Another great piece by Carrie Kaufman on journalism, and I am inspired to rewrite here some of what I said in posting it on Facebook and to indulge in my usual redundancy and triviality.
First, the trivia: Variety once had the great headline about rural theatergoers objecting to films aimed at them: Hicks Nix Sticks Pix. Cagney explained it playing the great Jewish composer, George M. Cohen.
Also, one of the great examples of this kind of thinking involved Dorothy Kilgallen, the legendary New York columnist, who warned that the "hicks from the sticks" were invading the city and to get out while you could. That night, Flatt and Scruggs performed at Carnegie Hall. Lester said, "There was a whole hall full of people who didn't get the message." And during the show, this New York City audience started chanting for them to sing the theme for Martha White Flour. Did anybody learn anything? Of course not.
Anyway, now to add to what Carrie said. First, Anthony Lewis came home from London to be a New York Times columnist and planned to live in DC. He spent a week there and went to Boston to live, saying he knew he couldn't write an honest column if he lived there. That has proved true 99.9% of the time with DC columnists. And no one ever said Lewis was anything but wide open in his beliefs.
Also, Turner Catledge, who covered Capitol Hill, among other DC hangouts, for The Times and eventually became the paper's executive editor, gave an order that if Congress passed a tax bill, he wanted it in the lede or second paragraph what it meant to the individual--how much money it would cost or save. He also provided the staff with examples of the opposite kind of reporting, and let it leak that they were all stories HE had written. They have regressed. Badly. And dangerously.
But let me get personal. Six years ago, I disappeared from Mr. Zuckerberg's little propaganda machine for a few months after one of my comments led one of those free market, First Amendment absolutist republicans to demand my firing because I exercised my free speech rights. At that time, The Times and other pillars of journalism were doing the stories Carrie mentions, and that The New York Times Pitchbot so perfectly satirizes: Just yesterday, "In this Ohio diner, it was a tradition: a few Diet Cokes, some well-done steak with ketchup, then pull out the nuclear secrets and show them to Kid Rock. But now the woke mob is taking all of that away." Eventually, I wrote to several editors and asked why they don't do stories on, say, educators being accused of preaching communist ideology in the classroom, without anything remotely approaching proof, because they disagreed with republicans in public forums or even if they said nothing. The answer is quite simple: The L word for the national media is not liberal. It is lazy. And their laziness is abetting treason.
Another great piece by Carrie Kaufman on journalism, and I am inspired to rewrite here some of what I said in posting it on Facebook and to indulge in my usual redundancy and triviality.
First, the trivia: Variety once had the great headline about rural theatergoers objecting to films aimed at them: Hicks Nix Sticks Pix. Cagney explained it playing the great Jewish composer, George M. Cohen.
Also, one of the great examples of this kind of thinking involved Dorothy Kilgallen, the legendary New York columnist, who warned that the "hicks from the sticks" were invading the city and to get out while you could. That night, Flatt and Scruggs performed at Carnegie Hall. Lester said, "There was a whole hall full of people who didn't get the message." And during the show, this New York City audience started chanting for them to sing the theme for Martha White Flour. Did anybody learn anything? Of course not.
Anyway, now to add to what Carrie said. First, Anthony Lewis came home from London to be a New York Times columnist and planned to live in DC. He spent a week there and went to Boston to live, saying he knew he couldn't write an honest column if he lived there. That has proved true 99.9% of the time with DC columnists. And no one ever said Lewis was anything but wide open in his beliefs.
Also, Turner Catledge, who covered Capitol Hill, among other DC hangouts, for The Times and eventually became the paper's executive editor, gave an order that if Congress passed a tax bill, he wanted it in the lede or second paragraph what it meant to the individual--how much money it would cost or save. He also provided the staff with examples of the opposite kind of reporting, and let it leak that they were all stories HE had written. They have regressed. Badly. And dangerously.
But let me get personal. Six years ago, I disappeared from Mr. Zuckerberg's little propaganda machine for a few months after one of my comments led one of those free market, First Amendment absolutist republicans to demand my firing because I exercised my free speech rights. At that time, The Times and other pillars of journalism were doing the stories Carrie mentions, and that The New York Times Pitchbot so perfectly satirizes: Just yesterday, "In this Ohio diner, it was a tradition: a few Diet Cokes, some well-done steak with ketchup, then pull out the nuclear secrets and show them to Kid Rock. But now the woke mob is taking all of that away." Eventually, I wrote to several editors and asked why they don't do stories on, say, educators being accused of preaching communist ideology in the classroom, without anything remotely approaching proof, because they disagreed with republicans in public forums or even if they said nothing. The answer is quite simple: The L word for the national media is not liberal. It is lazy. And their laziness is abetting treason.