A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the media

[blackmuddyriver]

That was enlightening. An arm of the government releases all the "secret" testimony it wishes for political reasons -- no problem.
Two reporters use some secret testimony to expose the truth and we should be more concerned about their source than we are about the truth.
Let's take a looooong look at that little picture, hold it up, examine it, inspect it.
The big picture? Aw, who cares about that stuff?
The president should be thanking them publicly, as should MLB.

 

[dixiehack]

So, those who think Mark and Lance should be jailed because their sopurces took them to very center of the truth about the steroids scandal need to explain a couple things:
1. Why is it more important that the government can use journalist as a kind of arm of the police than it is getting out the truth?
2. Why was it cool when Ken Starr released 3,000 pages of supposedly secret grand jury testimony from Bill Clinton and then released the entire grand jury testimony on video? Wasn't what Starr did a basic scored earth policy toward grand jury secrecy as opposed to what Fainaru-Wada and Williams did?
3. One more -- how come nobody has denied the biggest points made in the Chronicle investigation.
Remember when the truth was worth something?
It's not that the judge did something wrong -- following the law is following the law. The point is that the current strain of right wing government we have is using the laws is wishes to use and stifling the ones it chooses not to use -- even when they are the same law

Wow -- now there's a prime example of using ad hominems and non sequiturs.

None of that matters. What matters is this: They released grand jury testimony, then refused to say how they got it in a state that has no shield law.

Federal case. There is no federal shield law. Slight difference.

 

[blackmuddyriver]

No question that the two are different.
If the point is, you can get away with it here, you can't get around it there is probably a 10 second discussion having to do with this sheild law, that shield law etc.
But if the discussion is about the big picture and what journalists in America are supposed to do, count me with Mark and Lance.
I'd like to see the newspapers representing the other point of view -- keep the truth out of our stories.
Oh, wait. They're everywhere and growing like a plague, I forgot.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH -- All the News We Know Won't Get Us In Trouble

 

[Alma]

blackmuddyriver,

Allow me to sound entirely insane, but what is being jailed if the truth and the protection of that source is so holy? The Apostle Paul was jailed again and again. He died in jail under crueler and more unusual surroundings than today.

A lot of reporters stand around braying "I'd go to jail, I'd go to jail" when the next breath out of their mouth is "but I shouldn't go to jail..." Contempt's contempt, crime's a crime. Protect your source, go to jail, and feel the squeeze of the truth in a minimum security work program prison with petty thieves and drunk drivers. Not the first time "truth" was punished.

As a secondary argument, I'd suggest that the overuse of anonymous sources - in news and sports and even the forking arts sections - has hit epidemic proportions to the point where, now, reporters are quoting other reporters as "people close to the situation" or "speculation says..." Any time, for example, some college needs to hire a basketball coach, and seven names appear in the paper the next day, rest assured, it wasn't the AD handing those names out. A lot of times that was just random consensus among reporters who genuinely have no idea. In sports especially, half the news is embellished in some way, shape or form because nobody bothers to go on the record and indeed reporters see no need for the record at all.

It's sloppiness. We're not in Watergate anymore, and, for God's sakes, even Watergate wasn't Watergate. We have a press that's skilled about writing about some minor hotel break-in and Monica Lewinsky's thong riding up her ass, but we have two people in the whole nation even remotely talking sense about the Bush policy in Iraq. You've got to go to fringe magazines on both sides of political aisle to find some genuine (if slanted reporting) while the mainstream sucks the teat of blogs and the columnist rundown off Drudge. We got a sucker media, if you haven't noticed, and a lot of that is wrapped in the bullshirt, lazy reporting done, which, at its greatest effort, involves kneading a government leak to transcribe the story to you.

I'm not suggesting these reporters haven't done good work, or compiled evidence, or done their homework. They have, and should be commended. But the reason it wasn't done until some former track athlete got the ball rolling, and the FBI wanted to tell the media its story, is because the baseball media, in 1998-2002 was busy dicking around and waxing poetic on the great resurrection of the national pastime from its death at the strike.

Listen to the radio. What do you hear all day? Specuforkinlation. Not interviews, not breaking news, but some jackass pontificating on whether Carson Palmer is or is not in a rift with his coach cause he didn't play the second preseason game that shouldn't exist anyway because starters get hurt, so let's have today's question be: When will the NFL get rid of preseason?

 

[Chi City 81]

let's have today's question be: When will the NFL get rid of preseason?

Are you Jim Litke?

 

[DyePack]

Damn. Other than "kneading," Alma has a post I would be proud of.

 

[Alma]

dyepack,

I meant kneading just as I wrote it. As in the leak is dough journalists press into a cookie called anonymous info.

 

[blackmuddyriver]

Somebody seems to have lost his/her place. When Alma says:

"As a secondary argument, I'd suggest that the overuse of anonymous sources - in news and sports and even the forking arts sections - has hit epidemic proportions to the point where, now, reporters are quoting other reporters as "people close to the situation" or "speculation says..." Any time, for example, some college needs to hire a basketball coach, and seven names appear in the paper the next day, rest assured, it wasn't the AD handing those names out. A lot of times that was just random consensus among reporters who genuinely have no idea. In sports especially, half the news is embellished in some way, shape or form because nobody bothers to go on the record and indeed reporters see no need for the record at all. "

This is making my argument. It is a reach waaaaay too far to even suggest these things in a discussion about the work of Mark and Lance. The work they did is classic stuff that could stand up against the best journalism in newspapers over the last 50 years and should be protected in a country that is supposed to have a free press, which is the issue.

Of course there's abuse, especially in sports, of the use of "sources." Much of that is being eroded by a coporate/business model emerging in newspapers that sevitaleks to defend institutions and individuals in power while avoiding any reporting that might offend anybody. We are timid and shallow, publishing for the purpose of attracting business at the cost of journalism.
There's a giant chasm between the unfettered use of sources in speculative sports stories and the vital use of sources as represented in the Chronicle stories that stand as the personification of what newspapers are supposed to be.

 

[crusoes]

I have had the great misfortune of seeing the movie "The Benchwarmers" and Sean Salisbury's in it. I must admit - I'm very surprised it wasn't an issue with ESPN, given the character he plays, given that he's in it at all. It casts real doubt of his credibility. I'm surprised no one's asked him about it.

Let's put it this way: Were it politics, his participation in a such a sickening film would make him George Allen right about now. You're talking about a guy who climbs up on his soapbox every other day to rant about integrity, and he agrees to play a guy who has, for lack of better phrase, a gimp living with him, and enjoys (God I hate saying this) twisting the nipples of his fellow coaches.

man, a double bummer. First you get the movie, then you assume Salisbury has credibility.

 

[broadway joe]

Re: A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the med

I wish this was the only column that read like this yesterday. But it wasn't.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay18.html


To sum up - this columnist, and many others, actually claimed frustration at three well-played golf rounds featuring men acting like friendly adults.

Pundits and columnists - especially this guy, who talks as an authority on absolutely everything - should tread more carefully in years to come. There will come a tipping point where lots of Americans - not just homers, but intelligent, reasonable people who quite enjoyed the round yesterday and weren't particularly saddened that no "controversy" surfaced - will say to heck with it. They'll turn off all the talking heads and start tuning to team-owned media outlets that tell them absolutely nothing but sunny BS. That's how far idiots like this could push readers, sooner or later.

The bottom line is: There doesn't need to be a flashpoint every day. There doesn't need to be a missle of opinion screaming across the sky. There doesn't need to be histrionics, psychosis, or, for God's sakes, APSE award winners taking their shirts off on Around The Horn. What happening to some of these people? Have they really all become so drunk on this little machine they can push to get their food (which, in this case, is to pop off on whatever the news is of the day) that they forget they're opinion automatons, but people making triple figures to write?

I just got around to reading the column in question, and although I agree with most of your points in a general sense, Alma, I think you missed the tone of Marriotti's column. I thought it was actually more tongue-in-cheek, essentially poking fun at the notion that seeing great golf instead of a Tiger/Phil brawl could be considered disappointing. His last graf, in which he admits to instinctively following the hype most of the time, indicates that he gets it. This is one case in which Marriotti doesn't deserve the criticism he's getting.

 

[Alma]

Actually, I think he's trying to have it both ways and play both sides against the middle, which most cynical of all. Mariotti means both sides of his arguments, just like he means it when he nails somebody to the wall, and he means it when he takes them off the wall and puts them on his shoulders.

 

[Starman]

Re: A good reason why a lot of smart Americans are getting turned off by the med

He's windsocking as usual.