When You're Driving With the MSM, You're Driving With "THE TRUTH"

Here's an idiot in Time, writing a column filed in the "Arts" section, rather than the "Media" or "Politics" section:

Mainstream media will do itself no favors by downplaying this as a controversy hyped up by opinionated bloggers.

Ah. Sounds good. Let's read on.

[E]very time a straight-news journalist alters a fact—even something as picayune as the color of a bomb blast or the number of flares fired from a plane—it convinces people that the media must lie about big things as well.

1, these are not "picayune" details, though it is nice of you to downplay the importance of this right after writing "we must not downplay the importance of this;" and 2, you do lie about big things.

If these pictures and stories are so "picayune," why did you report them in the first place, Chief?

Is that your practice? To publish unimportant stories and pictures?

It's like how Hollywood tells us their movies cannot influence the culture, and then, at Oscars time, tells us how very much their movies influence the culture (in a good way, though!).

The media tells us it exists to provide the public with important and accurate information upon which great public decisions may be well-founded, but when they're caught lying, or being duped by liars, they claim the reverse-- eh, none of that mattered anyhow.

Okay. Can you guys indicate for us the stories and pictures that do matter for us, so we know which ones to actually bother with and form our opinions on the basis of?

All facts become suspect, all information becomes relative, and you might as well believe whatever your gut tells you, because the news is invariably driven by its own bias, which is, invariably, against you. We become a nation of Stephen Colberts, believing that facts are sketchy and overrated and should never be allowed to get in the way of what we want to believe.

Is he describing the public or the media itself? Since when has the media let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of its much-more-important "narrative" or "context" or (as the cool kids have it) "storytelling"?

We can argue till we pass out over Adnan Hajj's motives—politics? drama? careerism?—and those of the bloggers who pounced on the photos. In the end, they don't matter. What does matter is that every time something like this happens, the winners are the people of every political stripe who believe it's their calling to, to paraphrase another war, destroy the truth in order to save it.

That's what our calling is? To destroy truth?

No, asshole. It's to destroy you. How you have gotten yourself conflated with "the truth" is quite beyond me.

Has there ever been a sentence written that so unwittingly gives away the media's arrogance and narcissism?

Criticism of the specific people working in the media constitutes an attempt to "destroy the truth"?

It's amazing how this imbecile can be so arrogant and condescending as he confesses, on behalf of all the media, "we were wrong and you were right."

Doesn't really matter, though-- mere trivia. The Big Picture is that this asshole from Time was, during a special election I wasn't notified of, was elevated to the position of "The Truth."

Don't talk smack about "The Truth," punks. "The Truth" is here to chew bubble gum and write condescending, self-aggrandizing puff pieces about himself and his Fabulous Friends, and he's all out of bubble gum.

I'm indebted for that Time piece that has me gnawing on furniture to The Dread Pundit Bluto, who dissects it as well, and who originally pointed out the guy says "don't downplay this story" as he proceeds to do very little but downplay the story.

I could have thought of that on my own, though, if I'd wanted to.

And the Dread Pundit Bluto link comes from My Pet Jawa, who, quite frankly, doesn't need any more traffic.

Bastards.

Although, yeah, go there. A lot of good stuff, including a lot of pictures of Lebanese reading their Korans, with the text nicely angled towards the camera so you can see what it is.

These shots look as unrehearsed and natural as the pictures on the cover of every college brochure -- an Asian girl, a black guy who looks like Kadeem Harrison, a Latino girl, and a goofy white guy with a Jewish afro and a unicycle, all gathered together on the steps of the quad to look at a big textbook open in front of them, as the goofy white guy with the unicyle points to somethng hilarious in the textbook and they all share a rich, educational, multicultural laugh.

posted by Ace at 09:56 PM

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