If you were in the business of detecting original data, which would you rather have? An array of 10,000 independently reporting, but cheap sensors sending a raw signal or one very expensive sensor that decides whether or not an event had occurred? Dan Rather argued that the White House should create a commission to find ways to save the struggling journalistic profession, according to the Aspen Daily News.
“I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media,” the legendary newsman said. … “A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom … This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.”
Speaking at the Aspen Institute, Dan Rather expressed his concerns about online blogging, which he believed could never replace the “craft” of journalism which was reeling under the triple whammies of “corporatization, politicization, and trivialization” and in “free fall”. “On the Internet, nobody wants censorship … just put anything out there with no accountability.”
Rather gave no details of what the White House commission was expected to do, but on the face of his critique it seems reasonable to assume that Rather is hoping for some source of non-corporate funding to support what he regards as non-trivial newsgathering by craft journalists for a non-political purpose. For example, the former anchorman hoped there would be a “national debate” on Afghanistan, not that he wanted America to leave it yet. In the Aspen Daily News, Rather hinted that if government would not ride to the rescue of journalists, then perhaps large private foundations like the Carnegie Foundation might.
Yet not even the Carnegie Foundation, perhaps not even the US government can supply enough dollars to support a network of sufficient density to cover “foreign wars”, overseas destinations and small towns. Nor is it reasonable to imagine that government paid or foundation supported journalists will freely engage in investigative reporting when the consequences of biting the hand that feeds them are so dire. Either future efforts are supported by the market under some new business model or whole areas will simply go unmonitored, except for those fortunate areas in which the “First Amendment” will be upheld by an “independent media”.
Which brings us back to the question posed at the start of this post. If you were in the business of detecting original data, which would you rather have? An array of 10,000 independently reporting, but cheap sensors sending a raw signal or one very expensive sensor that decides whether or not an event had occurred? Personally I would rather have both, and will argue that having the former allows us to support the latter. Trained human journalists like Michael Yon or Michael Totten — or Dan Rather — work best as data interpreters. There ought to be better ways at getting at the raw facts than through expensive foreign correspondents. The are best employed to help us figure out — but ideally do not tell us — what things mean. They push out hypotheses and, if the public has access to a body of collateral sensors (provided by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the Blogs) then they can drill down and decide for themselves whether the human reporter has interpreted the data correctly. The biggest change the Internet has made on journalism is that it is no longer journalism — in the sense of a man keeping a journal. It is epistolary. It is letter writing, with the communications going in both directions. The modern journalist, pundit or blogger — and sometimes the difference between these categories is a matter of degree — is in a constant dialogue with his readers. He doesn’t publish; that’s oldspeak. He posts. The word “post” captures the epistolary nature of the new enterprise perfectly. For the reader is no longer a passive consumer of stories, he is an active partner in the search for the truth.
For that reason, the government or foundation type of journalist described by Rather, while certainly admissible, will be laboring under the huge disadvantage of a conflict of interest. He is working for someone other than his readers. He can be in as much dialogue with them as the letter-writers in your local bank are when they send you a form letter describing a new Super Saver Home Mortgage. Any attempt to rescue the media under Dan Rather’s terms will be destroying the village in order to save it.
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Pravda anyone?
Me? No thanks, did run away from it.
Don’t know where to run know…
Any attempt to rescue the media under Dan Rather’s terms will be destroying the village in order to save it.
But what’s the frequency, wretchard? Courage…
For that reason, the government or foundation type of journalist described by Rather, while certainly admissible, will be laboring under the huge advantage of a conflict of interest.
Advantage? Or disadvantage?
For the first time since i have been reading this column, Wretchard has asked a question that is just slightly off the mark. The methods used for gathering and disseminating news are determined by economic considerations, which are so complex as to elude the wisdom and judgment of any one person, even one as clever as our host or Dan Rather.
What we have observed over the past century is the gradual co-opting of the news media by political considerations, which have finally so swamped the economic basis that the media has abandoned profit considerations and is risking going out of business altogether.
The Internet is providing a new economic model for the gathering and dissemination of information and that model is only aggravating the decline of the traditional media.
My prediction is that the political value of the dying media is so valuable to the politicians that they will attempt to support it with government funding. Dan rather is making one such plea.
Sorry for the typo, “disadvantage” is the right word.
What Rather would rather is rather more blather.
We have enough government funded leftists telling us what they think happened and often omitting what really did. The trad media model is broken; so much so that it is indeed a red beating heart. Since the news media is populated more often by arty-lefty types who have a long-march cultural hegemony regardless of ownership, it is mission impossible to get honest, balanced reporting of everyday things like climate, crime, local and national politics. The half-dozen incisively conservative writers in Australian papers are hard-hitting but still a minority. They have no counterparts on television, which is LCD in nature, the screens, the programming, and the viewers.
Dan Rather:
“…the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power…is something every citizen should be concerned about.”
“On the Internet, nobody wants censorship … just put anything out there with no accountability.”
oh, what a flaming hypocrite.
He and the Travis County (Austin) Democratic insiders (including his daughter) who hated GWB for unseating the universally beloved Ann Richards (who lost because they –her party –keelhauled her into their plan to use a frauded-up Golden Cheeked Warbler habitat “issue” to move against Texas landowner property rights) in the last weeks of the 2004 campaign foisted on the public (that he says he cares so much about) a deliberate conspiracy to commit a fraudulent direct action (later christened “Memogate”) to unseat a president (and as in Watergate, a president fighting a war the Democrats themselves had started).
The internet is what stopped them (including my little part, my son is “the correspondent” –we called powerline between his two conversations with the ‘memo witness’, who had no idea that two hick goat cheese dairymen had an “internet” and a “politics”. Made for estranged neighborliness but jeez this was the leader of the free world that news-reader Dan Rather and his team of Inspector Clouseaus were conspiring (along with the DNC, Kerry Cmpgn, NYT & NBC) to ruin. And almost unbelievably (remember this is the Dan “The Responsible Newsman” Rather quoted above) via a deliberate fraud –which had it worked would’ve done so without even the kernel of truth (there WAS the 3rd-rate burglary after all) in Watergate.
We probably did the conspirators a small favor in our small way helping in a small way to stop them before they ran their silly selves off a cliff –and lived evermore in deep regret, as people do have consciences and those consciences do surface later after the fireworks are long gone.
But that’s Gunga Dan “Shoot from the Lip” Rather. He’d been seeking eyeball-to-eyeball I-laugh-in-your-face revenge on the Bushies ever since 1988, when elder Bush had, in standing up for himself, insulted His Highness on camera by stalking off a set during a Rather Ambush. Memogate was to be that revenge –but he screwed it up and it blew up in his face, cost him his job, and set him off on an endless ‘get-even’ crusade against CBS. Well at least the Aspenites are kind enough to give him a mike, still. No doubt he –being arguably slightly loony –is the ideal trial-ballooner for a government gang exploring a bailout-cum-expropriation of the several failing arch-liberal “newspapers”.
Better the 10,000 than the corrupt MSM. Obama wasn’t vetted, but some bloggers tried to fight the good fight. And, having done so, are dragging Obama out into the sunlight, as he kicks and screams about Bush and racism. My real concern is that we can’t ever trust them anymore. Rather was fighting an “army of Davids”, you know, giant killers, who with their slings of truth won that particular fight.
So, now Rather is worried about the giant killers? Methinks he longs for the days when ink and CBS controlled access to the “truth”. Well, we saw how that worked out.
In reality, there is more “journalism” going on than ever before. “Professionals” like Rather find themselves in the position of being prostitutes in a town where there are 3 women’s colleges, a large school for beauticians, the Hooters boot camp, and the biggest breast augmentation clinic in the country. The professionals might be able to do it better, but who is gonna notice?
So, with bail-outs the new norm – and that fact, curiously enough, due in no small part to the Professionals themselves – why, the answer is obvious.
Back around 1974 a self-appointed panel of 4 lawyers and a judge conducted some self-conducted studies and announced that they had found that technology had made life worse. I wanted to form a panel of 4 engineers and a physicist to reach the conclusion that lawyers and judges had made life worse. If a panel on journalism is to be formed it ought to exclude Professional journalists
Dan Rather is a poseur. Bloggers exposed his inaccurate reporting, now he disparages them. That is just petty, low-class behavior, a big ego with nothing behind it.
a lying newsman is the same as a cop on the the take.
The MSM is a business and has to cater to the demographic that will tune in every day, news or no news; and not the one-off exciting event crowd, which is nice to have but cannot pay the bills.
That reliable demographic is soap opera women.
The tastes of soap opera women edit every national debate, so long as the MSM is in on it. It’s not political bias at root, but business model bias.
Nothing that does not interest soap opera women is published.
Blogs of course do not have the bills to pay, and can blog for the satisfaction of, say, getting something right in a few words.
Hence blogs seem to be “taking away” the audience of the MSM. They’re not taking it away. They’re giving the rest of the population someplace to go.
My favorite represntation of the face of the MSM
female anchors.
Rather is just a buffoon and an careerist opportunist, and of the class of 2nd generation New Dealer that secretly admired the old WASP ascendancy and hoped to replace it. It is those that are behind him that are to be feared. He is a mere mouthpiece for them, and it is their thoughts he spews.
Have no doubts about it: If they could take away our every rightm they would. If they could silence us all, they would. They have nothing but contempt for us–contempt for every aspect of us. They truly think that they are the only legitimate human beings in the nation–not the only human beings with valid opinions, mind you, but the only actual human beings. Period.We are form of livestock to them.
Rather? To the extent that he has anything approaching a conscience left at all, I imagine that he does not feel that he has ever done anything wrong whatsoever.
After all that happen during the Bush campaigns, it is scandalous that he is given a forum. THis is the true outrage here. The Aspen Institute? You all do reallze that they fly people in on private jets for these intellectual/political equivalents of ski junkets? The Vox Populi , indeed.
One way or another, something has got to give. We cannot go on like this.
(BTW, what will zillionaire socialist do when the scorpion turns to them?)
(BTW, what will zillionaire socialist do when the scorpion turns to them?)
…call for more taxes and more heroin and more abortion to be poured into protecting their urban property values?
This coming from Rather is just so preciously, unconsciously ironic.
Buddy nailed it in #7.
Except these female anchors are not the people in power internally. They are all men.
Here whiskey is completely wrong.
I have had something to do with high-end media over the years. Yes, they get together with spreadsheets and look at demographics and numbers, but their orientation is skewed by their blinkered politics and their notions about themselves and the nation. Some on the inside are indeed crypto-marixists (and some not so hidden either)who have burrowed their way in through “the long march through the institutions”; others are these later generation New Dealers or their spawn or sycophants; others are opportunists and still others are remnants of the old wasp order who were co-opted, wittingly or not, by the New Deal order.
The point is that they are not effectively running their business by the numbers as far as the demographics go. They are more interested in their agendas than they are at running a real media business. All one has to do is look at the advertisements on the nightly news. They are mid-tier advertisers, and they are focused on geriatric products (at least this is what I see in my high-end media market region- denture commercials, life insurance, etc.) Their other main demographic, though not for news, is the so-called “popular culture/young adult”, demographic, and, at least as far as I am concerned, there is an element inside the media who wish to use the false “culture” as a means to debase real culture. There is also just a large element that is mediocre. TV and film have become so inbred through nepotism and empire-building that they hardly have anyone one with a new idea running or doing things. The poor quality of films these days, or the recourse to “Reality Shows” are quite telling here. Here is another revealing bit of evidence: Fri and Sat. primetime used to be a major market for media buys for the TV insdutry. Look at what shows they put on now on those evenings. We see reruns ow on Fri, nights. That was unheard of 20 years ago.
People are not watching TV nearly as much as they were. IT does not connect with the realities of their lives while at the same time it does not offer a pleasant escape from those realities.
Whatever is going on, you can always tell who they ae after by looks at the advertisements for that is where the money is coming from. No need to look at the contents for it is inceidental here.
This is why they are having real problems in their businesses. And do not be fooled, they are having problems. They may survive, but it may take government suppression of competitors for them to survive.
geof/16; he should thank his lucky stars for a ‘no accountability’ news-world. Memogate in other countries or perhaps even here in other times would have sent him and his cohorts to the Graybar Hotel if not stood them to the gallows. And rightly so, considering the stakes and the aggravated nature of the crime.
buddy larsen,
Thank you for posting that “It’s a small world” story. Your son was like the man who hung the lantern in the Old North Church before Paul Revere’s ride.
RWE,
That piece of prose, “prostitutes in a town where there are …“, is so good I need to figure out how to steal it.
We need a Best Bits of the Belmont Club clippings collection.
“10,000 independently reporting, but cheap sensors sending a raw signal”
You mean the 10,000 reporters creating cheezy sound bites or catchy ledes to sell soap?
Examples: Valery Plame and Swift Boating
“one very expensive sensor that decides whether or not an event had occurred”
The mass of bloggers on an insanely expensive infrastructure parsing 10,000 reports and headlines to sift out the truth?
Examples: Exposure of the “Bush Memo” as a fake. Disclosure of President Obamas friends; Ayers, White, the Annenburg Challenge, etc.
I’ll take the truth detector, please.
The White house cannot hire them all (The “Professionals”), so I would look for some stimulus money to go their way.
It is becoming more obvious that what we have is too many “journalists” who know a little about “journalism”, and also plenty of “citizen journalists” who know a lot about a very little. There is not enough pie for everyone.
Rather’s complaint is that he was here first, and is thus entitled to a slice of the pie.
The reporters who are members of the declining press blame everyone but themselves. It’s the culture. It’s the bloggers. It’s corporations.
Like everything else, it’s the product.
Dan Rather lecturing about the importance of an independent media… don’t make me laugh.
Do people like Blather ever step outside themselves and assess what utter fools they are making? Uhhh…rhetorical question.
Real life is better than parody as Mr. Blather has just reminded us.
An independant news profession protected and overseen by the government…riiiiiight
Internet is just a big rumor fest compared to the professional media who report what might be factually false but still true, i.e. memo gate…riiiiight
Someone close to him needs to quietly take him asside and kindly suggest he retires to a quiet place away from any microphones and cameras for the rest of his sad life.
Both are needed.
On the back of my tower station there is a little piece of doo-hickus tied into a cut off phone cord and interfaced into the system via serial port. Every five minutes a cron job (will convert it to a daemon when I get a USB interface) kicks off and reads the temperature. I am hoping to wire up my whole house with these things and then make a real programmable thermostat.
Now let us suppose the sensors I have take readings independently and then send the data upwire. That is no demon or cron job on the central system telling the sensors to sense. That data still has to be taken in and analyzed by someone (whether that be a central computer system, a single human, or an organization).
This is a central need of all reporting systems — the data needs to get to one central authority who can understand the data and act on it (or suggest action). The news contains similarities but also differences.
The idea of news is to distill what is happening and then take that product and dilute it back out — like taking a bottle of cognac and pouring water into it to make wine (I know this was one initial impetus to brandy production to reduce volume for shipping and reconstitute later). I myself look for my news-brandy primarily from opinion sources, at least those sources have flavor.
However, much Danny Boy complains he is a member of the MSM — a Mainstream Mastodon looking for a tarpit. Too bad for the blacksmiths (but good for society as a whole) they did not know the game Danny Boy is playing.
One of the notions (and I picked this up from Jonah Goldberg) is that the press is returning to its normal state that the dominance of a few large scale media corporations is being shattered by the ever falling price of access to mass media — either by digital media or the cheapening of satellite & cable bandwidth. It was always fashionable to “say freedom of the press is only for those who can buy a press” now that presses are cheap it seems they don’t like that either.
Even medium and small towns would often their own newspaper (if not multiple papers) but now, with conglomerates like Gannet having two papers spewing the same cliches is redundant. Same with broadcast — they give Rush multiple opportunities to play soundbites of reporters almost spouting the same stuff verbatim (e.g. gravitas). When the little guy spouts the same stuff as others its called astroturf, what is it called when the big guys do it?
Buddy #7: Well said, but my recollection of the Rather/Bush confrontation was that Rather asked Bush about the claims that he was a “wimp.” And Bush replied “Dan, that is old stuff. You’re a NEWSman. This is a NEWS show! You are supposed to report NEWS!” And I don’t think he walked off but continued the interview with a chastened Rather. Rather was using the old playbook, the old Nazi playbook, of saying the same thing over and over to make it true – and he had it shoved up his ample derrier.
Admittedly, next to Ronald Reagan, even the current Gov of Calif looks like a wimp, but you don’t ask a man who in WWII as the youngest Navy combat pilot and who had been head of the CIA if he is a wimp, anyway.
Lifeofthemind #19: Glad you liked it, but I woke up at 0530 this morning with a bad sinus headache so I am a bit off. Will try to do better in the future.
Mongoose the audience for TV news, sans Fox, is almost entirely female, and mostly single female at that.
So no, the entire Media/Advertising empire is built on a model of selling to female consumers. Which is why it all swings HARD LEFT. Simple as that.
no, whiskey you are wrong
that is what i am trying to tell you. You need to stop thinking that you have this deep understand the media business, you do not. The demographic for the news is by age, not gender. look at the commercials.
This is just a supposition that you are making. You let this female dominance fixation of yours cloud your judgment at times. You certainly have a point , but it is not nearly as large as you think.
Yesterday I was over at another Pajamas Media site, and the subject under discussion included the [to me] fantasy notion that the press would someday turn on Buraq Hussein Obama & Co. as their actions became unpopular. If I may quote what I said then:
Our media and political [both parties] elites have avoided all of the trauma of the economic collapse. They intend to continue to do so. The politicians, especially Democrats, would be more than willing to finally shred the Constitution to hold on to power.
I disagree with Ms. Rubin about the media possibly turning on the Democrats. The only way that their elites can avoid economic collapse is if they accept open government subsidies and formalize the employer-employee relationship with the government. That will not happen if the Democrats lose absolute power. They have lost their credibility happily. They will not lose their wealth or their claim to power.
What Rather is doing is the first visit to the Personnel Department to pick up the application papers for the MSM to be hired by what he hopes will become the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda.
#14 Mongoose
Your second paragraph is a masterpiece of accurate description, that applies not only to the willingly kept Media, but also to the entire Democratic party and its allies to the Left. Ditto for your description in #17 of what they prioritize.
#18 Buddy Larson
Perhaps it could from now on be considered a goal of the resistance to the regime to restore “accountability” to the media? *evil grin*
#20 Mark_B
If we have that “one sensor” that determines and defines “truth”; it will be owned by the regime and accountability will be defined as congruence with the “one sensor”‘s view. [*] It is simple, but it consistently puts out totally false results. There is a less than ideal signal to noise ratio with 10,000 sensors, but accurate data will be out there to be found and used. [*- I cannot help thinking of Tolkien in pondering Wretchard's sensor formulation: "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them."]
Subotai Bahadur
ah, yes –that WAS it –it was the “wimp” charge. Dan’s ‘ambush’. anyhoo he is said to’ve carried a major grudge, and that a torpedo in Jr’s presidency was payback for that on-air ‘humiliation’.
Y’know, even that –revenge –falls inside the boundaries of (alas) harsh politics.
But to decide that since kerry’s oppo had gone back into military records and come up with swiftboaters (not how it happened anyway if you believe as i do that swiftboat leader O’Neil is all honor), that they would gather together a group of phonies to fake going back in Bush’s military records and come up with…hmmm…hey, how ’bout we fake some docs written up by a man who’s now DEAD? –is just totally outrageous and utterly unforgiveable.
If i had been Dan, after the SHTF, i’d've been too embarrassed not to disappear –forwarding address somewhere in Tahiti or maybe Nepal. Forever.
But not Gunga Dan!
No, after besmirching to the nth degree his employer CBS (which had trusted him, BTW) and getting himself fired, he turns around and SUES them for…well, something –who knows –who cares.
He’s a rat, is what he is. A grandiose rat.
Subotai/27; re Reichsministerium –i too smell that peculiar smell, all over these people. I had thought Rahm Emanuel would be the mithridator but apparently he’s conquered all that and moved on.
LotM/19; thanks –yes, i was very proud of how quick he was on his feet. the whole thing was astounding but he right away saw what he had to do. Fully aware that whistleblowing –even unnamed (tho far from anonymous due to the published details) as he wanted it –would be weirdsville. “Those people have no right to do this” was his mind-maker, as i recall.
I think Rather forgot that the White House is occupied by a Republican some of the time.
#30 john lynch
I suspect that Mr. Rather’s view of the future [and he is not alone] permanently forecloses that possibility; violently if necessarily.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai writes: “I cannot help thinking of Tolkien in pondering Wretchard’s sensor formulation: “One Ring to rule them all . . .”
Wrichard’s title baits the hook:
Ah, yes, “The One and the Many.” The old question, and ever new. If you privilege “the one,” you are inclined, like Plato, to privilege the knowledge of elite, not only in its proper sphere (e.g., the laboratory) but also in politics and social control, and this towards totalitarianism. If you are inclined to privilege “the many,” following Aristotle, you tend towards subsidiarity, believing in the value of the diversity of phenomena. This can lead to democracy but also fragmentation. Christian theology is a long meditation on this puzzle of the One and the many, ending up basically with faith in the One, respect for the many, and appreication of appropriate authority that value the uniqueness of each human being and the value of creation, which is in some way or other an expression of the One.
Rather and his like privilege the newest, simple version of the One, which is post-modern, pantheistic, utopian, and desirous of imposing a corresponding social system. A system which will be, as usual, to the benefit of those in power.
And the constitution specifies a free and independent press…thus if government money is spent on any media bailout my friends hear at One First Street, NE, DC would have to compare the issue to the separation of Church and state. What fun that court ruling would be.
A blog (or web log) is another term for an online journal. It is journalism by definition; much of it is journalism by amateurs. And journalism is basically gossip that gets written down.
During the Middle Ages, some people would go from village to village (or castle to castle) telling people the latest news. These existed in both Europe and North America. (Yes, Indians had criers and troubadors…) The printing press led to newspapers, and now the internet is leading to blogs. It is just a matter of technology; true historians still care about accuracy while ideologues (such as Machiavelli) and playwrights (such as Shakespeare) are willing to make up speeches to tell a good story.
“There ought to be better ways at getting at the raw facts than through expensive foreign correspondents. The are best employed to help us figure out — but ideally do not tell us — what things mean.”
But how do these expensive folks become worth reading? Not at Harvard, or at Mudgeville Junior college’s “Journalism” program. Rather, by doing the job, or similar jobs, from the bottom up. And having some excitement/fun in strange places while learning — and more than a bit of luck.
ach, i love reading you folks –
Dan Rather wants the president to appoint a commission to rescue the struggling profession of journalism. Dan Rather is not the only reason the MSM is struggling, but he sure helped push it over the cliff.
In days of old when journalists were bold
And readers were not particular
We got the facts and some attacks
Both flat and perpendicular
When Murrow spoke we did not choke
And wonder who had paid him
We knew it was the truth becuz
The living God had made him
The New York Times for just two dimes
Produced a Sunday paper
That told when bought what whole world thought
As well as latest caper
But Cronkite’s tears while stoking fears
And tearing down the pillars
Led other guys to claim GIs
Were hulking, brutal killers
This turned the tide of the free ride
Once owned by comp’ny presses
And made us wince and ever since
We’ve seen beneath their dresses
They’re in the tank and they can thank
Their plight on one another
As readers flee their company
And now they cry for mother
To give them aid for which they’ve paid
The Dems in largest measure
They cry the first amendment’s thirst
For justice is their treasure
So we don’t need the Prez to feed
Their cries for a commission
I say they should be gone for good
Consigned to hell’s perdition
Whiskey @25
Where do you get your statistics from aka the consumers of TV news and which “news” are you referring to?
Aka a 2008 research study on News Consumption and Believability 25% of men “regularly” watch CNN compared to 22% of women. 33% of both men and women “sometimes” watch CNN. For FOX, the numbers are nearly the same: 23% of both men and women regularly watch, whilst 27% of men and 28% of women “sometimes” watch.
Men watch or listen to “sports news” more than women; women watch or listen to “religious news” more than men; men watch/listen to Limbaugh, Matthews, Lou Dobss, and Larry King more than women; women watch morning news shows more than men.
So, if, as you assert, the networks are using a model to “sell” their product to female consumers, either they are not succeeding or they are bringing out men’s “feminine” side?
Why do you fear a government subsidized health care system so much? Why is it so important to continue a health care system that is financially burdensome to so many people who cannot afford its high costs?
@Lee
The current dysfunctional system for funding medical services began with the WWII wage/price controls, slightly mitigated by allowing businesses to offer untaxed medical insurance to their employees and take a tax deduction for the premiums paid. It was extended with the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid which, over time, have suceeded in cost-shifting to private carriers and the uninsured – - – which accounts for a considerable fraction of the above-norm medical services inflation rate. As Ann Coulter has so artfully noted, fortunately this idea (benefits tax-deductible to business, not considered part of recipients’ income for tax purposes) was not extended to cover food and shelter. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32831 Coulter also does a good job of explaining why “third party payer” systems (whether “public” or “private”) persistently raise costs while lowering goods and services delivered.
But how do these expensive folks become worth reading?
I think they have to report from “on the ground”. There is very little value in a celebrity newsperson speaking from a locale, which only serves as a backdrop. There is far more value in somebody like Bing West. West for example, typically does hundreds of interviews. They know stuff almost through osmosis; and even if that includes what they can’t cite, they can still describe describe anyway if they can find open sources that can be quoted. Thus, a man might know we’re “winning” or “losing” because he has access to classified, yet be unable to refer to it. But he’s not stopped from citing or observing unclassified data to make the same point. The best thing about being wired isn’t knowing what to say, but knowing where to look.
The only problem I have with being constantly on the ground is that eventually correspondents acquire emotional IOUs that are hard to avoid, even with the best effort. People save your bacon; become your personal friend. Things like that happen over time. Some of the most likeable people in the world are bad customers.
So you tend pull your punches over time, but if you are not to do so to the extent that you lie, what keeps you honest? I think all real “correspondents” are glad that objective data exists. That the 10,000 sensors exist. That gives them an out. Keeps them from being compromised. Because those 10,000 sensors free them to say stuff that they’d rather not, simply because you can’t deny an obvious fact and even your thug friends know that. You might be friendly with guys in the Iranian government and reluctant to write that they are out of touch with the street. But if there are riots in Teheran, then what can you say? The ultimate coverup artist was Walter Duranty, and he could do that because he was both the source of facts and the source of “insight”. Until recently, as in the case of his Times Roman “typed” documents, Rather was in a similar position in certain cases. I think human journalists are needed, but they require collateral confirmation. They need collateral to empower them. I’m surprised that Dan Rather doesn’t realize that the blogs are a liberating force even for him. But then, he might not because maybe he doesn’t see liberation the same way.
Dan Rather, Hahahahahahahahahahaha….. What a marooooon! Of course he is against internet media and bloggers in particular. They ended his career. Well he ended it by promulgating a lie and participating in a cover up. But they called him out.
Personally, I would tend to go with the raw data from many sources. As this would show trends and patterns more than a supposedly sentient sensor that is filtering what is and isn’t newsworthy. And it would be easier in a internet sense to weed out bad sensors. Something like a very large poll giving a statistically better return on any given question.
Blogstrop #6: Wouldn’t you say instead that what Rather would rather is more Rather blather?
I thought that the government had already come up with a subsidy plan for the struggling papers:
“Cash for Clunkers!”
It’s amazing the absolute GALL of all the people in the organized, paid media. Even to my limited senses, almost all newspapers are worse today than 10 years ago, and immeasurable worse than 40 years ago. The quality of writing, the content, the professionalism is all much, much worse now than when I was a young man just becoming aware of the news.
People will pay for quality and value. They will not pay for trash. And Dan Rather has an amazing ability to peg the irony meter. It’s a new record every time.
The Internet and the people posting their captured images, phone-movies, and opinions, might be comparable to the multi-faceted compound eyes of a dragonfly or a bee. In most cases, the information getting thru a single conical lens to the receptor cells does not by itself provide a lot of information.
It’s only the analysis by the central processing unit of a whole lot of data from individual lenses, that provides the composite construct of the external world, complete with links and evaluations of space, time, threat, food, sex, flyswatters, and interesting odors.
The importance of the tens of thousands of people posting new data is approximately the same as the people scanning through those data and noticing connections and relationships.
Like a shadow or darkened silhouette progressively drifting across the array of lenses of first one compound eye then the other, even the ABSENCE of data can help observers conjure up a useful construct of the world.
What if the observers had their analytic powers compromised by drugs, alcohol, hunger, sex pheromones, fear of the whip, promises of reward for false reporting?
No one could afford to subvert ALL of the tens of thousands of roaming independent citizens with sophisticated camera phones who regularly post their images on the internet.
Someone with Billions of dollars at his disposal might be able to seriously screw around with the intermediate-level interpreters and analysts. (Headline: “Soros purchases Pyjamas Media: Wrytchyrd rumored fixin’ to buy ‘Pickfair’!”)
Corporations and Governments have shown repeatedly that they are willing, able, and in fact DETERMINED to buy the souls of point-source alleged Newsreaders such as Mr. Rather.
It sometimes seems that the only element in our modern world that’s kept the Fascistas from taking over, is the watchfulness of those tens of thousands of observers, unyet murdered, imprisoned or intimidated into silence.
Mr. Fernandez!
I don’t know what got into me! I grovel with shame that I implied you could be bought.
I will do a penance of your choosing.
I don’t know what got into me! I grovel with shame that I implied you could be bought.
I’m too cheap to buy. There’s a certain class of person who can’t take himself seriously, a major limitation on ambition, but it takes you out of the game. I’m a little bit like those guys in Texas corrections, who asked to name their last meal, would ask for a bag of Doritos and a big bottle of Dr. Pepper.
LOL, w –a rueful LOL, but a hearty!
“If your stock broker lied to you about Enron, would you still use him? And yet people still turn to information brokers like CBS and NYTs”
I hope “journalists” starve to death. And I hope I can be there to bask in their suffering.
#43 – yes, mate. Thanks for noticing.
#41 – Wretchard – agree Bing West has the goods. Andrew Bolt made an interesting observation about the climate change brigades the other day: that the oracles would be found to be frauds. I chipped in with the question whether the MSM were therefore accessories after the fact of fraud. He came back to the subject today saying that flim-flam would be made to pay. I hope he’s right. It looks more likely that developed western democracies will be made to pay (for a non-solution to a non-problem). I knew there’d been a long march through the institutions, but hadn’t realised how lemming-like it had become.
“Let’s kill all the lawyers” has morphed into “let’s get the lawyers to help us kill all the industries”.
The need for a “free unfettered press”,
I would Rather be fettered I guess,
His power to sway,
was sold on E bay,
His news hour, ka-putsch ex-press.
They laughed when he signed off with “Courage!”
(both the viewers and all his entourage)
but what they thought was peculiar
was a fool making foolier
and in actual fact saying “Cur Rage!”
“Why do you fear a government subsidized health care system so much?”
I fear a government ANYTHING, because government has proved over and over and OVER again that it gets most things wrong. I especially fear government having anything to do with health care because it’s such a critical part of many people’s lives…including mine, as a cystic fibrosis patient (even though I’ve not had to seek health care for that for several years now).
“Why is it so important to continue a health care system that is financially burdensome to so many people who cannot afford its high costs?”
Because it’s better than any ideas that anybody has floated yet. It’s what my employer would call the CBA, or Current Best Approach. That doesn’t mean it’s the best for all time, just the best anybody has put out to date. New ideas are welcome and will receive due consideration IF they aren’t stupid on their face. Putting government bureaucrats in the mix has proven to be a jaw-droppingly stupid move in other areas. There’s no reason to believe the same wouldn’t be true of health care.
“I’m a little bit like those guys in Texas corrections, who asked to name their last meal, would ask for a bag of Doritos and a big bottle of Dr. Pepper.”
Mine would be Creamette spaghetti noodles covered with Prego spaghetti sauce (with browned hamburger mixed in), and parmesan cheese and sliced jalapenos on top. I have eclectic tastes, but they’re easily satisfied. And yes, I’ve noticed that that seriously limits my ambition in many areas of life.
It would probably make me an incorruptible politician. “What? You want to give me a villa in France if I sign bill #135472? What the hell would I do with THAT? Get out of my face.” Unfortunately, the political/campaign process is set up so brutally that only those with a SERIOUS jones for power have the patience to wade through the dreck to the prize. The rest of us are at home in the living room watching it on TV with our Doritos and spaghetti.
LOL,
Near as bad a ‘limmerk’ writer as me,
Poor rhymes roam ponderous and free,
Cur tse, or Cow tau-n
puns fly and pigs frown,
No Teleprompted Suds Larseny
“Why do you fear a government subsidized health care system so much?”
well, let’s just take a glance at a few of the biggies.
income tax, 1913, 1% to 7% range and “never ever to exceed 10%, and that only in temporary emergency” (but which now fuels an out-of-control unstoppable blind careening Gigantotopolis that is veering straight toward the ‘end times’ cliff).
Fannie and Freddie –never to exceed a few percent of the market, currently half of the entire USA housing market (which influence & fact has ruined the operation of market forces and has thrown the nation into a total freaking likely-insoluble mess).
Social Security –do i need to say anything? created when we lived to 63 and now at 79 life expectancy we can –what??? –only ADD to the benefits?
Medicare –by underpaying extravagant freebies and thus forcing the unpayable cost into the private sector, has ruined the operation of a basic market and has run medical costs thru the roof, thereby….wait for it…creating a need for…wait for it…MORE of it????
Education system –well, talked to many of its median products lately?
feh. when you thinks about where the country could be if it had a Federalist government about a quarter the size of what we got, it just makes you want to cry.
And –worst of all –is the ‘moral hazard’. Just look at what furtive downcast creatures the tragedy of the commons does create!
***
wade –”Worse is better!”
AP/54; that’s that line from the Yeats poem again. the one about…oh hell you know.
“worse is better”
So it would seem re health care.
Blue Dogs agree to have taxpayers pay for non citizen care. In return I don’t know what they got, but it is certain the lack of resistance will speed up the process.
This has been, for me, an interesting thread.
Wretchard ended another stimulating article with a laser-like focus on the core of the issue. For the reader is no longer a passive consumer of stories, he is an active partner in the search for the truth.
14. Mongoose said all I would have said about Rather: just a buffoon and an careerist opportunist
17. Mongoose, in his second paragraph, encapsulated my own basic view of the state of modern journalism in the US. All I can add is that at the low end I have encountered raw incompetence and at the high end, slavish adherence to scripted narratives. The result is that, beyond the factors listed by Mongoose, truth often goes unrecognized or is deliberately ignored as ‘outside the narrative.”
41. wretchard addressed what may be the single most intractable difficulty journalists face when seeking truth in cultures alien to our own.
In the 90s, I invested a lot of time, too much actually, using the CIA daily reports to track events in the Balkans. These reports, now discontinued, provided full transcripts in English translation of native language radio and TV broadcasts from every country, every language. Problem was – to understand what the natives were saying to each other one had to know enough about the politics and history to recognize the meanings of the kind of short hand that people use when they are taking to each other in their own culture. Example: a reference to Reagan or Carter in our culture will have very different meanings depending on the politics of the speaker and intended audience. And sarcasm and irony can be hard to recognize.
Journalists, academics and analysts all use native speakers as guides and consultants, of course. Clearly, for native speakers with an agenda, there is an advantage to becoming the guide to an influential journalist or analyst. Point a “captured” journalist or analyst at a couple of hundred of ones friends and you have created an unsuspecting propaganda outlet for your agenda in the English speaking world.
From this exercise, pursued over several years, I learned enough that I could often detect which subgroup had “captured” which media outlet or book author, even when my own level of understanding was far short of adequate. This experience persuaded me that reporting from “on the ground” is only a first step.
So, wretchard, I agree that reporters will continue to be needed for translating truth from other cultures to our own, with the caution that it can be a very difficult undertaking, full of risk. We all need to recognize that risk. Today I fear that little of what we think we know about Iran is close to reality, as one example.
I like newspapers and read several a day, but many do not. Here is an explanation of why many do not: http://spectator.org/archives/2009/02/02/authors-of-their-own-doom
Observation re: 34. Alexis:
News carriers existed into modern times. In my youth I was acquainted with Chris Tellefsen, a prominent individual at U.C. Berkeley. Chris had been a postman in the Yukon during the Gold Rush. As a postman he also carried the gold from the digs down to the bank. Despite the wealth he trucked around, he was inviolate. The reason: he carried the news from camp to camp. In those days news could be a life-or-death matter. In any case, news was an extremely valuable commodity (as was safe delivery of gold). Anyone who threatened a postman was likely not to survive for very long – the other miners would see to that.