The majority of media pundits have not only criticized WikiLeaks and leakers in general, and supported the DOJ leading an investigation, they've turned quite vicious and begun calling for blood. From Bill O'Reilly to Bill Kristol, Jamie McIntyre discusses the media side to the release.
The reaction is over the top. But should we be surprised? I mean, mainstream sports media journalists still can't handle sports blogs.
ReplyDeleteI think TC is onto something; nothing is more annoying to a professional than seeing an amateur do it better for free.
ReplyDeleteTotally.
ReplyDeleteI love watching them squirm as they realized and pontificate about how easy their jobs really are thanks to a blogger's challenge.
A lot of these guys got jobs in a time when the industry was hiring rapidly. These days, it's not as easy and they get to sit on it. What did they expect for future generations of sports writers who had no outlet?
It's almost as if they believed only they had the right to talk about sports. And boy do they make it sound like it's rocket science.
Not only that, bloggers have the balls to talk about stuff sycophants journalists are afraid to talk about because they're too close with the players. I understand they can't talk about everything and get the professional angle, but really, overall blogs are a blessing in many ways.
I agree. Noam Chomsky makes this point in Manufacturing Consent when he describes the various filters through which news must pass in a corporate media system before it hits the front page. Between the event and its publication the truth of the matter is watered down into an anodyne and insipid shadow. Bloggers who rely on sources like Wikileaks may be biased in their own unique ways, but the process of identifying that bias is so much easier than teasing apart corporate spin.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Toby,
http://lostinthegreyworld.net