Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Not a Good Day
Not necessarily a bad thing that karma came to bite Miller in the ass but all things considered today is just not what I imagined it would be. You see, I always thought that when the Fed's came to get journalists for doing their job, there should be a great upheaval.
Not necessarily a bad thing that karma came to bite the profession in the ass. We shouldn't have been beholden to following the whims of politics and so now there are few at any point of the political spectrum we can count as being in the foxhole with us. It just seems as if we ain't got a friend to be found. Kinda can't blame 'em; we failed everybody, all around. There were bells, whistles and claxons going off that should have woke us to the sham comin' down. {Check the last three lines!} And the "crusaders" think the glory of their Message has been denied to all the world because of our slovenly state (Or we failed to effectively convey the important and far reaching needs for our country's course). Journalism, as a whole, failed to consistently deliver the news; good or bad, left or right. We, as journalists, must now begin the fight to gain the respect and support we need to keep our society free.
The truth will be a mighty armor in this fight. As I've said, the search for truth is never neutral. You gotta really want it: You gotta have that fire to find the truth. You have to want it bad enough to have the courage to make the tough choices the right way. And as we know, the truth doesn't usually come from the utterance of one voice. The right thing to do now is to make this issue front page on every newspaper, web space and broadcast news in the nation. We need the clarity and courage($$) to show that this isn't just an "inside baseball" story. It isn't over yet, but this could be The Big News. This could be the thing that effects every man, woman and child in this country long after the war in Iraq is over. There's more than one way to come at this story, that has been developing right under our noses for the last century or so. The story is big enough for everybody to get a piece of it.
All the blips along the way aside; you can reasonably state that steadily increasing information flow, that was not controlled by the government, has now put the civil, private side on a more equal footing with the government. There is now a greater parity than ever. This prosecution of Cooper and Miller is designed to remove one advantage of the press and gain a greater supremacy for the government. This would be a simple case of prosecutorial abuse were the grand political nature of it not so evident. The administration wants to plug all the holes in their control of the message.
The whole affair stinks to the high heavens. The leak was a White House driven bit; so the Dem's get them to agree to a special prosecutor who then goes after the NYTimes while the only chump (initially -ed.) to bite on the obviously tainted story gets a walk. No one really knows what kind of bargain Novak was able to cut but you can be reasonably sure that it is one of two things. He either rolled or he took such a principled stand, so righteously, that Fitzgerald was awe struck and decided to prosecute others. I've heard Novak went over to the dark side of the force; that must be it. This pursuit is unnecessary and we all know why it is driven. To attempt to deny it bespeaks the dumbest of gullibility.
It's time to get down to the fight. We are fighting for our social, civic and professional lives. We're gonna have to really want this one. ¶ 6/29/2005 12:41:00 PM
Not necessarily a bad thing that karma came to bite the profession in the ass. We shouldn't have been beholden to following the whims of politics and so now there are few at any point of the political spectrum we can count as being in the foxhole with us. It just seems as if we ain't got a friend to be found. Kinda can't blame 'em; we failed everybody, all around. There were bells, whistles and claxons going off that should have woke us to the sham comin' down. {Check the last three lines!} And the "crusaders" think the glory of their Message has been denied to all the world because of our slovenly state (Or we failed to effectively convey the important and far reaching needs for our country's course). Journalism, as a whole, failed to consistently deliver the news; good or bad, left or right. We, as journalists, must now begin the fight to gain the respect and support we need to keep our society free.
The truth will be a mighty armor in this fight. As I've said, the search for truth is never neutral. You gotta really want it: You gotta have that fire to find the truth. You have to want it bad enough to have the courage to make the tough choices the right way. And as we know, the truth doesn't usually come from the utterance of one voice. The right thing to do now is to make this issue front page on every newspaper, web space and broadcast news in the nation. We need the clarity and courage($$) to show that this isn't just an "inside baseball" story. It isn't over yet, but this could be The Big News. This could be the thing that effects every man, woman and child in this country long after the war in Iraq is over. There's more than one way to come at this story, that has been developing right under our noses for the last century or so. The story is big enough for everybody to get a piece of it.
All the blips along the way aside; you can reasonably state that steadily increasing information flow, that was not controlled by the government, has now put the civil, private side on a more equal footing with the government. There is now a greater parity than ever. This prosecution of Cooper and Miller is designed to remove one advantage of the press and gain a greater supremacy for the government. This would be a simple case of prosecutorial abuse were the grand political nature of it not so evident. The administration wants to plug all the holes in their control of the message.
The whole affair stinks to the high heavens. The leak was a White House driven bit; so the Dem's get them to agree to a special prosecutor who then goes after the NYTimes while the only chump (initially -ed.) to bite on the obviously tainted story gets a walk. No one really knows what kind of bargain Novak was able to cut but you can be reasonably sure that it is one of two things. He either rolled or he took such a principled stand, so righteously, that Fitzgerald was awe struck and decided to prosecute others. I've heard Novak went over to the dark side of the force; that must be it. This pursuit is unnecessary and we all know why it is driven. To attempt to deny it bespeaks the dumbest of gullibility.
It's time to get down to the fight. We are fighting for our social, civic and professional lives. We're gonna have to really want this one. ¶ 6/29/2005 12:41:00 PM
