(XLNT!) Open Letter to Network and Cable Pundits: THIS IS NOT A GAME

[kpete]

Open Letter to Network and Cable Pundits: This Is Not A Game
By: Glenn W. Smith Friday September 5, 2008 11:02 am

In an effort to seem neutral, unbiased and comfortably afloat above the messy rubble of everyday life, you, our professional journalists and media commentators, often act as if the deceptions, deceits and hypocritical poses of the politicians you cover are content-less strategic or tactical moves in a game without consequences. You like to think it's chess, but that really overstates the difficulties of politics. Politics is more like dodgeball played with rocks. There's only a couple of possible moves at any given time. Duck or throw. It doesn't take genius to succeed. In fact, smarts can get in the way. It's better to possess a certain unthinking brutalism, a brutalism you ought to condemn. Instead, you are too often mesmerized by it.

It's now clear that John McCain and Sarah Palin plan to run a deeply divisive, angry, racist, know-nothing campaign. They will provoke prejudice and burning resentment among voters. The tone of their just-completed convention was that of a red-eyed lynch mob impatient with the democratic rule of law. They want to deliver justice unto their enemies with their bare hands.

I don't need to go on. Those of you in the press, those of you whose opinions are heard by Americans every day, you know in your hearts that this is the course the McCain campaign has chosen. And you know how dangerous it is for the future of our country. I beg you, please don't disguise your coverage of this hateful return to thuggish politics with feigned neutrality and the misleading presumption that all tactics are legitimate, that Americans have the freedom to reject brutalizing, anti-democratic politics if they want to. The point of the brutalism is to intimidate and reduce the possibility of dissent. It is what bullies do. Like the idiot police who gassed lawyers, journalists and activists in the streets of St. Paul. Oh, you missed that, didn't you?

Your always-above-it-all approach hides the truth and magnifies the dangers. If your conscience is unmoved, how about your vanity? Because it is a certain fact that if democracy survives and we still have honest historians in the future, history will look back at this era much like we look back upon the Civil War. You will be judged by history, and your descendants will be either proud or embarrassed by what you do. This is not a game. In fact, your only real responsibility is to recognize and report the implications of that fact.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/09/05/open-letter-to-network-and-cable-pundits-this-is-not-a-game/

[intheflow]

1. The thing I noticed about the convention coverage

was that even though McCain was in a much smaller venue than Obama, and there were many seats left empty at that, the camera angles were maximized to make it appear that he was speaking to a packed house. One reporter did make a slip and said that it was a very small, intimate meeting space, but that was quickly covered by talking about the teleprompter or some other technical detail. By making it appear there are legions following McCain and Palin when in fact there are only dozens, the press is misleading the public into thinkin gthe race really is close. Therefore giving the Repukes another opportunity to steal the next election.

[tomreedtoon]

2. Let me explain TV journalists to you, kpete.

I've worked in commercial TV since 1976, and I've seen TV journalists up close during all that time.

1) They are not journalists. They are actors. They want approval more than anything else. The people in power give them that approval. That's why they support the establishment.

2) They don't know a hell of a lot about anything. They know how to look good and sound authoritative. Most of what they say is written by staffers too unattractive to be shown on air (think Ugly Betty) with real degrees...but with a need to make a living, meaning they have to write what the journalists want to say. You should only see these hair-jobs try to ad-lib or act like an authentic human being off-camera.

3) Their only responsibility is to get famous and go to bigger, higher-paying markets. That means feeding people the news they want to hear, which is identical to the Republican line: terror, terror, rape, pillage, Negroes, drugs, hurricanes, terror, car crash, rotting body, terror. It works. As a mid-market station, we are a way station for people on the way up...and on the way down. We see 'em at both sides of their careers.

4) They don't give a damn about history. When they die, the world ends. Same view as Bush.

So, in short, your post is shockingly ignorant of the reality of news and journalism, and I don't know where you got those loony ideas. Probably from some civics course in high school, a class they no longer teach anywhere.