American journalism

[joemurphy]

Ernie Pyle
Eric Sevareid
Edward R. Murrow
Jacob Riis
Chet Huntley
Walter Cronkite
David Brinkley
Ernest Hemingway
William L. Shirer
I. F. Stone
Upton Sinclair
Tom Wicker
H. L. Mencken
Mark Twain
Edwin Newman
Max Frankel
John Chancellor

Whom do we have today that compares to any of them?

[MajorFlaw]

1. Lawrence O'Donnell and Keith Olbermann.

[wurzel]

2. Add Tom Wicker Edwin Newman, and Max Frankel to that list.

We have a few. Moyers, O'Donnell and Seymour Herschel.

[CityZen-X]

3. Phuck The Pharoh...

and all his spineless scribes!

[Jim Sagle]

4. Joe Conason, Gene Lyons, Robert Parry.

[kwolf68]

5. I wish

you had added in Upton Sinclair on your list, but a sweet list otherwise.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. Seymour Hersh (?) and Greg Palast n/t

[despairing optimist]

7. Bill Moyers, Greg Palast, and countless others smothered by editors

As for the British and Australians (not intending to hijack the thread but to point out more great journalists who write with knowledge, wisdom, and conviction): Robert Fisk, Johh Pilger, Patrick and Alexander Cockburn.

I'd like to add a promising journalist by the name of Dahr Jamail, who has been risking life and limb on the ground in Iraq for more than a year to give us the story of the Iraqis beyond the hotel lobbies of Baghdad's green zone and spare us none of the brutal reality of the occupation and resistance. Will he grow beyond Iraq to become another Shirer? I think he has a good chance.

Remember that talented journalists and social commentators need support from the public. It's a two-way street. If people like their contributions, make sure thay and their bosses (editors, publishers, producers) know it.

[joemurphy]

8. Amen...

Perhaps blogging will someday counter the censorship of the media that you refer to. As more and more people become more and more disgruntled with the sad back and forth that passes for TV journalism today and the herd mentality and lame ass-sniffing for planted leaks that has compromised once reputable publications like the Washington Post and the New York Times, perhaps insight and quality writing will return. I hope so.

I wonder too what institutions keep belching out these immaculate clones we keep seeing every day. If they'd only dig a little. Get a little information. This morning on NPR, Juan Williams did an innocuous little report on Valerie "Flame". The name "Flame" was repeated at least 3 or 4 times. My God!

We produce lots of talking heads but very few thinking ones.

[despairing optimist]

9. True, and I'd like to encourage bloggers to keep blogging

You're hitting nerve tissue in newsrooms across the country. Those in powerful editorial positions feel threatened by the "rabble's" uprising, so keep rising up! Don't listen to the talking heads, who have a vested interest in talking you down.

Keep making them look bad. Ply the journalistic trade, and you'll soon understand why it isn't really a profession. No one needs a license to practice journalism (as if you hadn't learned that already from the self-appointed arbiters of newsworthiness themselves, who prove that point every day). What they hate to admit is that the "press" is anyone who has a computer and a weblog; facts are only incidental to stories, again proved over and over again in the pages of the NY Times, Washington Post, and on and on.

Be your own editors, exercise good news judgment beholden to no one, and teach those so-called journalists what journalism is. For inspiration, go to the library and check out the old newspapers of the 18th and 19th centuries. You are the heirs to their legacy of opinionated, lively, down and dirty journalism that held everyone's feet to the fire, no matter how high or low they were. Leave the elite to fester in their own "civilized" shame and lies.