Credibility and Credulity

"I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody that has 9 percent approval ratings."

Thank you, Harry Reid, for finally stating the obvious.  The attitude of the entire country now should be to afford no credibility to anything these liars say. Every time I listen to the news and hear some new comment or accusation coming from Bush or Cheney, I wonder why it's even reported as if it's serious news, as if anything they say is an honest man's opinion, as if at this point what they say means something.  It's no longer news because nothing these people say can be believed.  The news anchors should report on administration statements only with air quotes and a tone of supercilious irony.

Like that's going to happen. Irony will be an impossibility for the MSM so long as they are incapable of recognizing how complicit they are with the people in power they report on.  The Jessica Lynch/Pat Tillman business brings that fact into a dramatically stark light.  By way of Greenwald, here's WaPo's Vernon Loeb's understanding of how he was manipulated by his government sources to publish the breathless reprort of Lynch's rescue even though he knew it was completely and utterly a fabrication:

Vernon Loeb, who wrote the story with another reporter, Susan Schmidt, calls their sourcing solid. He concedes, however, that the tale could have benefited from stronger and more prominent caveats about the sketchiness of intelligence reports. "My lesson learned is I should have been more cautious in the way I wrote this story," he says. "But, having said that, I would have written the story anyway." . . . .

But he and Post Managing Editor Steve Coll say they have no reason to doubt that their April 3 story accurately reflected the information contained in those reports--even if the reports had inaccuracies. "We had multiple sources because multiple people were reading the same intelligence report," Coll says.

Are they serious?  They'd publish the story anyway?!  Have they no perspective on themselves.  Are they too blinded by their own sense of eminence to acknowledge that they were conned?

Both Greenwald and Somerby should be read this week if for some reason you still think our press cares more about the truth  than about its perqs.   Also watch Moyer tonight.

Comments

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

What magnifies all this--and in a darkly ironic way, to boot--is that we're reminded this week of what real journalism--especially in the military arena--looked like, once upon a time.

David Halberstam was truly "The Best and the Brightest."

Would that we had a press corps of Halberstams, not Loebs and many others far down the totem pole of quality.

Halberstam told a group of Columbia journalism students, "It's not about the fame. By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are."

Many are aware of the many connections between Iraq and Vietnam. One of the less appreciated elements of the two wars was and is the need for courageous journalists to sift truth from spin. We had Halberstams in Vietnam, we don't in Iraq. Hence, we fell into the same pit again, four decades after we should have learned our lesson.

Well, enjoy the popcorn tonight as we watch another beautifully crafted Moyers deconstruction of media incompetence that will produce much lamentation among the few of us that give a ---- about the country.

:-)

[Jack Whelan]

Matt--

Greenwald has a lot on Halberstam in his Tuesday posts. It's worth taking a look if you haven't already. Link is in the post above.

I wonder if it's a question of not learning a lesson from Vietnam so much as it's a change in journalistic culture since then. I see a kind of Ayn Randification of journalism where the common good is simply not something these cynical courtiers care about. That's what Reaganism/Thatcherism has done to us in the broader culture, and it's certainly reflected back to us in the MSM.

These journalists are careerists first, and careerism means your success depends on a talent for giving people in power what they want.

As the media have lost their independence in the move to greater levels of corporate conglomeration, so has their credibility. The idea of the independent, truth-seeking journalist in the corporate-owned MSM has become, to use Alberto Gonzales' phrase, "quaint."

[forestwalker]

Check last week's comic from Tom Tomorrow:

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=22246