Albritton to Bloggers: Shut Up Already

Chris Albritton of Back to Iraq is tired of the blogging class-- both left and right-- trashing the mainstream media. It has led, in his words, to a

distrust of all so-called Mainstream Media ... [i]t’s almost heretical to defend “the press” in a blog these days. Well, fire up the coals and burn me at the stake then: I think the journalism coming out of Baghdad has been some of the best the international press corps has produced.

Albritton's got a good point. A few lefty bloggers have tried to walk the line between a general attack on the mainstream press and what Atrios has called an "attack on the press when it screws up." But this is a hard and narrow road to walk: the opprotunities to trash the mainstream media are ever-present, fairly easy to do, and well-documented. In short, perfect its blog material.

It might be nice to see the left blogosphere distinguish itself from the right blogosphere by praising good journalism, by being fair, and by being merciless when, indeed, the mainstream press f----s up.

Finally, I'm not so sure I agree with Albritton about the quality of journalism coming out of Iraq. After all, the meme of the imprisioned press didn't just emerge out of nowhere. It was given a fairly vigorous push by Wall St. Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi's infamous email and has been consistantly reinforced, especially in this article by Berkeley J-School dean Orville Schell. So is the notion of the "besieged press" totally off-base? How do we reconcile Albritton's plea and Schell's critique?

Comments

[the burningman]

The journalism coming out of Iraq is among the worst I've ever encountered. Aside from the straight-up lying ala Judy Miller, we've gotten tons of warmed over Pentagon briefings and virtually no background on occupation figures, coverage of, say, the Anbar provence, or Israeli training in Kurdistan or who the resistance actually is (besides BS about Al Qaeda).

The MSM is a joke that's not funny. They've fired most of the reporters and now a small handful of wire services provide virtually all the reporting, and they in turn are mostly embedded.

I already gave up on broadcast media. There's lterally NOTHING there but more or less sophisticated propaganda. With print, the situation is hardly any better. I read the Times just to know what they are covering, not what is happening.

[Ryan]

The whole idea of "Journalism", that is integrity in reporting the 'news', has been killed off by JOURNALISTS! If integrity were mroe important than a scoop then the public would still respect them. At least we know not to trust a blogger off hand.

[cheap ed hardy]

The MSM is a joke that's not funny. They've fired most of the reporters and now a small handful of wire services provide virtually all the reporting, and they in turn are mostly embedded.

[amy]

http://www.buyreplicawatch.com/
http://www.thehandbags.us/

[volunteering abroad]

Nice read! Have a good christmas and new year. Thanks, from the UK.

[classic restoration]

I have a good chance of understanding it more.