1953 — my father, now 85, was fresh out of the Army (having been recalled for Korea), started working in the newspaper business in Los Angeles. First at The Citizen News, later for The Examiner (leaving when they merged with The Herald). While he worked the advertising side, he frequented the newsroom and got to know many of the reporters.
He also got me started, when I was 10, on the same newspaper habit we both still have. Dinner time was when we would discuss one or more articles we had read that day.
Some time in the early 70s my dad pointed out the subtle changes that were taking place. Reporters — cynical, skeptical bloodhounds who dealt, like Sgt Friday, in “just the facts, m’am” — were giving way to new J-school grads who arrived at the newsrooms with the ink barely dry on their diplomas and a burning sense of purpose in their bosom to not be bound by “antiquated principles of objectivity and neutrality*“. They aren’t there to report but to be the creators of meaningful change.
Reporters learned their craft in a way resembling apprenticeship — coming up the ranks from copyboy to reporter. Each small step granted on trust, the next one given only if the former was competently performed.
But Journalists expect to start out in the newsroom and balk that those who dare question either their credentials or point-of-view.
So no one should really be surprised to observe the public mutual masturbation between Pravda-media and The White House
According to the Atlantic, Time managing editor Rick Stengel’s decision to join the Obama administration is just the latest example of a new trend among mainstream media journalists who are making it official by officially joining the Obama administration. Stengel, who is joining the State Department, is just one of 15 (or 19) who have given up a career in journalism to join Obama’s crusade to fundamentally transform America:
A wave of reporters went to work for President Obama early in the administration, a time when many media organizations were going through layoffs and Obama’s approval rating was sky-high. The flow has tapered off since then. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe has semi-regularly kept tabs on the number of reporters working for Obama administration, counting 10 in May 2009, 14 in 2010, and 13 in 2011. The Washington Examiner’s Paul Beddard counted 19 reporters working for “Team Obama” in February 2012, but he included liberal advocacy groups as part of the “team.”
Whether the number is 15 or 19, the fact that this many so-called journalists from outlets as influential as CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times want to work at the very same administration they are supposed to hold accountable, is not only troubling, it also explains a lot.
Well, duh.
Can you say quid pro quo?
I knew you could.
Diane Feinstein is supposedly working on legislation that would create an official press accreditation process that would deny people without the government granted credentials the status of being the press. Which means they could be silenced and be forced to reveal sources and denied access to cover “press” events.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/matt-drudge-eviscerates-facist-dianne-feinstein/
And it would be up to a judge to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether the individual qualifies as a journalist.
Fortunately, I think this sentiment applies to the First Amendment just as fully as it applies to the Second:
Redstate has an excellent diary today on this very subject.
Some time in the early 70s my dad pointed out the subtle changes that were taking place.
The J-schoolers were seeing how powerful Woodward and Bernstein were. I mean, THEY TOOK DOWN A PRESIDENT!!!
If I ran the school, I would ask the incoming frosh why they want to be a journalist, and immediately expel anyone who used the word “change”.
“This is a career that involves nothing more than documenting events and telling others what happened. We don’t get opinions. If you want to change things, become a doctor or scientist. We don’t do anything but write down the stuff that happens.”
OT for cob-loggers: “Once dismissed by the GOP establishment as a gadfly, Paul is starting to look a lot like the leader of his party — and his enemies are panicking. “There’s a big transition in the Republican Party,” the Kentucky senator says in a BuzzFeed interview.”
Drum, you are exactly right re: Watergate. That’s when “Crusading” became a mandatory class in J-School and the era of the Celebrity Journalist really began. I had brief flirtatin with Mizzou’s J-School but quit because I couldn’t reconcile the pomposity of the place with the fact that most likely, I’d be writing about sewer district meetings.
“On top of this problem, you have a number of top news network executives related to top Obama officials, many of them at the center of the Benghazi scandal – which also explains a lot.”
And now a Senate panel has crafted legislation for shielding journalists from having to reveal their sources that narrowly defines who can be considered a journalist. How special.
Speaking of journalists and dropping the veil, we now have a movement in Congress to carve up the First Amendment by carving out a protected class of journalists, granting favor to these in contradistinction to all non-journalists so defined.
It’s getting awfully near to the point that we will be very hard pressed to make arguments to the people of America to stay their hands from violence against these tyrannical usurpers in office. Yet the tyrants don’t seem to have a care in the world about this possibility, do they? With every passing day they encroach upon the people’s right further and with more gusto than the day before, utterly unconcerned to be discovered in their acts, and to be held to account. Woe be to them should the dam of reason break, and a flood of anger cascade down.
Also dropping the veil, Sens. Harry Reid and Barbra Boxer, who, though living low lives already, have discovered a means to lower themselves yet further, by blackmailing one of their Senate colleagues, David Vitter.
*** Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter on Friday accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of engaging in a “intimidation and payoff scheme” to “bribe” colleagues to vote a certain way on a bill, after it was reported Friday morning that Democrats were trying to rekindle Vitter’s 2007 prostitution scandal to stop him from opposing an energy bill.
Politico first reported that Democrats were drafting legislation that would deny any lawmaker government contributions to their health care, a perk of life in Congress, if there is “probably cause” that he or she solicited prostitutes. ***