Thursday, December 31, 2009
Whatever you say, Sir!
It appears that the well known DC stenographic service, Politico, is taking heat from journalists for being a stenographic service. Politico's pretensions to real journalism rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
A number of writers and bloggers say Politico failed to perform the fact-checking role expected of reporters, pointing to questionable assertions from Cheney that went unchecked in Allen’s story.But Politico is just doing what it is paid to do and its stenography is then copied by the network of stenographers salted throughout the news media. And all their corporate bosses are happy.
The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan labeled Allen “Cheney’s Chief Spokesman” and quipped that Cheney should “be paying him.”
“There he goes again,” Sullivan said of Allen, “the mouthpiece for Rove and Cheney, believing his ‘access’ as a stenographer makes him a journalist. It doesn't. It makes him a stenographer.”...
...“So to sum up: Dick Cheney sends Mike Allen a press release, which Mike Allen then copies-and-pastes it into a 'news article' without mentioning key facts that would undermine Cheney's press release,” Foser continued. “Aren't you glad Politico got a spot on the Pulitzer committee?”
“Politico really is just a GOP bulletin board,” Foser posited.
Following Politico’s previous interview piece with Dick Cheney just weeks ago on December 1, Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen accused Allen and his organization of “stenography.”
“There's no real journalism to be found,” Benen wrote of the story. “No fact-checking, no pushback, no scrutiny. Just an uninterrupted string of predictable, misguided nonsense.”
“Cheney could have just written a blog post/screed, and had Politico publish it,” Benen added. “This would have saved Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei the trouble of adding quote marks to their stenography.”
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Gosh, this makes Politico different from the MSM... how? Remember the New York Times and Judy Judy's uncritical stenography of the Bushevik's drumbeat to war in Iraq? Remember the Washington Post printing all those stories about Iraq's WMD's that were sourced directly from the Bushevik regime? Izvestia on the Potomac and Pravda on the Hudson have a lot of nerve criticizing someone else for stenography! Pot, kettle, black, eh?
- Badtux the "Hypocrisy, anybody?" Penguin
- Badtux the "Hypocrisy, anybody?" Penguin
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