Here’s my reply to Mr. Wasserman’s email:
Mr. Wasserman:
Thank you for your reply. While I could wax poetic (and epic) in a reply, I will attempt to make this brief. I’m sure you don’t need or want to read a 5,000 word essay in refutation of your single paragraph.
First, I am certain that a lot of the responses received from “the loud and bullying sliver” of the audience are of the “SHUT UP!” persuasion. There is a least-common-denominator effect, after all. However, there’s a loud and principled set of voices out there who actually want the media to do what it is they claim to do: report FACTS. Impart INFORMATION. Not “tell us what to think.”
The difference now is that the so-called “new media” has given us, the previously voiceless, a real voice – as noted in a piece in today’s LA Times. That link, if you haven’t read it, is here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blog12sep12,1,1043155.story
That piece details how the “loud and bullying sliver” shined a spotlight on the centerpiece of CBS’s 60 Minutes II expose: the Incriminating Memos – memos so obviously forgeries that mere amateur sleuths were able to expose them in just a few hours. Yet CBS, apparently in possession of them for days if not weeks, were (and I’ll be generous) completely duped into running them as credible. Dan Rather (and oh, how I wish I could superscript the “th” in Rather in an email) has stood on the bridge of the sinking ship of his (and CBS’s) stock-in-trade, credibility, and protested that they must be real because they prove what he wants to believe.
And this exposes, in Glitter Gulch technicolor animated two-story lighting, the problem we “the sliver” have with the media: You aren’t doing your job and we can no longer trust you.
Why else do you think the (now derisive) term “mainstream media” was invented? Because that media has become “yellow journalism” once again. Only now they operate under the laughable pretense of “fairness.” And some of you STILL believe you are.
Your colleagues have, more and more often, come out and admitted bias since Bernard Goldberg published his first Wall Street Journal piece on the topic. Most recently the New York Times in the person of “Public Editor” Daniel Okrent in his July 25 piece “Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” A paper that Bernard Goldberg quotes Dan Rather as characterizing as “middle of the road.”
Do you want to know why the Bush National Guard duty story can’t get traction? Because the majority of the public DOESN’T CARE. And we’re the arbiters of what is and isn’t important, in the end. We didn’t care that Bill Clinton actually lied to avoid the draft (letter to that effect available here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/draftletter.html), we don’t care if Bush used connections to avoid dropping napalm on babies in rice paddies, or burning Vietnamese hooches with a Zippo in a free-fire zone. But we DO find it interesting that Senator Kerry has a memory SEARED into him of being in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 – a memory that affected his voting record in the Senate. A memory that he now says (though it’s etched forever in copies of the Congressional Record, at least) was in error. We, the irritating sliver, knew about this for WEEKS before the mainstream media decided they could no longer ignore it and had to tell the public “this is wrong and this is why.”
But if Kerry can be in error about that, what else can he be in error about? And why isn’t the media asking? Why is that up to us?
We DO question the “rightness, fairness and timing” of reports now because it’s blindingly obvious to us that the “mainstream media” has an agenda: Get Kerry/Edwards Elected. It’s even been admitted by another of your own, Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek. He said as much in an “Inside Washington” roundtable discussion (available here: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20040712.asp#1) back in July.
Apparently the “mainstream media” wants them to win REALLY badly.I don’t want to correct you Mr. Wasserman, I want you to do your job. But it’s become blindingly apparent to me and many, many others that you won’t do that job any longer. Especially not when you brush aside our objections with the lame excuse:
“As long as such writers retain some minimal respect for fact, the transparency of their motives may even work to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all.”
RatherGate illustrates that the “minimal respect for fact” has gone right out the window. Right along with media credibility. We don’t trust the media because you no longer deserve to be trusted. So some growing proportion shouts “Shut up!” Perhaps you should think about why, rather than dismiss them offhandedly.
Kevin Baker
http://smallestminority.blogspot.comP.S.: I’d like to continue this conversation if you’re so inclined, but if not, I certainly understand.
He surprised me once. We’ll see if he does it again.