I’m now in one of the marquee panels of the weekend: blogs vs. MSM! In attendance are Mike Allen of Politico, Jill from Feministe, Jay Carney from Time, and Glenn Greenwald.
Those of you who follow blogs know that Greenwald’s attacks on and contempt for the mainstream media — particularly Allen and Carney — are legend. Everyone’s secretly hoping that there will be fireworks … only not secretly.
Mike Allen’s opening comments, however, are disappointingly conciliatory.
Jill makes the great point that specialized blogs — health care, feminist, (ahem) environmental — are doing a far better job than the MSM at covering their particular areas.
Greenwald says that while the lines have been blurred somewhat, there’s still a distinct and meaningful distinction between how establishment journalists and bloggers approach things and believe the government should be covered. He notes that large majorities of Americans believed — and believe — that Saddam Hussein had a personal hand in 9/11. On the other hand, almost half of Americans can correctly identify … which candidate got an expensive haircut.
Then Greenwald goes on to detail the miserable failure of the media in reporting the Bush administration’s lawbreaking.
Jill makes the excellent point that most of the media criticism from the left is about making the media better, whereas the criticism from the right is simply intended to destroy it and its credibility and authority.
Mike Allen pathetically dodges a direct question about Politico’s role in the degradation of political dialogue.
Greenwald stresses again that’s what’s been lost is the adversarial stance of the media toward officialdom. He said people ought to be grateful that there’s a group of passionate citizens who care about law and principles.
Boy, people are pissed at the media. The questions demonstrate a real sense of betrayal and anger.
