But it's not true fortunately. Even at its worst, the MSM is not thirty or so voices all trying to hit the same one-note. For all the group think in the media (and in all institutions), it's nothing compared to the Trotsky-like devotion to Party Ideals to be found at the country's oldest magazine of (increasingly bad) opinion.
The factually challenged paper is infamous in its latest incarnation mainly for repeated smackdowns as the weekly gets further and further from the truth in order to propagandize. Best example in the last 12 months?
Let's set the stage. Last July, The Nation rushed online to repost Robert Borosage's "Stop Coddling the McCarthyite Smear Machine." Four short months later, the tired magazine was being called out by Salon, Lew Rockwell and many others for their efforts to smear a man with half-truths and outright lies. Anthony Gregory's "The 'Nation' Smears John Tyner, Shills for the TSA" noted of the article, " the typical stance of 90% of the “progressives” under a Democratic president: Attacking normal, everyday Americans sick of big government, including its police state, so as to shore up the Democratic-controlled executive, even as it lays waste to nations and puts tortured children through show trials for the crime of defending their country against invading conquerors." John V. Walsh (Antiwar.com) noted:
John Tyner triggered a wave of protest against the Transportation Security Administration when he recorded himself saying, "If you touch my junk, I’m gonna have you arrested," pithily paraphrased as "Don’t touch my junk!" But this protest was anathema to the thought police at The Nation, because after all it is now Obama's TSA, and the virtue of the Messiah's works is not to be doubted. On top of that, Tyner is (gasp!) a self-declared libertarian.
A smear was in order, and so The Nation quickly served up an innuendo-laden piece attacking Tyner by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine. And it has quite properly provoked a chorus of disapproval. Glenn Greenwald writing at Salon.com was first to criticize Ames and Levine, calling their smear of Tyner a "shoddy, fact-free, and reckless hit piece." Next up was Justin Raimondo, who chided Ames ("I spit on libertarians") and Levine for their "implausible fiction." Raimondo suggested a modicum of competence would serve them well and that if they wished to be "the 'go to' team for the dirt on libertarians … they ought to learn their subject." By now the critique of Ames and Levine's trash must be turning into a cottage industry on the Web.
The Nation is factually challenged because they employ so many who just don't understand the facts. Most reputable magazines, for example, would have fired John Nichols for all his smears -- for any of them. In early 2008, when AP exposed Barack Obama's NAFTA lies (while posing publicly as an opponent of NAFTA and smearing Hillary as a NAFTA supporter, Barack Obama sent Austan Goolsbee (currently the White House's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers) to Canadian government officials to inform them that Barack's remarks about ending NAFTA were just "political positioning" and not to be taken seriously, John Nichols publicly insisted it was not true, that AP got the story wrong, that it was Hillary Clinton who had met with Canadian officials and that he had a blockbuster scoop coming out. The kindest explanation is that his mistook his poop for a scoop (we're assume he ate it on a waffle cone regardless). The explanation his long pattern of lying (has everyone forgotten what he said would happen at the 2004 Democratic Party convention?) demands is that facts never matter when John Nichols is serving a 'higher good.' (If you're late to the party, see Ava and C.I.'s "TV: Goodman and Rose 'honoring' bad TV past" -- and note the other Lie Face tackled in the article now works for The Nation. Failure to repeatedly disclose on PBS or Pacifica that you're working for the campaign of the candidate you're 'independently' analyzing on PBS or Pacifica is considered 'good ethics' at The Nation.)
Sometimes, you just think the people are dumb, not liars. But though we do agree Greg Mitchell is really dumb, we're also aware he is dishonest (see "Liar Supreme: Greg Mitchell" and "Those Wacky Ethics of Greg Mitchell").
So we do agree he was stupid about what "live blogging" is (Nation writers frequently use terms they obviously fail to grasp) but his anger over the January 21st "Iraq snapshot" made it clear that the basics had been broken down -- even to him. From that snapshot:
Which brings us to professional liar Greg Mitchell. (Liar? Changing your errors online after they're called out and 'forgetting' to note your changes makes you a liar.) Greggy wants credit for, well, let's let him tell it: "As I've done for more than seven weeks, I will be updating news and views on all things WikiLeaks all day, with new items added at the top." Oh, is he covering WikiLeaks' revelations? Writing about those?
He's not writing a damn thing. If you were generous, you'd call his bits and pieces "Tweets." It's basically a glorified gossip column with a dozen items.
Nothing is savored long enough
To really understand
Our focus is Iraq. When WikiLeaks did their Iraq release in October, we covered it for two weeks here (here and here) every day. At Third, Ava and I wrote "TV: The WikiLeaks reports" and "TV: Media of the absurd" on the media coverage in real time. The Nation and Greg Mitchell weren't interested in covering the Iraq leaks. Greg Mitchell's still not interested in actually covering anything. He's Louella Parsons offering chatty, breezy gossip items. Or, if you prefer, he's like a character in Heathers, rushing in insisting, "Did you hear? School's cancelled today because Kirk and Ram killed themselves in a repressed homosexual suicide pact."
Now he knows reality but continues to bill his random blog posts as "live blogging." For him to be using the term correctly, it would require him to continue blogging on WikiLeaks after he's six feet under -- and the thought that the world couldn't escape his bad writing even after he died is truly a scary thought.
For Greggers and all the other liars at The Nation (all writers and editors at The Nation are not liars -- and many of the ones barely published actually have much to say that should be said), this is live blogging.
George Eaton and Samira Shackle live blogged a debate on WikiLeaks. That is live blogging. The work the two did for The New Statesman should put the issue to rest and Mitchell to cease and desist with his claim that he's live blogging anything until he, in fact, actually live blogs an event.
For more fun, check out Radley Balko explaining the basics (including what is an apology) to Katrina vanden Heuvel and company in "The Nation Posts a Narrow Apology. And Publishes Another Error" (Reason magazine).