That wacky Columbia Journalism Review cracks me up:
Of course they’re tussling over the implications of news accounts (here, here, here and here) about FBI documents detailing charges by prisoners that the Koran was abused by guards at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, including at least one allegation of flushing the holy book down a toilet.
Oddly enough, bloggers of all political stripes view the report as vindication for their own pre-set notions. (Who’da thunk it?) More below:
So, asks CJR, is Newsweek redeemed?
John Podhoretz is in Malkin’s Corner. He says it’s worth considering the source of the allegations: “These are sociopaths we’re talking about here,” he says, casting a broad net over a group of detainees about whom he has no knowledge. (Yup — third grade pretty much describes it.)
On the other side of the playground is John Cole, who thinks Newsweek has been vindicated and suggests that conservatives revise their media-bias talking points.
Watching the scrum from the sidelines is Jeff Jarvis, who observes this about Koran abuse: “This will yield another round of political, media, ideological, and ethnic nya-nyas on both sides. Meanwhile, I wonder, is anybody in Iraq preparing a report on beheading abuse and Muslim-Muslim murder, otherwise known as ‘human abuse?'”
Michelle Malkin also takes some heat from Garrett Graff at FishbowlDC. Malkin quoted journalism professor Ralph Hanson in a recent column on the Newsweek flap — except, it turns out, she had never spoken with him and skewed his comments. Hanson penned a column about the experience. His column, writes Graff, “is a good cautionary tale about how journalism is being changed by the idea that everything on the web is fair game for others’ use — or misuse as the case may be.”
Juan Cole takes note of a Wall Street Journal article by our favorite numbers guy, Carl Bailik, who’s measuring the impact of blogs today.
The reason that’s important? Advertising, of course. (You’re surprised?)
Writes Cole:
As I see it, the problem for advertisers is that blogging appears to be a form of narrow-casting. They like broadcasting. You place an ad on even a low-ranking cable television show like “Star Trek Enterprise” (while it was still limping along) and about 3 million people see it every week. You place an ad on even a popular weblog like MyDD and Blogads says that it has 146,000 page views a week.
The answer, according to Cole: “[N]etworked ads (which I prefer to call blog-casting).” Liberal bloggers are already doing it.
Finally, Arthur Silber at Light of Reason picks up a column from one of our favorite MSM-ers, Molly Ivins, on an anti-gay marriage bill in the Texas legislature. Ivins, in turn, knows exactly when to step aside and let her subject wax eloquent.
Is this really any different than the MSM would have treated the issue in the absence of a blogosphere? Probably not. You’d expect the NYT to come out and say “see?! Newsweek was right all along!” and the WSJ (these are opinion pages we’re talking about here) to come out and say “see?! Newsweek was irresponsible!”
Yeah, now there are a lot more voices out there to get into the intricacies of both arguments—but why is it that the Columbia journal is writing this article at all? We would never have seen such navel-gazing in the days before the coming of the blogs.
In other words, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The MSM does the same “third grader” shouting match… the blogosphere just does it better, and that scares the piss out of the MSM.
A bit snotty, isn’t it. “Third graders” and all.
do you realize that you just linked to Juan Cole linking to ‘Advertise Liberally’ which if you look at the bottom left of the front page, you might notice something new…
We have Chris Bowers of MyDD to thank. He’s a nice guy. I met him a couple weeks ago.
How excellent…. all round. From Juan Cole to Chris Bowers, both admirable people.
Oh, I just had the most wonderful treat. I laid down to watch some TV after setting the fan in the window because it’s so hot tonight (80 degrees).
I couldn’t find much until I hit the higher numbers, and there it was: Bill Moyers at UCSB talking with a wonderful poet. Here – I just searched and found the site:
Bill Moyers in Conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye
(#9391; 89 min.)
You can buy the video but you can also watch for free via RealVideo. + here’s a link to four Bill Moyers programs
I feel rejuvenated and restored when I listen to Bill Moyers. And Naomi Nye was an exceptional interviewer — something magical about her.
My observations I just want to make:
The subject of the beheadings always comes up when the subject of torture does, as if there were some sort of investigation that could be done for this, what would it reveal, that insurgents, or AlQueda did it? So the answer can never be sufficient for those who bring this forward.
Yet they still use these factoids to justify their positions on torture, yeah it’s ok because they did worse.
What can be said to those who argue “But what about their brutatlities,” as their reliance on that fact to justify the actions precludes any further understanding that there is no justification, whatsoever, in all the world.
The reference above is a little cryptic when it says that she “knows exactly when to step aside and let her subject wax eloquent.”
Her column this morning was the text of a speech given to the Texas legislature by Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston. Republicans in our state lege are (as usual) working overtime to stir up hate and bigotry to distract the voters from their incompetence and unwillingness to do anything difficult or unpopular that would actually solve real problems. Rep. Thompson delivers a thorough butt-chewing.
Here’s the link again. I hope you’ll all go read it.
This same pattern has been happening with the release of almost every report, be it the 9/11 Commission, Deulfer, etc. The righties take a few lines out of context to support their position, while the lefties point to the report as a whole to show that they were right all along.