In all the righteous indignation about the story that there were four cops who failed to enter the school after the shooting, I’ve yet to see a source cited other than CNN.
We on the right have spent a lot of time and energy yelling that CNN is untrustworthy.
Why, then, do we uncritically accept this story from CNN?
Story also reported by the local paper Sun-Sentinel, who says they got it from Coral Springs police
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-florida-school-shooting-response-fail-20180223-story.html
OK. You’re clearly better at tracking down sources than I am. Ever consider a second career in journalism?
(shudder)
Well, that’s the thing–journalism isn’t a profession. It doesn’t require a degree, it doesn’t require years of specialized training. You write stuff down, if you want to you ask other people questions, you make observations, do some research, etc. Literally a kid can do it, or even a pajama clad dude on the internet.
What CNN, etc, do is cultivate access to the rich and powerful so they can write stories at their behest. I don’t care what the likes of Dick Durbin and Adam Schiff want me to think, or that they use CNN to launder their press releases.
Journalists should be treated like vermin, not celebrities. We’d all be better off.
It seems believable because it does not fit the “agenda”. In promoting a leftist agenda, CNN would preferentially promote stories that fit in with “only police/military/government should have guns”. This story undermines that, so CNN would be unlikely to lie to disseminate it. Therefore, it is more likely than the typical CNN story to be true.
“Journalists should be treated like vermin, not celebrities. We’d all be better off.”
We do agree on some things. ;)
It turns out that the FBI are liars of the same caliber as the BROWARD COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE….>SPIT<.
They didn’t call Facebook or Instagram either about the shooter.
They didn’t bother.
See —
http://thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/just-reported-fbi-lied-investigating-fl-school-shooter-told-public-not-identify-video/
http://thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/stunning-fbi-never-contacted-youtube-learning-nikolas-cruz-vowed-become-professional-school-shooter/
This is the legitimacy collapse of the American state written in the blood of children.
My perception is that journalism changed at the time of Watergate. Previously, it was more of a blue-collar trade. But following the fall of Nixon, a lot of college kids got visions of becoming Investigative Journalists and collect scalps, thereby becoming celebrities.
Watergate plus Vietnam, I think. That gave the modern activist journalists their founding myth–they stopped a war and took down a president (it’s kind of funny/tragic how Nixon gets no credit for, you know, ending the war–somehow it’s “Nixon’s War”, as even John F’n Kerry called what he served in, although he served exclusively under LBJ…). And the draft deferments drove so many into attending college, where they insinuated themselves and somehow made it necessary to get a degree for any job, but especially now journalism, where the previous generation had no need for such silliness–love him or hate him, Cronkite dropped out of college to pursue journalism, since it was something you DID, not something you learned about in a classroom. So the lefty loonies are now the gatekeepers on both the education side AND the employment side, so we get morons who know nothing pontificating about how we all must listen to them because they are the priesthoods of information. It’s more than a bit pathetic, though, how little self-esteem they have that trash like Ben Rhodes can dump all over them publicly–even after they licked his boots and did his bidding–and they don’t utter a peep of protest. Sad!
“Watergate plus Vietnam, I think. That gave the modern activist journalists their founding myth–they stopped a war and took down a president ”
Yes and the leftward slant of college faculties began about the dame time as draft avoiding students stayed in grad school to avoid Vietnam and became the faculties 20 years later.
The old school were guys like Mike Royko.
Mike Royko grew up in Chicago, living in an apartment above a bar. His mother, Helen (née Zak), was Polish, and his father, Michael Royko, Ukrainian (born in Dolyna).[1] He briefly attended Wright Junior College and then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1952.[2]
From his bio. No modern reporter like “the 25 year olds who know nothing ” would have such a bio.
David Foster
My perception is that journalism changed at the time of Watergate. Previously, it was more of a blue-collar trade. But following the fall of Nixon, a lot of college kids got visions of becoming Investigative Journalists and collect scalps, thereby becoming celebrities.
In the ’70s, a number of very bright grads from my high school- many were Merit Finalist bright- went into journalism. At least one did it before Watergate, but yes, most went into journalism after Watergate. Most of them had written for the high school paper, which meant that Watergate wasn’t the only inspiration for going into journalism. Some of them have become nationally recognized. Only one of them became- or should I say remained- a moonbat lefty. One, perhaps because of his experience with a failed startup newspaper, which showed him that entrepreneurs don’t have it as easy as the lefty mantra informs us, became a libertarian. Another became an arts journalist, with articles that very seldom focused on the “hip.” Another wrote on foreign affairs,with balanced, well-informed articles: exactly what one would expect of a journalist.
My niece is a business journalist, so she can’t get away with the “knows nothing” approach that Rhodes lampooned.
While I overall have contempt for journalists, I respect most of the journalists I have known.
“While I overall have contempt for journalists, I respect most of the journalists I have known.”
Yes, it needs to be emphasized that CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc., do not equal journalism. The local newspaper reporter is not a boot licking piece of garbage like Acosta, Cuomo, etc. The beat writers in Peoria, Utica, Scranton, Bakersfield, etc. aren’t looking to get rich and cultivate connections so they can be Chuck Schumer’s sock puppet. I think Trump would do himself well to have his communications staff pick a local newspaper to give an interview to at least once a week, if not several times a week. Obama actually was very good at this sort of thing.
Brian….”I think Trump would do himself well to have his communications staff pick a local newspaper to give an interview to at least once a week, if not several times a week.”
This is a very good idea.
Blogging is also journalism, let’s not forget that. This site is a bastion of “citizen journalism”; most of those who write and comment here are not professional journalists but with some exceptions they are both informative and thought-provoking if not entertaining. As for most “professional” journalists these days I find myself in agreement with General W. T. Sherman….
Because it is an admission against interest.
@Jenk: I think Sherman and R.E. Lee agreed on that issue ;-)
I have a friend who is a science journalist for the San Diego Union and he is excellent at it.
I have gone to some science meetings with him and met Craig Venter at one.
Then there are people like Michale Hiltzik at the LA Times who used to use sock puppets to send emails praising himself.
Mike, regarding Royko,
Roger Ebert had a great story about hanging out with Mike Royko one night when Royko was already a veteran journalist and Ebert was a young cub reporter.
Funny story, but he obviously didn’t suffer fools gladly in the first place. The rules of the journalism game changed on him late in his career, and he didn’t accept it. He wrote an article endorsing Buchanan for president. It was deliberately designed to ruffle as many feathers as possible. The resulting fallout probably contributed to his untimely demise.
Royko was the old time reporter like the one Butterworth describes in his Philadelphia police series.
I doubt many remember Westbrook Pegler, who started as a sports writer and became a famous Roosevelt critic.
At his peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Pegler was a leading figure in the movement against the New Deal and its allies in the labor movement, such as the National Maritime Union. He compared union advocates of the closed shop to Hitler’s “goose-steppers.” The National Maritime Union sued Hearst and Associated Press for an article by Pegler, settled out of court for $10,000.[5] In Pegler’s view, the corrupt labor boss was the greatest threat to the country.
He really raised Hell but had a sense of humor. One year he sent out Christmas cards that showed him with Eleanor Roosevelt.