Sunday, March 09, 2008

"Journalistic Standards"

Here's a funny piece about the Samantha Powers flack.

Tucker Carlson, interviews the Scottish reporter who interviewed powers.

Excerpt
CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?

PEEV: If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren't doing a very good job of getting to the truth. Now I did not go out of my way in any way, shape or form to hurt Miss Power. I believe she's an intelligent and perfectly affable woman. In fact, she's -- she is incredibly intelligent so she -- who knows she may have known what she was doing.

She regretted it. She probably acted with integrity. It's not for me to decide one way or the other whether she did the right thing. But I did not go out and try to end her career.


Great Britain journalists' standards are much lower than the US, who are these guys? Car salesman, Attorneys, Pimps?

To be lower than Jayson Blair, Rathergate, The NY Times McCain piece, is quite an accomplishment.

But I'm still trying to figure out what Carlson means by "since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here".

How can Great Britain have lower standards than the US when the US has no standards to begin with? By the way, I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me the qualification difference between a blogger and a "journalist".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's simply a case where democrats are complete amateurs when it comes to dealing with a hostile press. They are so used to dealing with journalistic "teammates" in the states. Here this Powers chick got negative press, and she happened to be accurately quoted. In the minds of many US journalists, the problem can't be a problem with the candidate's standards, it must be with british press standards.

By the way, did anyone notice Hillary's reaction? She really was offended by the monster comment. Come on! These libs are so thin skinned. If the monster comment was about any republican, he would have just laughed it off. And that's after a couple of press investigations to determine whether the monster charges were in fact true!

With all the liberal bias in the media it's amazing that republicans win any elections at all.

If there is anything that works in our favor its that the libs can't take a punch. So when a left hook grazes their ear, they start to whine and cry about low referee standards how unfair and mean their chosen sport can be. It comes across to many as very weak and unpresidential.

gordon gekko said...

My take on it is this.

Too many "journalists" are in bed with the people they cover. They're always chumming up in the hopes that one day they'll be the recipient of a true scoop.

So they don't report a damn thing and, in fact, become the talking point distributor for the very people they're supposed to cover.

They end up no more "independent" than the media relations person.