I'm outraged at all this outrage
The New York Times > Technology > Resignation at CNN Shows the Growing Influence of Blogs
What have we come to? Is being partisan a worse crime than, at the least, manslaughter due to negligence and, at the most, outright murder? I feel like a stranger in my own country.
posted by Llama @ 2/14/2005 02:25:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Well, IMHO it is a problem when partisanship prevents our elected officials from actually accomplishing something. Not that it should be too easy for the scoundrels to do their dirty deeds...
No can read. I refuse to subscribe to the NYT. Care to paraphrase?
John,
From what I understand, the current level of Washington partisanship is nothing new. I'm hardly an expert, however. Sometimes things get exagerated by the media. For example, when Dems boo'd Bush during the State of the Union, a number of commentators stated that it was the first time that had happened... when, in fact, Clinton was boo'd at least twice during his State of the Unions.
The point is that as bad as things seem now, I think that is how it has always been. Politicans don't really make much policy, anyway; it's the bureaucrats crafting the majority of legislation. Politicians just set the direction.
Sammy Jankis,
Hm, who are you, really? Since you refuse to subscribe to the NYT, I'm lead to think you object to its liberal editorial staff, which means you would be conservative. That would make you either Ron (who would object to that label, I imagine) or Nathan. If I'm correct, you should know that David Brooks (http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/) is one of the more prominent conservative commentators in the country, and he writes opionions for the Times. Though I frequently disagree with him, his arguments are at least rational rather than rhetorical.
Regardless, I'll give a brief summary. Basically it's an artical talking about the resignation of CNN head Eanon Jordan because he said (in off-the-record remarks at an industry round table) that he thought US troops had either directly targetted reporters or, at the least, acted without concern towards their safety. Something like 20+ reporters have been killed by US forces.
These comments were posted to a blog of the conference and quickly spread around the universe of conservative bloggers, then got picked up by FOX and other major media outlets, and generated enough heat that Jordan was forced to resign.
There's tons of stories on this out there. What strikes me, though, is how there is this massive uproar over these remarks, which again were off-the-record, and NO coverage of the problem that he was addressing, that being the man-caused deaths of reporters. I'm not blaming the military or whining... reporters assume a great deal of personal risk when they enter a military zone. But why is there absolutely no discussion about why so many reporters are being killed by our own forces?
It seems to me the answer is partisanship... American society (not the politicians) has become so polarized that many people appear to be prioritizing unwaivering, unquestioning support for a party and politician over the loss of American life. The discussion should be about the place, role, and safety issues of reporters, and what the responsibility of the military is to them, rather than whether somebody in the media might be biased.
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