Doug's Views

I am not a fan of mainstream news. Not just because they can make things up but because many national reporters don’t do their jobs any more. A perfect example is the fall out of the recent resignation of Dave Weigel, a reporter for the Washington Post, after private e-mails were published on a conservative website. Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic made a comment about Weigel not being a real reporter. That released the hounds.

Goldberg really has no room to talk about who a real reporter is as Glenn Greenwald noted:

Despite all of those war-cheerleading deceits — or, again, because of them — Goldberg continues to be held out by America’s most establishment outlets as a preeminent expert in the region. As Jonathan Schwarz documents, Goldberg is indeed very well-“trained” in the sense that establishment journalists mean that term: i.e., as an obedient dog who spouts establishment-serving falsehoods. That’s why Goldberg is worth examining: he’s so representative of the American media because the more discredited his journalism becomes, the more blatant propaganda he spews, the more he thrives in our media culture. That’s why it’s not hyperbole to observe that we are plagued by a Jeffrey Goldberg Media; he’s not an aberration but one of its most typical and illustrative members.

The Jeffrey Goldberg Media

Ian Welsh at Crooks and Liars writes:

This is exactly what is wrong with US journalism. The responsibility of reporters is not to be “impartial”, their responsibility is to tell the truth. Should reporters have been unmoved by the fact that that Bush was torturing people? Should that not bother them as people? Should they be unmoved by the fact that Obama is still torturing people? Should they be unmoved by the fact that Bush sold a war based on lies, and millions of people were displaced, killed and injured as a result?

Is that we want? Sociopaths who have no personal opinions?

The Court Eunuch Standard of Blogging Exposed by Dave Weigel’s Resignation

This was the same dust up after the Rolling Stone article brought down General McChrystal. the main discussion in the mainstream media was how the reporter “burned his bridges” by reporting how the General and his staff really felt. The story wasn’t about the reporter, the story was about McChrystal and his views and how that relates to the current war policy in Afghanistan. No one really gives a shit about how the story effected the reporter.

To paraphrase Sam Axe from the TV show “Burn Notice”: You know DC media… bunch of bitchy little girls.

The reporters and pundits trapped in the Beltway bubble of DC are too full of their self-importance and their need to protect their celebrity perks and that hurts America because they don’t do their actual jobs – reporting the truth.