Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« "Truther" College Leader Discovers The Actual Truth | Main | Claim: Tom Cruise Spending $10 Million To Build Bunker To Protect Against Intergalactic Attack By Vengeance-Seeking Xenu »
September 28, 2007

How To Become A Superstar "Journalist" In One Easy Step

Breaking a big story takes work. And a lot of luck. And even with both you might never manage it.

There's an easier rout, of course. If you can't be good at your job, at least you can become a superstar, at least among those who count, by being an unabashed partisan.

Looks like MSNBC correspondent David Shuster may have deprived loyal MSNBC viewers of their favorite GOP talking heads — at least for now.

This week, the MSNBC reporter “sandbagged” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) during an interview by asking her to name the last solider from her district to die in Iraq. After she couldn’t, Shuster named the solider himself and then scolded the Tennessee Republican for her hypocrisy.

But it turns out that the soldier Shuster named — Pvt. Jeremy S. Bohannon — was not from Blackburn’s district after all. The incident landed Shuster in some GOP hot water, and the newsman was forced to make an on-air apology for the incident last night.

But that might not be the end of it, as irked Republican Hillers are now planning a boycott of Shuster’s employer.

...

“There’s no difference [between] sending your boss over to David Shuster or the Democratic National Committee at this point,” sniffs one high-placed House source.

"He thinks acting like a jerk will turn him into a rising star, but he's really just Chris Matthews' schlep,” says a high-placed Senate aide.

I think we'll see an awful lot more of this. It's simply too easy to break with supposed journalistic traditions of objectivity and become a crusading hero to one quarter of the population just by being a dickbag hack. Most journalists are simply not all that good at their jobs. To some extent that's true of every profession -- one third of any group are "average' and one third must be "below average" -- but journalism seems a particularly soft field as far as standards so it seems to attract crap talent.

So expect to see a lot more Keith Olbermanns and David Shusters in the future. Excessive partisanship and bias is a launching pad to success, and it's a hell of a lot easier to take tips from MoveOn than to cultivate sources and carefully expose big stories.

Jeff Goldstein had this same idea a few days ago, remarking upon NPR's refusal to run a Juan Williams exclusive interview with the President on race issues. Juan Williams noted he'd taken time to cultivate a relationship with the White House to give him such a big get. Turns out NPR wasn't so hot on that.

Well, developing a relationship with the White House was your first mistake, Juan.

Because unfortunately, these days the “adversarial” media takes that designation literally. It is not enough to ask tough, fair questions anymore. Instead, one has to have shown an open hostility toward the President to make his bones — or else risk being called an adminstration shill by the kinds of listeners NPR tends to cultivate.

As was long predicted, even the pretense of objectivity is being dropped. In a way, that's progress of a sort. But the media will simply become more and more outlandishly partisan in a race to the bottom, each wannabe Woodward and Bernstein competing with each other to see who can out-liberal the rest.

It hardly needs to be said that there will not be much competition in this regard among the 10% of journalists who lean conservative. Because they'll simply be fired or never promoted above the level of copyboy if they try such a thing.

Nuance, people. Look into it.

Related: Tavis Smiley, "journalist," lies about not having called Bush "nothing more than a serial killer" when questioned about it. This is new again, because the top Republican contenders all avoided the debate he was moderating immoderating.

Also related: it appears that the soldier Shuster asked about did in fact live in that GOP Congresswoman's district... while living with his girlfriend in her mom's house for less than a year before deploying with the army.

I don't think this saves Shuster -- obviously he didn't know this and didn't fact-check beforehand, or else he would not have apologized. He took MoveOn's sketchy tip at face value and failed to determine if the home address they supplied him (where he'd spent all of his life before this brief stay in another district) was even in the district of the woman he was ambushing.

But of course the left, and "reporters" (but I repeat myself) claim vindication.

I ask again of David Shuster: Who was the last US severiceman awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor?



digg this
posted by Ace at 02:31 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
[/i][/b]andycanuck (2yu8s)[/s][/u]: "750-pound alligator seized from home near Buffalo, ..."

Ben Had: "Only 30 more years of these moronic statements ft ..."

2008 is calling: "Mahalia Jackson>>>>>>>>>>>Affimative Action Jackso ..."

BillyD: "[i]158 Mind you, a Moron claimed the car would sti ..."

Diogenes: "DEI in action, and that's a good thing! Posted by ..."

Piper: "Have we discussed KBJ and her gripe the 1sr amendm ..."

Commissar Hrothgar (hOUT3) ~ This year in Corsicana - [b]again[/b]! ~ [/i][/b][/u][/s]: "[i]257 Watching another Boeing United Airlines iss ..."

Loose Emergency Door Plug: "Return to Newark? I'd rather ditch. Posted by: D ..."

J. Random UA Flight: "[i]Return to Newark? I'd rather ditch. Posted by ..."

Diogenes: "Watching another Boeing United Airlines issue in r ..."

Truthbomb : "Watching another Boeing United Airlines issue in r ..."

Ciampino - on time: "About 43 minutes [b]SpaceX - Falcon 9 - Starlin ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64