Like A-list journalists in the Mainstream Media, their counterparts in the Mainstream Menagerie, Tiny and Baby, showed no interest in the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story for weeks as it gathered momentum in the "marginal" press.
"Mark the calendar," writes Tony Blankley Jewish World Review in a lively fisking of Big Media's recent SwiftBoatgate news blackout. "August 2004 is the first time that the major mainline media -- CBSNBCABCNEWYORKTIMESWASHINGTONPOSTLATIMES
NEWSWEEKTIMEMAGAZINEASSOCIATEDPRESSETC -- ignored a news story that nonetheless became known by two-thirds of the country within two weeks of its being mentioned by the 'marginal' press":
According to Editor and Publisher, the respected voice of official big-time journalism: "Chicago Tribune managing editor James O'Shea tells Joe Strupp the Swift Boat controversy may be an instance of a growing problem for newspapers in the expanding media world -- being forced to follow a questionable story because non-print outlets have made it an issue. "There are too many places for people to get information," says O'Shea. "I don't think newspapers can be gatekeepers anymore -- to say this is wrong, and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why."
Now, there are two revealing statements there. First, it is odd to see Mr. O'Shea, an official, credentialed seeker of truth, complaining about "too many places for people to get information." He sounds like a resentful old apparatchik glaring at a Xerox machine in the dying days of the Soviet Union.
The second noteworthy statement is the hilarious complaint that they can no longer merely think a story is wrong and ignore it: "Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why." It apparently escaped his thought process that if he hadn't yet investigated the story, it might not be "wrong." A seeker of truth in a competitive environment might have phrased the sentence: "Now we will have to report it to determine if it is right or wrong."
[via goomp]
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