International Law

?Blogger journalists make mainline journalists look bad, and they know it?

By Rob Hyndman

An exceptional comment on Glenn Greenwald’s exceptional post about Monster-gate and off-the-record comments. Glennzilla’s post is now updated, including with this depressingly accurate precis of where we are on MSM political reporting:

Even after the lead-up to Iraq War, eight years of the Bush administration, the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch fiascoes and an endless string of similar incidents, American “journalists” like Carlson are actually proud of the role the American media plays. Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe, sitting and chatting with Tony Snow: “the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general.”

That’s why it won’t change and the only real hope is to develop alternatives to it. Serving the politically powerful, functioning as the PR arm of the political establishment, is what they want to do, what they believe they should be doing. The more they do that, the more respectful they are of the politically powerful, the more “standards” they think they have. The success of the American establishment journalist is measured by how many good friends they count among the politically powerful.

Full post as published by Rob Hyndman .com on March 09, 2008 (boomark / email).