One More Glenn Greenwald Joke

Hey everybody! Glenn Greenwald's gonna tell another joke!
When a litigator pretends he's a journalist pretending to be a press nanny, the result is usually another Glenn Greenwald joke pretending to be a column.

Only a former litigator could manage to make the claims that Glenn Greenwald does without his body twisting into spasmodic fits of laughter.

In "Bad Stenographers", Greenwald reaches the correct conclusion that most mainstream hacks are little better than stenographers.

If only.

Greenwald proceeds to tell us what he thinks a journalist should do, ought to do, doesn't do, whatever.

One example:

I worked for years with highly professional stenographers in hundreds of depositions and court proceedings. Their defining trait is that they have a fierce devotion to transcribing accurately everything that is said and doing nothing else. It's not uncommon for lawyers, in the heat of some dispute, to attempt to recruit the stenographer into the controversy in order to say who is right.

Say, sounds like what reporters used to do.

Back in the day--before journalists got the bright idea that someone elected them to make policy--reporters/journalists used to record the facts and what was said: without trying to resolve the "good guy" or "bad guy" issue for the reader.

Greenwald then takes the press to task the few times they slip up.

Stenographers will never do that [say who is right]. They will emphasize that they are only there to write down what is said, not to resolve disputes or say what actually happened -- exactly like Time Magazine and most of our press corps. If someone in a court proceeding voices even the most blatantly false accusations, stenographers will faithfully write it down and publish it without comment -- exactly like Time Magazine and most of our press corps, at least when it comes to claims from the government and its GOP operatives.

"Greenwald said what? The press are Bush robots??

So the Washington press is nothing more than a herd of Bush poodles.

Journalist n. A person who collects and edits news for the public.

Sound familiar?

I didn't think so.

It doesn't sound familiar to Greenwald either.

After wading through the rest of the piece (with a short nap in the middle), the former litigator has completely convinced the reader of his case for liberal media bias--all the while swearing it doesn't exist.

Not content with completely disgusting anyone who believed the Journalism 101 teacher about a "disinterested press", he inserts this howler. Probably to check to see if anyone was still awake.

As Eric Alterman documented before most people were pointing it out, the greatest myth in our political culture is the Rush-Limbaugh-generated complaint about the "liberal media."

Greenwald even writes the phrase "liberal media myth".
Did he say "liberal media myth"?? Stop it! You're killing me!
Long before Limbaugh settled into his popular show, complaints of bias on the network newscasts began, people switched off their sets and network ratings began their slide down. Greenwald argues that Limbaugh manages some kind of mass hypnosis/mind control to plant this outrageous voo-doo idea of "liberal media bias" in the public's imagination.

Limbaugh is an evil genius. With the powers he possesses, he should quit his radio show and take over the world.

Then maybe he'd use his power to save us from former litigators masquerading as journalists masquerading as concerned press nannies.
Glenn, will you be my nanny?

by Mondoreb

Source:
Bad Stenographers




Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Rockefeller, Verizon, Telco Cash, Greenwald, Wired & Immunity: Newly Flush with Innuendo

[image:Huntington News]
by Mondoreb

This is rich. Wired's Threat Level is trying to beat a few facts into a creamy froth. Here's the few facts, complete with an official graph:

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans.

He has also recently benefited from some interesting political contributions.
Top Verizon executives, including CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Dennis Strigl, wrote personal checks to Rockefeller totaling $23,500 in March, 2007. Prior to that apparently coordinated flurry of 29 donations, only one of those executives had ever donated to Rockefeller (at least while working for Verizon).

Well, okay, there's some froth there too. But to see some furious froth-beating at work, you have to go to Glenn Greenwald attacking a more reasoned view of Michael Goldfarb in the Weekly Standard:

UPDATE: Wired's Ryan Singel provides an excellent analysis of the tidal wave of cash from telecoms that has suddenly poured into Jay Rockefeller's coffers over the last year. At exactly the time when telecoms need amnesty from Jay Rockefeller, unusually large amounts of cash flow from telecoms to Rockefeller, and lawbreaking amnesty then flows back from Rockefeller to the cash-providing telecoms. While there may be theoretical deniability as to causation, it is just factually true that this is what happened.

My, my. Rockefeller better spend some of that money on water wings because there's a "tidal wave of cash" coming at him. Wired is implying and Greenwald is amplifying that Rockefeller is on the take.

Rockefeller (you've heard that name before somewhere?) is worth millions and millions and millions and...well, you get the idea. But Greenwald wants you to believe that some campaign contributions which amount to nothing in the Rockefeller wealth scheme of things is sinister. It is sinister: it's a view contrary to what Glenn Greenwald believes. That's what makes it so sinister. Greenwald doesn't have a neat graph, like Wired, but he throws around words like "deniability" to set the right mood.

It's not often that one is placed into the position of defending Rockefeller, my home state senator, but Wired and Greenwald's not-so-careful casting of aspersions has accomplished that trick. Having never voted for Rockefeller, I'm now forced to defend him from a--smear? One is loathe to utter the word that comes so easily to liberal lips. It's not a smear; more of a "snear".

That Rockefeller has more to consider than some chump change campaign contributions he may not be aware of seems not to have occurred to Wired or Greenwald. National security concerns? No way--"Tool of Verizon" is the cry here. Rockefeller may be many things, but Verizon's stooge isn't one of them.

Think for just a bit about Rockefeller's wealth and then what is not-so-subtly being implied. As mentioned before, it's a rich creamy froth.

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