Why There’s No Journalism Any More

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I’m up against deadlines today, but while I’m busy do read this Salon piece about why the press gave the Bush Administration a pass. See also what happens when a political analyst admits that a particular Republican candidate is so stupid, it’s frightening.

16 thoughts on “Why There’s No Journalism Any More”

  1. OY!!!!!!!!!!!

    I used to joke that our “Fourth “Estate” makes me want to drink a fifth a day.

    Now, I want to chug a gallon of high-test Everclear.

  2. “why the press gave the Bush Administration a pass”

    Is that like how many are now giving Israel a pass?

  3. I saw the video that Lenar Whitney made about global warming. I didn’t really hear what she had to say because I was distracted by the wrinkled sheet she used as a backdrop for her video, and the consuming thought of turkey neck crowded out my ability to concentrate on what she was saying.
    Maybe I’m ready for a lumosity account?

  4. re the lady wingnut from Louisiana – the wingnut response to this interested me. Somebody writing in “the Daily Caller” – a site I see referenced more and more by wingnuts, itself a reason why there’s no journalism anymore. It took them ten years, but they came up with their own top-down knock off of Daily KOS.

  5. This chart helps to explain what happened. You see the spike in Bush’s approval ratings, and then the long, slow, inevitable decline. It’s understandable that everyone would rally around the president in a time of crisis.

    But then that’s really just charting what happened, rather than explaining it. Really the drop-off from the peak should have been a lot more precipitous, as it became obvious within days that the Bush junta intended to exploit the 9/11 attacks for entirely unrelated purposes.

    But then I’m one of the proud 10% or so who never approved of Bush’s job performance. So I’m probably not very well equipped to understand people who did.

  6. as it became obvious within days that the Bush junta intended to exploit the 9/11 attacks for entirely unrelated purposes.

    Yeah, when I saw a photograph of NYC firefighters raising the American flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center in a pose eerily similar to Joe Rosenthal’s iconic WWII photograph of the U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and then saw another photo of a perfectly proportioned Christian cross fashioned from I beams standing proud in the rubble…I kinda got a sense we were headed down a rocky road littered with potholes and exploitations.

  7. Stephen,
    I’m also one of those 10% who NEVER approved of W’s “job performance” – though, I DID want him to succeed after 9/11.

    But, lifetime fuck-up that he was/is, after his photo-op moment at the WTC wreckage, he not only ‘screwed the pooch,’ he screwed the cat, the parrot – and any fleas – the whole family, the furniture, and the house!

    And yeah, Swami, I noticed the same thing – and got that same sense.

  8. And Stephen,
    “It’s understandable that everyone would rally around the president in a time of crisis.”

    That was then, and it wasn’t just Republicans and conservatives, it was Democrats and liberals, who also rallied around the President.

    I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that if something similar to 9/11 happened under President Obama, that the R’s and conservatives would really around him.

    They’d call for his head.

  10. There are quite a few good journalists still out there. I think its a case where the political stenographers (minus the shorthand) have gained positions of prominence in the profession of journalism. They are not all engaging in the fine art of political mimicry.
    Polly want a cracker? …. David Brooks want a story?

  12. “Of all the reasons an employee could be fired, writing about homophones ranks pretty far down on the list. Alas, that is exactly what happened to Tim Torkildson, a social media specialist at English-language learning center Nomen Global Language Centre in Provo, Utah.”

    Nomen – yet another example of a fine privatized institution of ‘lower-learning.’
    I pity the poor foreigners who go there.

    At Nomen, a place where know men, knorr women, knead two no about homophones.

    What did this boss think homophones are?
    Cellphones gays use to set-up trysts?

  13. “Of all the reasons an employee could be fired, writing about homophones ranks pretty far down on the list. Alas, that is exactly what happened to Tim Torkildson, a social media specialist at English-language learning center Nomen Global Language Centre in Provo, Utah.”

    Nomen – yet another example of a fine privatized institution of ‘lower-learning.’
    I pity the poor foreigners who go there.

    At Nomen, a place where know men, knorr women, knead two no about homophones.

    What did this boss think homophones are?
    Cellphones gays use to set-up trysts?

  15. Wow, Ms. Whitney definitely has her talking points memorized and she delivers them like a true believer. I’m seeing Jindhal/Whitney or Palin/Whitney in 2020. Hey, “Palin, Whitney, They have the vision.” Get it? 20/20, vision? Maybe I better copyright that.

    Is it my imagination or is Al Gore gaining weight?

  16. Is it my imagination or is Al Gore gaining weight?

    I hear his bank account has gained a lot of weight.

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