More Hiltzik

Allah tips this guy had a little problem in the 90's, something having to do with reading co-workers' emails. I'm still tracking that one down.

But I did find this bit by this guy, defending the LATimes against Patterico's charges of liberal bias. Ummm, if you're going to claim no leftist bias, try to do so without lapsing into leftist cant while doing so.

[Blogging media critics'] techniques include a promiscuous use of labels as shorthand slurs ("leftist" and "liberal" being, of course, their most popular denigrations). They no doubt find this technique valuable because once they can hang a label on a newspaper or a journalist, they can dispense with anything so fundamental as discussion or argument. Some also favor imputations of treason or unpatriotism; contentions that the offending reporters and editors are detached in spirit from their readership; and suggestions that what underlies their political deviancy is moral turpitude. To back up their assertions, they often quote articles selectively, take out of context what they do quote, and ascribe imaginary motivations to reporters and editors, which they then feel free to decry. As any student of history knows, these are tools and techniques that were used to great effect during the Stalinist show trials of the ‘40s and ‘50s. The functionaries who wielded them then had the same goals as the self-anointed press watchdogs on the right do today: To support the regime in power through intimidation and threat and to impose ideological conformity, while avoiding at all costs debate on the merits.

These critics equate a newspaper’s failure to parrot a conservative, Republican, or Bush Administration line with inaccuracy, or cavalierly interpret it as evidence of "bias." Unconcerned with a free press’s duty to challenge official versions of events, they fault newspapers and newsmagazines for failing to fall into lockstep in support of George W. Bush and his policies....

The main drawback of the blogging critics’ ignorance of or uninterest in journalistic tradition and practice is that it unleashes their own prejudices. They’re largely unfamiliar with the requirements imposed on reporters and editors by deadline haste and space constraints. They read an article through the prism of their own political mindset, and if they judge that its effect is to promote a "liberal agenda," they invariably assume that the effect is intentional.

Yep, this little asshole compared a media critic to Stalin.

He goes on, in another installment:

Press criticism of this nature passes muster only if you’re preaching to the choir. But then, these critics aren’t really interested in persuading the unpersuaded; they’re interested in reinforcing the prejudices of their followers through a chorus of mendacious commentary and rhetorical cant. They don’t wish to improve the free press, they wish to coerce it into supporting those with political power. Later, we’ll examine how this process works in detail, with Frey’s effort as an instructive text.

Well, this little sonofabitch has the "rhetorical cant" thing down pretty well.

And it turns out he also has a "chorus of mendacious commentary" to offer-- through a chorus of false identities.

Okay, he's a real douche. I feel like Dennis Hopper in True Romance, after looking into the history of the pimp/drug-runner his son murdered.

"The more I find out about this guy," Hopper says, "the more I think you did the one-hundred-percent right thing."

Always liked you, Patterico. Always will.

It's pretty funny. Patterico criticized this asshole, so he created false identities with which to show how much "the people" supported him. And then Patterico, of all people, figures that out and exposes his lies.

Man, he must be loving life just about now.

posted by Ace at 07:57 PM

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