giving/yielding to Islamist terrorism & hamas. +
Terrorist Leader “Sick and Tired” Of West’s Racism
Hamas kingpin Ismail Haniyeh finds a home at The Guardian: A just peace or no peace.
We are sick and tired of the west�s racist approach to the conflict, in which the Palestinians are regarded as inferior. Though we are the victims, we offer our hands in peace, but only a peace that is based on justice. +
I sometimes wonder if there�s anyone on the Guardian�s staff who feels a tiny, remote pang of conscience when the paper allows murderous monsters like Haniyeh to use it for propaganda. +
via LGF
You got Mayes…the Libs have Brison, who creeps me out.
Left liberal/socialist “Guardian” is a mouthpiece for Islamist terrorism.
The “Guardian” has allied with Islamist terrorism in a joint war against Western civilization.
This item is a piece of agit/prop; read all of it. The headline is a specimen of deception.
Here is the nub of the agit/prop piece:
“Many people in the UK have voluntarily embraced Islam.”
Code for: Join us in slitting your own throat. +
Apostasy and Islam
Excerpt:
A few weeks ago I took part in a debate about the Trinity and Tawhid (Oneness of God) on the Christian Premier radio station based in London and very much enjoyed the encounter. Many people in the UK have voluntarily embraced Islam. Is this not how it should be – with people choosing for themselves which faith – if any – they want to follow? … +
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2006/03/apostasy_and_islam_2.html
via instapundit
maz2
The critical distinction is here:
“To force someone to remain in a faith they do not believe seems rather absurd as it negates the whole basis of sincere belief and seems closer to officially endorsing hypocrisy.”
One could make the same comment in regards to equally odious systems of thought such as: National Socialism, Communism, insert other -isms as needed, which posit, in practice, that the non-adherent deserves extinction by virtue of being a non-adherent.
In short, one is hardly free to choose one’s faith based on grotesque coercion, which sacrifices one’s life, livelihood, or station in the community.
One might as well hang a sign about one’s neck and like town criers of old and shout: “Leper, leper.”
One really has to question when protesters against the “Mohammed cartoon” go to the rather absurd proposition of marching in the streets to firebomb numerous cars in France, or carry signs
bearing the inscription “GOD BLESS HITLER” in Iran.
While the Mohammed cartoon was obviously designed to bait to the point of idiocy; the response of extremists to join in the idiocy is hardly going engender sympathy or demonstrate the dignity of their faith. Your faith either grows up or it will be dismissed out of hand.
Given that the Muslim community were the originators of Al-Jabar or algebra that is taught to every high school student; they would be well served by applying a trifle bit of logic to their position and find it will have more traction in respect of world opinion.
This would be akin to the rightly offended Christian, at the recent Jesus Blow Job cartoon, identifying the offender and all those who laughed at it, to be commended to crucifixtion.
Hardly a demonstration of “Peace be with you.”
If spiritual fruit is the objective; how pray tell is this accomplished by consuming religious nuts?
I listened to the entire speech.
The most interesting parts were those that Jarvis quoted.
The primary example of a high profile blog that Rusbridger gave was the Huffington Post. The others hardly were mentioned.
The usual BS followed:
blogs are unreliable
the traditional press is reliable because of its wonderful fact-checking.
I was stunned to hear him say
no one was willing to go to Baghdad to do a blog.
Before the MSM get their shirts in a knot – because the MSM ARE guilty of left wing whacko biased, myoptic, agenda driven reporting – they should consider that Mr. Meyer might have been casting a line in the merky water to see if there is anything alive in there.