Update To My First Blogging Foray Into Critical Writing

Two things:

1) I feel like a dumbass when I give a side in a political debate more credit than it turns out it deserves. Case in point: health care. Seems like bullies are going to harass, hunt down and make miserable the lives of every single congressperson even thinking about voting for a health care reform bill. I would give the anti-reformer Republican dickheads who are paid to show up at these places some slack if they were just people organizing on a grass-roots level, or if they were honest about being organized by powerful lobbyists for the health insurance industry, or even if weren't being so rude. But that's what Republicans do: yell, shout and drown out cogent arguments hoping for either humiliation or a blow-up by a politician. It is newsworthy in the sense that, even though this is being spearheaded by a lot of money, blocking needed health-care reform is working.

2) I said reporters being afraid to report on sponsors and puff pieces were the worst culprits of the erosion of true broadcast journalism today. I feel stupid in forgetting an even more formidable foe: pissing off their employers, conglomerates who run companies and make products that may be scrutinized by their broadcast properties' newscasts. Who cares about the drug companies purchasing ads on the nightly news? What about General Electric, Viacom, Disney and News Corp.? It's those interests that news organizaations have to worry about.

Read this article, the whole thing. If you're curious as to why Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann have stopped their pissing match, you'll get the explanation over there. And it also reminds me of other times when journalists were influenced into not doing critical pieces that may not be popular. In the run-up to the Iraq War, there was pressure not to do any reports critical of the war or the Bush Administration for fear of not only ratings or accusations of treason, but of the news organizations' employers losing business with the government. Also, there was the story that broke of how the networks used ex-military officers as analysts when they held jobs as consultants and lobbyists for defense firms. They openly coordinated with the government to parrot White House talking points in exchange for influence and potential contracts for the companies they work for in the future. Shame on the Bush Administration, shame on TV journalists for being snowed, and shame on me for forgetting.

If I want to be a media critic, I have to do a little more research, don't I?