QUESTIONS for D-: June 17, 2021 from John Hawkins
1. At your blog site you tell visitors the happy news that the archives for the P-, going back to 1966, will be made available to the public. I remember the P- fondly; it helped get me through my undergrad years at UMass-Boston, during the trickle-down Reagan Era. In some ways, the beginning of the collapse of our Exceptional Democracy can be traced back to those fraught years. The Gipper was especially adept at shaping the media coverage of his agenda. The P-, community newspapers and Mass PIRG seemed then all that stood between us and the abyss. At your site, you quote S M's farewell message to readers, where he says:
What I can and will say is I am extremely proud, as all of you should be, of the highest standards of journalism we have set and maintained throughout the decades in all of our areas of coverage and the important role we have played in driving political and socially progressive and responsible agendas....
And now -- poof! -- gone is longform, trenchant analyses, entertaining and intellectual reads. What have we lost in the decades since Reagan? Like Dylan sings, sometimes "I close my eyes and I wonder if everything is as hollow as it seems." Any comments on the differences in the eras, vis-a-vis journalistic integrity?
2. Karl "Turd Blossom '' Rove is now regarded, anecdotally, as the Father of the F-Bomb to reality-based thinking, and was apparently cagey enough to hide even that admission in mythopoeic ambiguity. It's 10 years since headlines strutted "we got him" in Abbottabad and 20 years since the towers came down (look for sidewalk sales as we approach the anniversary-- probably bits and pieces from Ground Zero if the Berlin Wall aftermath is any indication). What have we learned about how events get shaped by the media in that time? Recall that Kathryn Bigelow announced beforehand that her film Zero Dark Thirty was "journalistic" because of her access to Obama admin classified docs that not even reporters had access to. Could you critique her remark? The Obama admin's play? And have we learned anything from 9/11? Susan Sontag took flak after the attack for her perceived anti-patriotism for, among other things, daring to call into question "the maturity" of the American response to the disaster. What do you reckon? Has she been vindicated.
3. Recently, you were quoted in a WaPo piece, "The media called the 'lab leak' story a 'conspiracy theory.' Now it's prompted corrections - and serious new reporting." Serious new reporting? What was the old reporting -- clown show pretense? But seriously, even in the headline itself there is the indication that we are suffering for lack of virtue and integrity and battling for control of the common narrative that shapes our understanding of public events. Conspiracy theory? Americans have been conspiracy theorists since at least JFK's death out of which came no resolution. We still don't know what happened. And, as those of us who were "there," die off, the dominant narrative is anything but certain. Who gains from this, D-?
4. WaPo's motto. "Democracy Dies in Darkness." Hmph. Given that WaPo is now Bezos' baby, and he partners with the intels (WaPo always has, beginning with Asst FBI Director Mark Felt's angry-at-Hoover Deep Throated "whistleblowing" to Bernstein and Redford), can you see the light in WaPo's journalism any more? Maybe Bezos bought the paper for the jingle.
5. In the piece mentioned above, you are quoted on the Wuhan leak's coverage. Here's the excerpt:
To some pundits, the early dismissals of the lab thesis now look like media malpractice. "The media's credibility is taking yet another hit," D-, a veteran media critic and college professor, wrote earlier this month. He suggested the alleged mishandling of the story last year "may make it that much harder to persuade Trump supporters to get over their skepticism about vaccinations."
Can you elaborate on the credibility issue? When the MSM shapes a conclusion the way you describe, and then cries "conspiracy theory" to critics -- even scientists who know how crucial understanding what happened is, so it doesn't happen again -- how are we ever to know what to believe from the MSM? Is it enough that the media are willing to re-visit and re-write? Jeez, WaPo refers to the media, like they ain't sto ho media themselves. What gives?
6. In Borat 2, Rudy Giuliani, minutes before he's caught "tucking his shirt in'' on a hotel bed, in front of the teenage journalist from Kazakhstan, Tatar, tells the journo actress that "China deliberately set the virus on the world." This scene comes after the media brouhaha over Trump's accusations (especially through Pompeo) and one wonders why this scene is not cause for more legal and journalistic action. Comments? Instead, we ricochet the other way -- coincidentally, as the political rhetoric from Biden calls for a "global effort" to contain China, in a "fer me or agin me" European appeal that nobody seems to be buying. Timing?
7. Speaking of Wuhan and batshit crazy stuff involving vaccines. In April 2020, and after Trump had crowed about Operation Warp Speed, the NYT disdained Trump's optimism for a quick vaccine, full-feature write-up telling us that "no vaccine had ever taken less than four years to develop" -- graphs and everything to disdain the vain king. Then, voila, come November, every monkey in the tree is shaking a vaccine solution simultaneously. What happened to this story of miracles? (And why is Peter Thiel suddenly on the board of AbCellera, the first lab given Covid-19 survivor antibodies to develop? Does he expect more rain?)
8. In the whole MSM/alternative journalism schism that has developed, where corporate journos are fed loaves by 1% partners for their shaping coverage and alt journos are living on breadcrumbs and getting abused by their bimbo brethren (and sistren, as Bob Marley put it), what are the dangers that nobody will really know anything anymore in the political realm, from the smelly seats of power that control our lives? You know, the Fourth Estate question.
9. You're a professor of journalism at X in Boston. What is the Hippocratic Oath that newbie journos sitting before you in class must commit to as they enter the profession in these darkening days of empire's end and capitalism's hoary decline? How will we know that we can trust these brash new scribes to tell us what we need and not go all Bartleby on us when we need them most? Will they emphasize balance or "truth"? Objectivity in a relativist age? If they choose truth, mustn't we chastise them and send them onto a career in advertizing? If balance....
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