skippy the bush kangaroo: don't like seeing gossip in newspapers?

Thursday, November 29, 2007

don't like seeing gossip in newspapers?

then stop reading those newspapers. skippy already linked to this brilliant at breakfast post, but the last paragraph is worth repeating:

...this is the kind of campaign journalism we're going to get until november 2008: republicans good. democrats bad. rumors true. facts false.

jill is right when she says this is exactly what we're going to get. what she failed to mention was, no matter how much hell we raise about this, we're going to get gossip-as-news campaign coverage anyway. and she's wrong on one part: this is not going to stop after election day. decades ago, you see, some obscenely wealthy and influential far-right republicans got together and decided to create their very own spin machine, one that would advance their special interests in the name of national interests. it was very hard work -- they had to create and fund their own magazines, newspapers, think tanks, direct-mail marketing organizations, and so on. it cost them a fortune, but they pulled it off.

in fact, they accomplished more than they intended. they wanted their spin machine to cow the mainstream media into submission, and eventually it did. then, flushed with their success, they made the same mistake every single power-hungry leech on our species preceding them made: they got sloppy. they allowed their spin machine to become even bigger and more powerful, enabling it to slowly morph into a monster they could no longer control. by the time awol was appointed president by five thoroughbred d!p$#!+$ in black robes, the monster was the one in charge, not its creators, and certainly not the spin machinists who now have to feed it constantly as if their lives depended on it.

this sorry-assed lot includes the so-called journalists who promote speculation over whether barack obama is a {*gasp*} closet muslim while rudy giuliani's very real and very dirty history goes unacknowledged.

but you know how all we really want from mainstream journalists -- how all we've ever wanted from these people -- is to behave like journalists, not stenographers or rumormongers? that ain't gonna happen. ever. it's way past time for us to cut these people loose and forget about them -- they're hopeless, beyond redemption. the sooner bloggers and people who read blogs realize this, the better off we're all going to be. we have plenty of other media outlets to choose from -- the huffington post, buzzflash, tompaine.com, salon, common dreams, truthout... you get the idea. these sites and others like them do link to heaps of steno and dish tripe masquerading as news pieces and op-eds all the time. but they do so in the spirit of journalism. that's what counts, and that's what we ought to be mindful of as election day 2008 creeps toward us -- and after it's gone, too.

stop wasting your tears and your blogging time on the mainstream. those people are getting precisely what they deserve. we don't need them anymore. perhaps we never did...

Labels: enough already