And wahahahaha again. Oh, my aching sides.
The most sycophantic and furthest up-the-arse-of-New-Labour-ministers of British political journalists, Andrew Marr, in this morning’s Independent:
‘It’s time to save serious journalism’
Wahahahaha. That’s tickled me, that has.
Media Matters has caught Fox News photoshopping pictures of NY Times reporters critical of Fox, to make them look sinister and ugly.
On the July 2 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe “attack dogs,” claiming that Steinberg’s June 28 article on the “ominous trend” in Fox News’ ratings was a “hit piece.” During the segment, however, Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head. Fox News gave no indication that the photos had been altered.
Is it me, or is there a flavour of some of those anti-Jewish caricatures of the thirties?
Fox employees’ve given up all pretence to being journalists of any description.
Maybe this commenter to Charlie Brooker’s latest column about Ascot hats is a trifle overinvolved. But is he right, is the thrill gone?
supercereal
Jun 23 08, 02:20am (about 7 hours ago)
I’m actually really disappointed in you, I used to look forward to getting the guardian every Monday just to read your column, I’ve been a fan for a long time, since I was working a crappy minimum wage job in a newsagents putting myself through college and on my break I’d read your column on the back of G2 with the yellow cartoon, it was really witty and insightful with original ideas. I got into the Guardian because of you and now I get it every day. I live in Ireland and don’t get whatever channel screenwipe is on, so I tracked all the episodes down online and really like them, I don’t buy papers on weekends, but I track down your screenburn column online, that’s how I got into the guardian website last year and now I check it every time I’m online.
It’s two o’clock in the morning, and the only reason I’m online is to see your column before it’s in tomorrow’s paper.
I’m not just a casual reader, I’m a big fan, I was really happy for you when you got upgraded to a proper column inside G2….the reason I’m telling you and the whole internet this, the reason I registered just to post this comment, is so that you know I’m not just some dickhead taking potshots, like just saying something like [Charlie you silly monkey, i like hats, LOL, u are gay.]
I couldn’t give a fucking toss about hats, and to be honest I really don’t care what you think about them. Your columns have gotten progressively worse over the last few months, you’re just getting god damned lazy, so shape up or shut up cos it’s just depressing, you were one of the ones who told it like it is, you were one of the good ones, but now you’ve become one of the mob of tittering twats you despise, you don’t seem to have anything original to say any more. I won’t ever pick up the paper on a Monday with any sort of expectations of any kind about your column, I’ll still read it…along with the rest of the paper, but I won’t turn to that page in G2 first or I won’t be disappointed when they have a stand-in, you’re just another boring columnist with nothing to say…that’s all I have to say really. You’ve probably realised this the same as I have, you know deep down that you don’t have it any more, that you’re just phoning it in. You know when you write a bad column and you don’t need a stranger like me to tell you.
That’s all, just to let you know you lost a fan, I’m sure I’m not the only one, I’m not trying to be harsh so you’ll kill yourself in the bath with a lady razor or anything, I just feel that I’m not alone in this opinion and had to say something, I wanted to do it earlier but I couldn’t give you any more chances, I nearly did it last week (what a pile of balls) but this week was the last straw…bye.
Was it? Was it really? Was it really?
I came across Brooker’s loopy, Mr Angry viciousness through TVGohome. He has said what we all think but lack the eloquence to say about the crap being fed to us by the media, like a foul-mouthed suburban Chomsky but without the charm and with even stupider hair. Brilliant. Now he’s become what he despises, a lazy insider who phones it in for a fee. Yes, I know that’s always been his schtick, but when did he start believing in it?
I suppose this is all part of the accelerated lifecycle of writer stroke tv personalities in the New Media. How long has Brooker been a cult? About five years, all told, including the 2 years or so bubbling under online, and reaching a high point with Nathan Barley.In meeja whore terms that’s ancient. Ah well, live by the sword….
There’ll be another Angry Hip Young Person along in a minute anyway. Next!
Politicians are increasingly seving up their most intimate relationships for public inspection, either for money or the spin value: the ins and outs, so to speak, of the Sarkozy-Brunis’ married lubriciousness are regular fare in the print media, David Cameron is laying his family life bare-ish in online video (did those poor bloody kids get any say in the matter?) and this week, noted Catholic hypocrite Cherie Blair has been rubbing her contraceptive arrangements in our faces. Enough.
I really don’t need to think about those those two rictus-grinned hypocrites copulating in the dark or even in the feeble light of a thrifty royal 40 watt bulb. I really don’t need to think about it at all. No.
But exposing all to the media is a growing trend and now a Minnesota governor has joined the throng by using his his marriage to a sports-fan as radio comedy material:
“I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish. I mean, she will take the lead and ask me to go out fishing, and joyfully comes here,” he told radio station WCCO. “She loves football, she’ll go to hockey games and, I jokingly say, ‘Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.’”
Cue mortified dead air. I wouldn’t want to have been him when he finally summoned up the courage to go home.
But really, how far are politicians willing to go with this? How much further can you go than into your contraceptive arrangements? When we will see the first webcam over the marital bed?
It’s one thing having your private life exposed by a prying media, but what if you invite them in for the purposes of advancing your own career? The Blairs and Sarkozys I submit are special cases, being as both halves of each couple are equally voraciously publicicity-hungry, so no harm done there except to themselves.
I suppose too there’s something to be said for the argument that a public person should be completely public and their life an open book. But there are other people in these relationships besides politicians – and I should think that they may feel somewhat less positive about the exposure of the inner workings of their marriages.
Sometimes I just want to bang my head on the wall with the sheer jaw-dropping, mind-numbing hypocrisy of it all.
The Guardian’s Jackie Ashley writes this morning about the New York Times April ‘expose’ of Rumsfeld’s paid media sockpuupets, already exposed by many, many progressive bloggers; and in the light of the Times own trumpeting of the White House line and Judith Regan’s fake reports, it’s frankly a bit of a joke.
Ashley purports to be horrified at what the NYT reveals about the revolving door between the media, defence industry, government, military and lobbyists and about US media figures’ personal complicity in building a false case for an illegal war.
So what are the darker messages for us from this American scandal? I was struck by the way in which the deal between the analysts, the TV bosses, the Pentagon and – behind them all – the military contractors, never needed to be explicit. The Pentagon didn’t need to offer cash, or lean on anyone. The TV networks did not ask too much about their experts’ sources of information, or their outside interests.
That this comes as a surprise to her makes me wonder where this woman, who’s paid well to be plugged into politics and world affairs, has been for the past few years. Has she not met the internet? The central narrative of progressive blogs since 2000 has been the complicity of mainstream journalists in pushing the right-wing, pro-Israel, militarist neoliberal line and parroting the White House’s fake war rhetoric.
It;s not as though she’s shown herself unaware of the Murdoch press’ in particular’s role in making the case for war; this is what she said in 2003 during the David Kelly/BBC/Gilligan affair:
Those papers have been intertwined with New Labour ever since it became clear that Blair would be in Downing Street. Blair wooed them, and from the first Murdoch, sensing a winner, responded.
Sun and Times journalists were courted and favoured with leaks, which they could promote as scoops; Murdoch editors were treated as visiting royalty when they were entertained at No 10 and Chequers. It is shameless, unabashed, and was driven both by Blair and by that high-minded socialist and critic of journalistic standards, Alastair Campbell.
Why do they do it? Because the deal is frank, and even on its own terms, honest. Murdoch wants media power and Blair wants reliable media support. So long as nobody takes journalistic principle or the public interest too seriously, then there is a deal to be done. One day, if Murdoch gets his way, he will be in a position of terrifying influence over any future government. So this is a dangerous time for the BBC. In some ways it has been here before. In the wake of the Falklands war, when Alasdair Milne was director general, Margaret Thatcher berated him about BBC funding and journalism in terms almost identical to those we hear from Labour now. John Birt had his rows too
Yet this is the woman who professes to be horrified at the way the system in which she works works.
It was all nods and winks. Does this begin to sound familiar? It wasn’t cash for peerages. It was propaganda for access. But isn’t the underlying structure – you do me a favour, I’ll see you right, while neither of us says a word – just the same?
Why yes, it is just the same.
Has it never, ever occurred to Ashley – New Labour’s cheerleader-in-chief this past decade at New Labour’s favourite newspaper – that she’s had privileged access to the PM and cabinet ministers and their aides because, funnily enough, she repeated their lies, supported the party and no matter what her disclaimers, as a result was objectively in favour of the Iraq war ?
Apparently she thinks all that access and tips and cosy invitations and the like came because they like her. Nothing to do with the fact her partner is also a chief political bigwig for the BBC either, oh no. It was all for the sake of her beaux yeux.
Surely no well-educated, observant opinion writer for a major modern newspaper could be either so naive – or so disingenuous – as to truly think that the British punditerati are less compromised than those in the US, could they?
We see the cost of not having an honest, open argument, whether about Pentagon strategy or about how the banking system really works, and the media feel embarrassed: “How did we miss that?” In Washington, and elsewhere, the answers are often the same. It comes down to unspoken deals between powerful people, and smiling faces telling fairytales.
“How did we miss that”? I’ll tell her how she missed that; you never see the dirt you’re sitting in.