Monday, September 3, 2012

Stand back! We're Professional® Journalists!

After spending 15 years furiously turning their high trust environment into a low trust one (want to buy some Texas Air National Guard memos?  Only driven on Sundays!), the Einsteins in the Press have a cunning new plan: Fact Check!

You see, they're going to "fact check" the claims by the politicians.  What could be more journolistic?

The problem is, of course, that nobody trusts them anymore, because we remember their past "reporting":
I suppose it would be easier to muster the media-desired amount of outrage on media-command if one had no memory of the previous election cycle in which all the (R)s were also, coincidentally, called “liars”. Or the one before that. Or, really, any situation involving an (R) that has been observed and then punditized all over on by some bright young Ivy Leaguer with a WaPo career in his future or present. But this “liars” thing has always been with us, going back as far as I can remember. The administration of George W. Bush, for example, was so dishonest that punditlings all felt the need to break out their thesauri and search for synonyms, presumably just so they wouldn’t all bore themselves (‘mendacious’ was evidently hit upon as the preferred synonym, by some sort of tacit universal agreement). Come on! He ‘lied us into’ a war. He was the head Lying Liar And The Lying Liars Who Lie. There was also Sarah Palin who said she could see Russia AND SHE COULDN’T and said she went to Iraq at a certain time AND SHE DIDN’T. It’s always like this; spot-the-(R)-lie is journalists’ favorite parlor game, for crying out loud. It’s their calling.
We remember that Drudge broke the Lewinsky story, because the press found a "lie" that they didn't think was important.  We remember that the New York Times let themselves be scooped by the National Inquirer on the story of John Edwards' mistress, and his lies about same weren't lies sufficiently grave for the fact checkers.  And as I pointed out, they took lies written in Microsoft Word - not even convincing lies at that - because it was useful to be used against George W. Bush.

Ah, but this time will be different, because they're ... well, just because.  Ooooooh kaaaaay.

8 comments:

Aaron said...

The media will correct its giving a pass to Democrats by working over the Republicans twice as hard.

This is called, in media parlance, "fairness".

Alan said...

Just 15? Try 44 years or more.

One of the biggest lies ever was Walter Cronkite's about the Tet Offensive. He portrayed it as a loss for the US but in fact it was a HUGE defeat for the North Vietnamese.

Journalists have always lied.

RabidAlien said...

Heh. The problem is, Sarah Palin never said anything about seeing Russia from her house. It was Tina Fey, parodying Sarah Palin in an SNL skit. I haven't really liked SNL in many years, but that season, they raked Sarah Palin and McCain over the coals...there was at least one derogatory sketch about her each episode. I only saw one about Obama, I guess thrown in there so they could say they were "unbiased".

SiGraybeard said...

I was doing some research for my post on breaking the $16 trillion deficit mark last night. Stumbled across a fact check site checking on Texas congressional candidate Ted Cruz. He had said that the debt was greater than GDP and they had the nerve to say that was only "half true"!

I think the only sources who say that debt < GDP are looking at projections that exclude certain expenses. Everyone else says we exceeded the 100 % debt/GDP ratio last year. I found no less than a half dozen sites that say the ratio is 103 to 104%. They found one that disagrees so it's "half true".

As you well know, in the world of the three letter agencies there those who watch the watchers. Who fact checks the fact checkers?

Chris said...

"Journalists have always lied."

But they lie in service of a greater truth, right? ;)

southtexaspistolero said...

What could be more journalistic

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. Well played, sir!

southtexaspistolero said...

Damn spellcheck apparently didn't, though. ;-)

libertyman said...

You know, if the Pulitzer Prize still meant something, the National Enquirer should have earned one for the Edwards' story. That would have been one for the main stream media to ponder!!