Finkel's hit piece in WaPo: Ya Know Brady, Hiatt & Howell are freakin'

[understandinglife]

did a hit-piece on those who know how to think, write, obey the law, and are passionately concerned about the destruction of America's Constitution, humanity and the planet.

As Glenn Greenwald summarizes:

The Washington Post published yet another article today -- this one entitled The Left, Online and Outraged, by David Finkel -- seeking to depict the liberal blogosphere as being nothing more than the venting ground for the crazed and hateful rantings of what it calls "the Angry Left." To accomplish this goal, the article features a single blogger, Maryscott O'Connor of My Left Wing, examines her posts, finds the most extreme and outrageous, throws in some deliberately selected inflammatory comments buried in various blogs, and then attributes all of that to the liberal blogosphere generally. Based upon these isolated comments, The Post tells its readers that the liberal blogosphere is a place reserved for the furious and the profane -- "Loud, crass and instantaneous."

The article's principal tactic -- really, its sole tactic -- is to search through hundreds of comments on O'Connor's site and sites like Eschaton, pick out the most extreme ones, and then feature them as representative of the blogosphere generally.

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Any time old, crusted, failing, dying institutions launch attacks on new and innovative competitors, it is an unmistakable sign that the attacking dinosaur feels threatened and feels its power slipping away. That dynamic, more than any ideological goal, is what is motivating the steadily increasing appearance of these types of hostile blogosphere caricatures masquerading as news articles. The reality is that the blogosphere need not be a hostile competitor of journalists, but can be a uniquely valuable research and analysis tool to supplement the governmental adversary role which journalists are supposed to perform.

But until they realize that, and as long as they continue to perceive that their stranglehold on conventional wisdom is being abolished as a result of the irreverent and increasingly substantive blogosphere, these types of "articles," devoted to the destruction of the blogosphere's credibility, are going to become more and more common - and more and more desperate. Today's exercise by Finkel in the lowly art of absurd caricature and sloppy generalization advances that process, ambitiously and enthusiastically.

Much more of Glenn Greenwald's Mistaking caricature and generalization for journalism at:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/04/mistaking-caricature-and.html

Well, Debbie, Fred and Jim, it didn't work.

Deborah Howell and Fred Hiatt: Fact Free and Loving It

by Jane Hamsher on 15 April 2005

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Yes, we know you have a lot invested in your warmongering. It has no doubt paid the giant cocktail weenie bill for years. But the fact is that there was no reason for the president to believe Iraq was seeking uranium at the time. Do we have to go through this again? I guess so. Joe Wilson’s oped appeared on July 6, 2003. Five days later, on July 11 2003, George Tenet had to admit Wilson was right and there was no credible reason to believe as of January, 2003 when the President gave the State of the Union address that the 16 words had any validity; indeed, that’s why Tenet said they never should have been included in the first place.

Only this last week we learned what they knew then, but what we didn’t know – the National Intelligence Council had delivered a definitive judgment in January of 2003 that the claims weren’t credible. It appeared in the Post on the same day Hiatt’s editorial did. Lil’ Debbie claims Hiatt had not read Gelman and Linzer’s piece at the time he wrote his editorial, not that it would have made any difference (her words not mine — facts obviously have no place within the bubble world of the Post’s editorial page). But by the time Howell was scribbling her excuses for Hiatt she most certainly had read it.

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Much more at the link:

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/15/deborah-howell-and-fred-hiatt-fact-free-and-loving-it

So, while many of the most talented and thoughtful members of the blogosphere may be justifiably enraged at the atrocities and lies and fiscal irresponsibility of Bush and his neoconster syndicate - which includes propagandists like you Debbie, and you Jim, and you Fred (and your good buddies Sulzberger, Keller and Baghdad Judy) - we also know how to debunk, demystify, account and communicate and we're going to 'stay the course.'

'Stay the course' meaning that no matter how many hit pieces you pen, or have one of your cronies etch for you, we are going to keep exposing the crimes and those of you who do yeoman stenography for the criminals.

Oh, and ya just gotta love the irony embedded in the WaPo hit-piece author's name -- FINKel. He should change his first name to Rat.


Never Forget: George W. Bush willfully violated National Security to cover-up his willful launch of a war of aggression and illegal occupation of Iraq.

[aquart]

1. Yep.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

2. Wow, how informative!

What did I learn from that article?

Liberals use a lot of expletives! :eyes:

[me b zola]

3. Great pieces by Greenwald & Hamsher, *but*

Now I can't get the image out of my head of Deborah Howell with a giant cocktail weenie.

[understandinglife]

4. ROFL!!!!

:rofl:


:thumbsup:


Peace.

[Eric J in MN]

5. It's a GOOD thing for readers of the Washington Post who are angry

at Bush to learn they're not alone.

http://www.speakspeak.org/speak-blog/2006/04/15/bush-makes-some-people-angry/#more-1996

Some visitors to the blog “The Daily Kos” are portraying the article as a hatchet job to help people dismiss liberal bloggers as too angry to pay attention to.

I don’t share those concerns.

“When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose” as Bob Dylan sang. Liberal blogs had so little impact on the political process through Friday, that I’m not worried that the publication of this article on Saturday will lessen the impact of liberal blogs.

The worst I believe will come from the article is that some right-wingers will get a chuckle out of the anger described in it. Whoop-dee-doo.

The best which may come from it is a greater awareness of how polarizing George W. Bush is. Maybe Mary Scott O’Connor will get invited on radio and TV shows and become a pundit in the mass media. Probably not, but I hope so.

The harshest view of the Bush Administration typically shown on TV is that it consists of honorable men and women who have made some bad policy decisions.

Some Americans, such as Mary Scott O’Connor, have a harsher view, and I’m glad to see that view quoted in today’s Washington Post.

[understandinglife]

7. "Some Americans, such as Mary Scott O’Connor, have a harsher view, and I’m

... to see that view quoted in today’s Washington Post."

Thank you for your comments. I agree.


Never Forget: George W. Bush willfully violated National Security to cover-up his willful launch of a war of aggression and illegal occupation of Iraq.

[Olney Blue]

11. The article explained her harsh view as relating to the loss of

her father in Vietnam when she was very young.

She sees Iraq as a repeat of the same situation by criminal warmongerers.

[Polemicist]

10. I agree...

Even bad publicity is still good. People will likely read this Washpo story and go on-line to see the "angry liberals" for themselves.

They will see angry liberals. And they will see thoughtful angry liberals. And they will see well spoken, thoughtful, angry liberals. And they will see logical, well spoken, thoughtful, angry liberals. And they will see liberals that are all of those and not angry.

Some will agree. Many will disagree. Others will find kindred spirits and find their own voices for change and progress. And they will see that the Washington Post wears no clothes.

We need as many front page articles as we can get. Thank you sir, may I have another.

[DemReadingDU]

6. K&R

[understandinglife]

8. Thank you!

Peace.

[AuntPatsy]

9. Excellent reading...K&R

[Canuckistanian]

12. Greenwald gets it right so often

I'd never heard of him before about 4 nonths ago. I'm a semi-regular reader of Kos, Eschaton and Hullabloo (among others). But everyone seems to track back to a post by Glenn.

I love this line in particular, speaking about Finkel's "angry Left" target:

To recap: Finkel had no angle in mind for the article beforehand - merely a phrase floating around in his mind (where, I suspect, there is plenty of room for phrases to float comfortably)

And I agree that this article was a screed about their major, threatening competition - the dreaded left wing blogs.

[Old and In the Way]

13. I think this was pure vindictive payback from the WaPo for the heat

that they've gotten from the Left in recent weeks. It changes nothing, but might actually start getting a few non-internet readers to check it out. Whatever, they are in the last throes....in 10 years, paper newspapers will be relegated to the past.

[Canuckistanian]

14. It's payback for the Ben Domenech outing, that's what it is

The WaPo was humiliated by that little episode.

[GOPFighter]

15. I didn't think it was a hatchet job

A hatchet job wouldn't include the following passage:

"What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite. But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about."

We are angry, at least I am. And Finkel explained why: "Then George W. Bush was elected. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, secret prisons, domestic eavesdropping, the revamping of the Supreme Court, and the thought "It has come to the point where the worst people on Earth are running the Earth."

My only complaint about the article, and I wrote and told him, is that Finkel should have included the fact that many people on DailyKos reject the extreme anger in Maryscott's diaries.

I think we should be careful about always assuming the worst about reporters who don't write exactly what we would want them to write. The Washington Post reporters have generally done a courageous job criticizing this Administration considering how extremely vindictive Bush/Cheney/Rove are.

[autorank]

17. ...but

"I think we should be careful about always assuming the worst about reporters who don't write exactly what we would want them to write. The Washington Post reporters have generally done a courageous job criticizing this Administration considering how extremely vindictive Bush/Cheney/Rove are."

I live in DC, read th Post since '81, used to love it and now have not bought it since '98. I do check it out online and will pick up a copy if I'm in a restaurant or something for breakfast.

The reporters are lazy, they don't investigate, they are not courageous at all in investigating the * administration in general. There are stories that are provocative like Abu Gharaib but they drop the ball every time they get one. They never fail to give * a pass on the really tough stuff.

Here's one about the Post: anybody with a brain or who was wired in this town knew that the Iraq war intelligence was a TOTAL LIE. The Post is very connected. They knew they just didn't blow the whistle--the Niger stuff, the metal rods, the tractor-trailer factories -- all known, nothing said.

The Washington Post lost me when they became a sex paper -- all about Clinton's sex life.

That's a big crime to them but getting us into a war based on lies isn't? They're not pounding Bush every day like they did Clinton. Whats the difference: Clinton got a *J and nobody died.

They are an affront to intellectual honesty, journalism, and the concept of respecting and serving your customers.

I'm a moderate to left Democrat with a brain...I'd be thrilled to have a real news paper in this town. I don't and it irks me to see someone say they've been "courageous." They're cowards and craven power seekers.

[GOPFighter]

18. I agree with you on some things

The Post, like every fricken' newspaper in America, made an ass of themselves over Clinton's consensual sex with another adult. They also bought the Bush line about Iraq's WMDs in the runup to the war. I subscribed to the Post in 1974 when I first moved to Washington and read it every day until their editorial pages became rude and obnoxious towards those who opposed the war. Michael Kelly's columns were especially insulting. I cancelled my subscriptionin 2003. Hoever, in the past year or so, they have become the leading newspaper in investigating wrong-doing by this Administration. Yes, their editorial board sucks, I won't defend the indefensible. Could they do a better job of investigating Bush/Cheney/Rove? Yes! But they are one of the few MSM media outlets that is reporting things that are embarrassing Bush.

I, too, would love to see a new newspaper in town that would do some real hard-hitting investigative reporting. No city needs it more than Washington.

[autorank]

16. UL, can you imagine, this is my only paper!

They are idiots beyond all belief. They have no standards as journalists, they're lazy (duh), and they hire smart asses like Dana Milbank who sat in a room with Gannon for a year and never commented on the fact that Gannon was a ringer.

I fired of my usual letter to the ombudsman at the Post. What a lousy job that must be;)

Very nice post. Thank you.

When will my long suffering end :evilgrin: