Time Magazine Needs Grease
Posted by Mad Rocket Scientist | Filed under Guest Authors, Plain Old Hypocrisy, Yellow Press
To slip their collective head on through the door, it’s getting way too big.
From an article about the new cover of Time Magazine, where a tree is used to replace the flag that Marines are raising on Iwo Jima in order to hype on more about “Global Warmening”, we get this quote from the Managing Editor of Time:
“I think since I’ve been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that’s needed in journalism is that you have to have a point of view about things,” Stengel said. “You can’t always just say ‘on the one hand, on the other’ and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We’re experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let’s just say so.”
People trust you?! Not according to most of the recent polls I’ve seen. As a matter of fact, most people don’t trust you to take out the trash, much less make wise or intelligent decisions about our country or our world.
Experts in what you do?! I guess so, although I did not know that spinning excrement was something you could be rated an expert in.
Seriously, stop thinking you are that relavant, and stick with either reporting facts, or spouting editorials. But please, stop dressing up your opinions as facts and then trying to tell the rest of us you are the wise decision makers.
Makes me glad that the only time I ever pick up a copy of Time is right before I see the Doctor.
Tags: print media is obsolete
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April 18th, 2008
So, at one MSM outlet anyway, the mask of “objectivity” is finally slipping off. This is a welcome development.
April 19th, 2008
The following is really for Bruce Springsteen, but it works for journalists just as well.
Plato, Apology
April 19th, 2008
Even if we accept the idea that they’re expert journalists, since when does being a good writer make you an automatic expert on anything you write about?
April 19th, 2008
S. Weasel, there is a problem with my line of work that is similar to what journalists experience.
I’m a computer programmer. I’m actually damned good at it too. I can tell the computer to do pretty much whatever I want it to do in short order. The problem arises when we are asked to write a program that isn’t in our line of expertise. The Jr. developer will always say “Of course I can write that!” It’s a sign of immaturity.
For example, I can’t balance a check book to save my life. I’m damn good with numbers, but something about finances just eludes me. So for me to write a tax software package would be a disaster. Without an underlying knowledge of what I’m writing, the end result is going to be severely lacking.
Journalists seem to suffer this in spades. They can “journal” and therefor assume that because they know how to write their opinions down that their opinions are somehow more valid that others, even when their opinions are of a subject they know little to nothing about. For me, as a firearms enthusiast, this is especially evident in any article regarding guns.
This is one of the reasons I like blogging and reading blogs. Corrections are quick, easily checked, and the blogs that get the most eyes tend to be the ones who display their bias in the open rather than pretend they’re some sort of infallible font of information.
For the longest time, you had to trust the papers. There wasn’t an easy way to check to see if what they were writing was correct. Today, this is not the case. It doesn’t appear, though, that the paleojournalists have quite realized this yet.
April 19th, 2008
P.S. Pardon me if I’m rambling. I have a slight migraine.
April 19th, 2008
Dang it Robb, that would have been a great analogy over at the blog post by David Manes.
And having done a fair bit of coding myself, I should have thought of it!
You should get headaches more often, you get all inspired
April 19th, 2008
“For the longest time, you had to trust the papers. There wasn’t an easy way to check to see if what they were writing was correct.”
Of course, there was a time when you could actually trust the papers in most cases.
April 20th, 2008
The really sad thing about Time is that they posture about evnvirocrap, but due to the shiny paper you can’t even use the durn thing to wipe your behind with. A total waste of effort, ink and shiny paper; a lose-lose-lose.
April 20th, 2008
An ex-girlfriend of mine actually changed her major at OU because this is what they teach in Journalism Schools now. She had always wanted to be a reporter, and now she is a librarian, simply because she wanted to report the news. That simply doesn’t work anymore. Budding journalists are taught they must “have a view” and come to the “story” with a mind to “mold people’s opinions to that view”.
So this really isn’t a surprise to me, nor given the amount of bias show in the msm for years should it be a surprise to anyone.