Media Studies: With Jay Rosen

"The news media believe 'the system works.' ”

And you believe the system should. I'm arguing it can't; not because of the Israel/Palestine debate but because your model of "cleaning up" is still a model of cleanliness. And cleanliness like humility, as Oscar Wilde would say, is false.

The point of my Gaza references was not the M.E. itself; I thought my references to trade-craft made that clear. My point is this, I'll say it again and I'm out:
There is no such thing as objectivity. There is only engaged intelligence. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Rupert Murdoch for returning vulgarity to the news business. His vulgar advocacy journalism spawned serious intelligent advocacy journalism, honest about its biases. I don't even like TPM, but I take it more seriously than most newspapers.
And don't forget who gave us the Simpsons.

Your response to me bringing up the Middle East was tellingly passive, and it's the passivity that's the problem. I'd have been happier if you'd started screaming like an enraged Likudnik. I would known what you believed and where you stood and I would have been able to judge for myself and engage you. As it is I know nothing about your response to the biggest news of the new year. But considering your silence and your vocal response to other issues I can guess.
I shouldn't have to guess at all.

I read my news on the web because I get it mostly from academics, scholars and activists, in the US, Europe, and the Middle East who are experts in the fields that journalists pretend to know about, and are fluent in the languages that journalists pretend to read. I read historians before I read theoreticians of the present [cf."Media Studies"]. I read Reidar Visser before and after I read any journalist on Iraq. I read the webpages of people who would otherwise be publishing op-eds, in other countries if not this one. They're the ones who filter the news for me, more than reporters do. And I don't read legal reporters when I can read lawyers.
Journalists are grunts. They shouldn't stop trying to be intellectuals, but they should stop assuming that's what they are.

Intellectuals are always biased, it's their job. It's my lawyer's job to be biased. I'd fire him if he weren't. Why would I ever trust someone who claimed to be objective about the most intellectually and emotionally complex issues of the day?
Atrios' silence on Gaza is strategic. He's trying to stay out of trouble with his audience. That's not "reality based" journalism, that's the realism of a political operative. Accept it for what it is.

There are two kinds of corruption in any social network: the corruption of idiots who support each other out of friendship, who back each other up and help each other up the ladder; and the corruption of intelligent and imaginative people with curious minds who support each other out of friendship, back each other up, and help each other up the ladder.
You can't get rid of corruption, but you can try to minimize stupidity. Honesty's a good start.

Rosen [responding to someone else]

"...It's just a factor in what journalists do that tends be be under-weighted: their need to demonstrate deatchment, neutrality, nonalignment, professional distance.
Simplest method: politics as a game, journalists as savvy analysts up in the booth, sizing up the strategies and what the players have to do to win."

So journalists are outside the circle. Amazing.
Philosophy professors are athletes and journalists are sportswriters.
But I was always told the secret to great sports writing was that sports weren't serious. You're free to work with style.