Our Media

atrios: That's High I really don't get the sense that our elite press really has a sense of how bad it is places. They tend to talk about recession in terms of what new accessories it my inspire. Oh, and those poor people who might have to send their kids to public schools.

Greenwald: UPDATE: NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen says that "reporters (and TV) are training every mid-level hack in DC to think they can go off the record any time they want," and points to this very representative anecdote reported by Charlie Davis which illustrates just how pervasive is the culture of secrecy in Washington, cooperatively maintained by political officials and "journalists."

After all we've seen, this is still quite funny. From C&L: Countdown: This Week in Tea Bagging

Heather Saturday Apr 18, 2009 12:00pm

David Shuster responds to Bill O'Reilly's criticism of MSNBC for making sexual jokes about the tea bag protests and replays some of the Fox News wall to wall coverage of the events.

Pathetic Concern Trolling at the Times:

Despite Major Plans, Obama Taking Softer Stands

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and JACKIE CALMES

After pledges to change Washington, the president’s early willingness to deal or fold has left commentators and allies wondering: where’s the fight?

Yglesias on Ricks: Ricks: Close the Service Academies

Tom Ricks has a provocative column suggesting that we don’t need the service academies for military officers:

After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I’ve concluded that graduates of the service academies don’t stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I’ve been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military.

This is no knock on the academies’ graduates. They are crackerjack smart and dedicated to national service. They remind me of the best of the Ivy League, but too often they’re getting community-college educations. Although West Point’s history and social science departments provided much intellectual firepower in rethinking the U.S. approach to Iraq, most of West Point’s faculty lacks doctorates. Why not send young people to more rigorous institutions on full scholarships, and then, upon graduation, give them a military education at a short-term military school? Not only do ROTC graduates make fine officers — three of the last six chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reached the military that way — they also would be educated alongside future doctors, judges, teachers, executives, mayors and members of Congress. That would be good for both the military and the society it protects.

This is an issue I’ve never thought about before. But the point that it makes more sense for the military elites of tomorrow to be educated alongside the other kinds of elites of tomorrow seems right to me. The question becomes whether or not it’s genuinely the case that the service academy graduates don’t perform better as officers. Ricks’ anecdotal impression is powerful, but you wouldn’t actually want to abolish these schools without first undertaking a more serious look at performance. But that seems like an exercise that would be worth undertaking.

Sully: Mike Allen: Bush Mouthpiece, Ctd.

Greenwald tackles Allen:

Note, too, the sequence of events as Allen describes them:

While I was writing the piece, a very well-known former Bush administration official e-mailed some caustic criticism of Obama’s decision to release the memos. I asked the former official to be quoted by name, but this person refused, e-mailing: "Please use only on background."

So these quotes arrived in Allen's email inbox with no agreement that the quotes were off the record. Thus, Allen was free to publish them and identity for his readers what Bush officials were saying about Obama. But -- exact like Tim Russert -- Allen apparently treats his conversations with Bush officials as "presumptively confidential," i.e., like a good and loyal P.R. spokesman, he will only report what he learns if they give him permission to do so -- even in the absence of an explicit off-the-record agreement.

Glenn then gets tough:

Allen's excuse for anonymity was that readers could decide for themselves whether the anonymous Bush criticisms "sounded defensive or vindictive." But he then confesses that he edited out "the most incendiary parts," including "several ad hominems." So, like a good servant-editor, he first helpfully sanitized the Bush official's smears by making them appear more sober and substantive than they actually were -- by removing all the parts that reflected vindictiveness towards Obama -- and then justified the anonymity he granted by saying he wanted readers to see for themselves if the criticisms of Obama's decision were grounded in vindictiveness. He evidently confessed all of that without realizing that his actions completely negate his claimed justification.

• Tim F. adds: What Glenn Said

  Taking a short break from the torture beat, Glenn Greenwald found

  an unusually egregious case of journalistic laziness by the Politico’s Mike Allen. The give-and-take is worth reading in full, but this is blogs so I’ll summarize.

  Allen: Various anonymous Bush officials think that Obama sucks eggs.
  Greenwald (via twitter): Mike, please explain your standards for granting anonymity.
  Allen: ‘The left’ (including, amusingly, Andrew Sullivan) is attacking me! Also, basically, I don’t have any standards.
  Greenwald: QED.

  If you think that my shorter version misses some important nuance in Allen’s response, by all means, scour Allen’s article for evidence of real standards. It could be that I am an amateur at this, but in his own words it looks like Allen will grant anonymity to anyone who wants it, before or after the quote is given, as long as the source meets some arbitrary standard as an important person. A free subscription to the blog goes to the first reader who can find a substantive point that distinguishes Allen from Judith Miller, the index case for journalistic dishonesty.

  ...

  His [Glenn's] closer is just cold.

  Media criticisms are often grounded in the ethical deficiencies and corrupted motives of journalists. And that’s all appropriate. But it’s worth remembering that often the conduct of a journalist is at least as much a question of abilities as it is anything else.

  I want to highlight this point because the Politico is not some marginalized joke like the crackhead squatters warming themselves with book fires in William F. Buckley’s place. Whether or not they deserve the attention, real news outlets look to the Politico as a model of how to survive and grow in the internet age. These days that you can find shoddy journalism practically everywhere, but that is not an excuse. It’s a choice.

  In establishing Politico, as much as anything Mike Allen meant to prove that online journalism could stand toe-to-toe with anything in the print world. If Allen really wanted to make that point, practically the best thing he could do is make a point of observing best-practices that once separated ‘real’ journalism from the yellow and tabloid kind. The New York Times can shrug off a certain number of mini-scandals because, well, they are The New York fucking Times. When Politico fudges a story it just looks like another sloppy online outlet. To the degree that Politico has influence, it convinces struggling print reporters that maybe that is how internet age journalism should be.

  I can understand the impulse to play defense against Greenwald’s relentless criticism. It is a stupid impulse, but impulse control (also known as ‘standards’) is what got him in trouble in the first place. Allen honestly does not see that he is punching himself in the face here.

Foser: Weak tea

For all the media attention devoted to this week's so-called "tea party" protests, the most striking thing is what wasn't mentioned.

When a group of colonists in Boston dumped a bunch of tea in the harbor in 1773, they had an unambiguous grievance: They had no say in the tax policy to which they were subject. "No taxation without representation" became one of the central rallying cries of the American Revolution and continues to represent a concept so basic most Americans probably take it for granted.

As for this week's tea parties, few people seemed to have any idea what, exactly, the events were meant to protest.

Even Fox News, which served as both quarterback and head cheerleader for the protests, had trouble explaining what the attendees were upset about, and what they wanted. They were angry, Fox told us -- but angry at what? Some were angry about taxes, or (typically unspecified) spending, or Washington, or (purely imaginary) attempts to repeal the Second Amendment. Others just seemed angry at the wind. In Texas, some members of the "Party of Lincoln" even began talking about seceding from the United States.

One thing was clear: They were angry. Fox News' Neil Cavuto made that clear during an exchange with Bill O'Reilly: "They're annoyed at everybody. ... There is a palpable rage here. ... These people are ticked. ... These were a lot of average folks who said they were sick of it. ... They're just very angry. This is a populist rage. ... They don't like being laughed at. They don't like being joked about. They're average folks who want to just be treated like average Americans who are angry." (Presumably, the people who don't like being laughed at were not the people who walked around with bags of tea dangling from the frames of their glasses.)

Absent any clear indication of what, exactly, the protests were meant to protest, or what the protesters think should be done, Fox News was reduced to explaining by implication. Throughout the day, Fox News reporters periodically reminded viewers why they were billing the events as "tea parties" despite what appeared to be a complete lack of beverages of any kind. That reminder usually went something like this one, from Bret Baier: "In December of 1773, new world colonists protested British taxation policies by dumping tea into Boston harbor."

Notice anything missing from that little history lesson? Right: Baier forgot to mention the part about "taxation without representation." Fox News kept leaving that part out. Maybe because Fox News wants you to think the American Revolution was the result of colonists unhappy that the wealthiest among them would see the top marginal tax rate increase from 36 percent to 39 percent, or maybe because the tea parties in Texas and California and 48 other states were attended by people who do have representation.

Cavuto, however, was ambitious enough to try to reconcile the appropriation of the tea-party imagery by a group of people who have representation but just don't like the results -- or what they perceive to be the results, since real facts did not play a prominent role at these gatherings or on Fox News during these gatherings.

CAVUTO: I think the criticism that this is not like the Boston Tea Party because that wasn't about taxation without representation. But a lot of the folks here ... they feel this doesn't represent our views, Glenn. This isn't what we thought were represented to us, the change that we would see. This isn't our cup of tea, so to speak. So, they're railing against it and protesting it.

The New York Post (a Fox News sibling) quoted a tea-party participant making the same argument:

"This is a matter of liberty. We're here to break the chain of taxation without representation," said Abraham Mudrick, who traveled from Oregon to DC -- which he called "the belly of the beast"-- for the event.

Although Mudrick acknowledged taxpayers are represented in Congress, he said, "My elected officials aren't doing what I want."

Of course, that isn't what "taxation without representation" means. Representation doesn't mean that your representatives will do what you (individually) want. Indeed, it can't mean that, unless each member of Congress' constituents all agree about everything, which seems reasonably unlikely.

But a lack of coherence or reasonable understanding of the concept of representative democracy among tea-party participants and their leaders at Fox News probably isn't all that noteworthy.

Here's something that is: Today, more than 200 years after the Boston Tea Party, United States citizens who live in their nation's capital are subject to taxation without representation.

Actual taxation without representation. Not the "my elected officials aren't doing what I want" kind; the "I don't have elected officials" kind. The kind that led colonists in Massachusetts to flavor the Boston Harbor.

Now, here's the amazing part: Every major news organization in the country covered Wednesday's tea parties. And, in doing so, they all ignored the fact that residents of Washington, D.C., are subject to the very conditions that led to the Boston Tea Party.

It's not like this is some big secret. On their way to work on Wednesday, reporters who are based in Washington would have passed countless cars bearing license plates that offer the reminder "Taxation Without Representation." Many of them probably have such a license plate on their own car. Then they went out and covered tea-party tax protests in which people who have representation complained about "taxation without representation" -- and it didn't occur to them to mention the situation in Washington, D.C. If any reporter asked any tea-party participant or advocate if they support giving the District of Columbia a member of Congress and two senators, I can't find evidence of it.

Even The Washington (D.C.) Post didn't mention the surreal situation in which right-wing activists, who no doubt favor taxation without representation for D.C. residents, held a rally in the District of Columbia that they claimed to model after the Boston Tea Party protest against taxation without representation.

Instead, the news media just played along with the absurd fiction that this week's whining by conservative activists and Fox News reporters had anything at all to do with the principles on display at the Boston Tea Party.