Sadly, the Washington Post aint what it used to be

I miss Catherine Graham, who was the conscience of the Post and it's integrity. ---BBB

Tricks of the Trade: Plus the Altercation Book Club
by Eric Alterman
9/8/06

I've got a new "Think Again" here called "Spun Dizzy"

I'm taking the semester off from teaching, but it's the first week of classes and I need to get a few things out of my system: One of the many, many problems with journalists' attack on bloggers for lacking professional ethics is not only that many journalists lack any professional ethics--see under "television news, cable, entire,"--but that even when journalists at the top of their profession do their job entirely professionally, their practices often lead us no closer to the truth, and often mislead us away. For instance:

The old "Ascribing Verifiable Opinions to Inanimate Objects," Trick:

In a front-page Leisure Section story called, "New Shows for Old Stars," The Wall Street Journal's Brooks Barnes observes, "And some shows have hit the jackpot by casting veteran actors who just a few years ago were deemed unfit for anything but the retirement-home talent show. Who does ABC credit with giving "Boston Legal" buzz on the Web? Actress Betty White, 84." Here.
Hey, wait a minute. How does an entire network, in this case, ABC, "credit anyone with anything? Shouldn't someone at ABC be quoted to verify this assertion? And second, just what is "buzz on the Web," in this context? And how does that translate into viewers, in this particular case? Barnes never bothers to explain, which is just as well, because the entire paragraph is so amorphous as to evaporate with even a millisecond's scrutiny. (I think "Boston Legal" is great, by the way, but now I may have to boycott it.)

The old "There Are Only Two Options, Here, Mine and Some Idiot's" dodge:

In a Washington Post chat, an emailer asked reporter, Jonathan Weisman, "Dick Cheney said he was stuck with the grave decision of whether to shoot down the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania or not. The recently released NORAD tapes confirm that the government first knew of the flight one minute before it went down. Is Cheney lying, again, or was he thinking very fast that day, with his drama unfolding within 60 seconds?I've yet to read anywhere that Cheney has been queried about his story. THANKS.

Weisman replied: If I can get him on the phone, I will query him. Cheney's statements present a quandary for us reporters. Sometimes we write them up and are accused of being White House stenographers and stooges for repeating them. Then if we don't write them up, we are accused of being complicit for covering them up. So, all you folks on the left, what'll it be? Complicity or stenography?" Here.
The contempt dripping from Weisman's typist is evident but his logic is not. Why would it be impossible for Weisman, even without getting Cheney on the phone, and ha ha, what a riot, asking a politician an impolite question--publish what Cheney actually said alongside the evidence that the man is not telling the truth? That would not be "complicity." That would not be "stenography." (And by the way sir, in the case of this administration, "complicity" and "stenography" are synonymous.) It would be solid, sensible journalism. Has the Washington Post fallen so far from the ideal of actually trying to tell the public the truth when officials want it hidden that their reporters are actually unfamiliar with the practice?

The old "Fool Me Once, Fool Me A Thousand Times," Story:

Continuing with the above theme, why, for instance in this story is there no room for even a mention of the fact that the Pentagon has a history of deliberately trying to fix these tests, over and over, in order to fool gullible reporters and keep the funding spigot on, and punishing those honorable whistleblowers who try to expose it? Would that be bias to point out the word of the people you are accepting has proven worthless in the past, over and over and over? See Frances Fitzgerald (2000), Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War for details.
The Use of the Word "Arguably" to Say Something Otherwise Indefensible as in "Paris Hilton is Arguably a Better Physicist than Albert Einstein Ever Was."

In the New York Times Arts and Leisure Section, Alan Light writes, [Bob Seger's] "brand of lunch-bucket rock 'n' roll has struck a universal chord, arguably even more than the music of peers like Bruce Springsteen." Here.
Now, I really like Seger, but really, who in the world would sensibly argue...

Using a Single Anecdote to Make a Larger Point when the Anecdote Actually Proves Actually Nothing:

In the first few paragraphs of a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, Lynn Hershberg writes, "But it says something about the changes in the industry that when Sissy Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar in 1981 for portraying the musician Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter," she was the lead in the film, while Witherspoon was playing a secondary character in "Walk the Line." Here.
Perhaps, Hershberg is right, but what it says to me is that one movie was about Loretta Lynn, a woman, while the other one was about Johnny Cash, a man. Call me sexist, but I too, would have shown "a growing reluctance" to cast a woman--even Meryl Streep--as the Man in Black. (And by the way, Mary Steenburgen won the Oscar back in 1981 for Best Supporting Actress in a movie about, you guessed it, not one but two men: "Melvin and Howard.")

The Phony Comparison With Someone or Something Insane to Make the Otherwise Outrageous Appear Sensible:

In The New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Rauch writhes: "This "party of death" -- "those who think that the inviolability of human life is an outdated or oppressive concept" -- is not perfectly congruent with the Democratic Party, but in Ponnuru's words, it has made the Democrats a "wholly owned subsidiary." That distinction may seem less meaningful to many readers than it does to Ponnuru, who has been accused by his critics of political partisanship, and whose title and subtitle do their commercialistic best to give that impression. He is, however, the soul of fair-mindedness compared with many of his fellow pundits. (For instance, the conservative writer Ann Coulter, in her new book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," distinguishes Republicans from Democrats this way: "We're the Blacks-Aren't-Property/Don't-Kill-Babies Party. They're the Hookup party." Now that's partisanship.) Here.
Now you see the service that Coulter provides to conservatives and that network brass provide to them by giving her a platform. It's impossible to be considered beyond the bounds of sensible discourse when your only standard is a screaming, hysterical dishonest lunatic, but that here, is what appears to be Rauch's only allowable standard.

That's all for today. Class dismissed.