We’re Not Them, Don’t Want To Be Them

There was a creepy piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution – “Unfettered Citizen Journalism Too Risky”, by David Hazinski.

Makes me want to wretch – not that bloggers aren’t reckless and lazy, but the attitude he has that journalists are somehow doing their job. Right – it was journalistic integrity that allowed Bush to take us into the Iraq disaster, Iran to follow. It’s journalists’ willingness to cozy up to power that exacerbates the problems we have today with a runaway executive. And it’s journalistic integrity that allows presidential candidates to be peppered with softball questions in debates, without follow up.

CNN’s last YouTube Republican debate included a question from a retired general who is on Hillary Clinton’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender steering committee. False Internet rumors about Sen. Barack Obama attending a radical Muslim school became so widespread that CNN and other news agencies did stories debunking the rumors. There are literally hundreds of Internet hoaxes and false reports passed off as true stories, tracked by sites such as snopes.com.

Journalists allowed Grover Norquist to horn in on the Republican YouTube debate. Agenda, anyone? The last Democratic debate I saw, Dennis Kucinich was excluded by the Des Moines Register. Before that, he had to interrupt to be heard. Why? Journalists have decided he’s not a “front-runner”. The Obama rumor was spread by FOX News, supposedly comprised of journalists. And there’s Media Matters and FAIR, fine organizations that are devoted to debunking mainstream corporate journalism. Somebody had to do it.

Bloggers do an end run-on journalists. We work without their supervision. In the old days, we were relegated to letters to the editor, sidestepped, censored and muffled, all to satisfy the embedded right wing philosophy of some smug editor.

We’re not a pretty lot, and we don’t pretend to be journalists. Neither should Hazinski.