Samuel mentioned reading both WAPO and WATIMES. This is exactly what I tell my students to do. Find reputable sources from both ends of the spectrum and then go from there. Chances are you will give yourself a fairly balanced picture.

I agree with Roger. I think the MSM is upset and worried that it’s losing its position as the purveyor of all that’s right and true in our world. How dare we, average citizens, dig around and find out information for ourselves!

In the end, I believe it is a good thing. Maybe we’ll go back to the days of competing daily newspapers, each one with a different editorial slant (except blogs will likely take the place of dead-tree news).

T.V. news as a serious outlet for news is beginning a slow death spiral. It may survive in a tabloid entertainment form but Dan, Peter, and Tom will retire and their replacements will eventually become non-players as far as guiding the country in a serious fashion. I see this as positive. The democratization of outlets for info will be good because the idea that anything could be explained in 2 or 3 minute bites was a fraud even when we thought we were getting the truth.With the net people will be able to get as much news as they want with the ability to dig deep if they wish. Without 2 0r 3 networks creating phoney and incomplete “story lines” on important issues it will require more work from the public so instead of spending 7 hours a night watching insipid network re-runs they can investigate their world instead. The false notion that these self appointed news Mandarins were giving us a complete picture on the truth the last forty years was a false paradigm and now that there influence is starting to crumble they are trying to scare people into thinking that they will become more ignorant if they don’t have Danny and his clique editing the important news for them. They were just as likely to swallow a bill of goods as any first time surfer of the web and the last year has shown just how mistaken they were. They just didn’t have anybody calling them on their crap before the net came along. No doubt there will be some stumbles along the way and no information delivery system will ever be perfect but I think the potential of the web to give a better picture of the news is far greater then the old fashion give me 30 minutes and we will give you the world format.The net has flaws but the old fashion media was never as good as they thought it was.

My undiluted respect for every person now actively serving in the cause of freedom.

With the advent of the internet, paper is obsolete, and the whole idea of a fixed broadcast slice will soon be obsolete. The MSM has great information gathering ability, and potentially a vast wealth of stored complete interviews, uncut stories, etc, just sitting on the shelf. Sometime within the next decade, we can expect to have a much more random and at-will access to relatively unedited material, strictly for technological reasons. Eventually every computer on the web will have full, random access HDTV bandwidth to whatever material the user chooses. At 10:17 PM you queue up episode 5 of Lost In Space, at 10:21 PM, I queue up the uncut interview with the global warming skeptic.

I would imagine that this would add value to much material that is currently worthless under the current paradigm, so perhaps economic forces will tend to result in a less biased MSM.

It’s all speculative, but there you go!

“The above quoted paragraph demonstrates the failure of Henninger’s arguement. Parsed carefully, it drips of elitism.”

Yes, and amen, but even more damning is Henninger’s blindness to the recent attempts and spectacular failures to execute exactly the kind of tactic he suggests.

Rathergate was ten pounds of BS in a two pound bag and it was almost certainly a coordinated program between the Kerry campaign and CBS. Only slightly less insulting to the intelligence of the average doorstop was the Al Qaqaa allegation in the closing week of the race. The only reason that effort got launched at all was the media assumed that the administration had so often routinely ignored media mischaracterizations of battlefield reporting in the past the perpatrators just assumed that Bush wounldn’t step up to bat on this one.

Having Christianne Amanopour or the NY Times editorial board selling quagmire is old hat; specific charges of dereliction are not. As soon as the numbers were put in perspective and the gaps in the timeline became apparent, the publication of the ratline (U.N (al Baredi (sp)- CBS-NY Times) became nothing more than icing on the cake.

Al Qaqaa only made it to press because there wasn’t anything left for Kerry to campaign on, anyway. That’s the saddest indicator of a lack of substance in just about any campaign I can remember. In the end they had NOTHING to convince voters to vote for them. It was always an ABB strategy. Eighteen damned months of it.

Now Henninger might be given a little grace if we accept his position that red herrings and poisoned wells might be generated solely by politicians in the future…but in the interest of honesty, how come the issue of decades of seamless agitprop support by media for Democrat candidates wasn’t mentioned?

BTW – I’m still waiting to read the results of the Rathergate Report. I wonder if it’s stuck in the pipeline with Sandy Berger’s Excellent Pants Adventure?

60,366,497

No, not Vincent DíOnofrioís psychotherapy tab.

Thatís the total number of ballots, as of todayís date, that were cast in favor of President re-elect George W. Bush.

—-

Kerry’s still at 56.9M

When CBS put the TANG memos on the Web, we got raw information. When the tape of Bush’s supposed boobirds was released, we got raw information. But we need the raw information before expertise can be applied to its analysis.

Ideally, when a “newsworthy” event is planned and can be taped, someone should tape it, release it, and allow us to decide which reporters we trust based on the accuracy of their accounts. When the event is not planned or is covered secondhand through eyewitnesses or documents, make full disclosure the rule – how did you find the witnesses/documents, what do we know about their background/provenance, what did you ask the witness, what were the full answers he gave? And let’s see those documents. Give us the complete version and your summary – let us decide whether we trust you enough to want just the summary next time.

With the raw information, we can evaluate the analysts, too. When Little Green Footballs came out with their analysis of the TANG memos, I could check their version of the memo against CBS’s – and LGF specified the font, font size etc. used to recreate the document.

Then we can leverage the nature of the internet to keep a check on the reporters and analysts. I might just read the summary 99% of the time, but if everyone evaluates it against the full-disclosure version that other 1% of the time then every report will be fact-checked thousands of times. If I have a problem with the way it was reported, I can say so, publicly, and other people will be more likely to check it out, too.

But it all starts with access to the information.

should have thought of the consequences of Raines behaviour

http://www.nationalreview.com/impromptus/impromptus200411120827.asp

“It’s good that Raines is away from the Times and able to speak his mind, in this unrestrained way ó because we see what kind of man inhabits the Times, and is chosen to lead it. Howell Raines, Maureen Dowd ó they are that paper’s ethos, its Geist.”

And then to treat us to the garbage of Carter

“Vote For Peace” ex President Jimmy Carter’s obituary for Yasser Arafat is riddled with gross distortions and untruths. It is a testament to the lack of editorial control that such a sloppy piece of garbage made it to the op-ed page of an elite American newspaper.”

http://soccerdad.baltiblogs.com/

and Judith Miller’s obituary

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41416

“In a tribute to the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, the New York Times yesterday featured a glowing obituary that blames Israel for Palestinian terrorism, ignores major violent incidents, contradicts historical accounts of certain events, whitewashes viscious propaganda on Palestinian TV, and hails Arafat as a “statesman” and the only Palestinian leader who could make “painful compromises for peace.”

In the 5,265 word obituary by writer Judith Miller, readers are introduced to Arafat only as “the wily and enigmatic father …”

When they continue to twist and distort facts, withhold pertinent facts and generally treat the reader with contempt what do they expect from those who are ableto think?