And I plan to do a follow-up about how this is the kind of multimedia work that might save NYT’s bacon. But I can’t help but feel like the NYT is doing penance for its past sins. It’s too late, after all, to make up for bringing us into a senseless war. But is it enough to save the discredited press?

Speaking only for myself, I’ve been appalled and disgusted with the MSM in general — mostly about the he said/she said format that falsely equates environmentally irresponsible shills funded by oil corporatations with credible, peer-reviewed scientists. After seeing key issues like climate change languish for so many years, because the press acted like syncophants to political elites, it’s taken me awhile to see what value the press might still merit. Nevertheless, after a few long slogs on some (lunatic, inaccurate, wheedling) wingnut blogs, I now hope the MSM gets its shit together ASAP, because there needs to be some entity paying people to go out and research, synthesize, and report information.

The press needs to do more ‘credibility indexing’ a la MediaMatters — when it comes to Iraq, I’m absolutely fed up with yammering tools like Wm Kristol, who doesn’t even speak any Arabic.

Every single article should have a little sidebar listing data about sources used for the article, along with a checklist, even rated 1 – 10:
– speaks (language of country being reported on)
– has lived in (country being reported on) from X to Y dates.
– reads (language of country being reported on) fluently/slightly
– has traveled to (country being reported on)
– has friends living in (country being reported on)
– is familiar with political, cultural, or literary history of (country being reported on)

Wm Kristol, on Iraq would be: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
Juan Cole would be: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10

So would I believe ‘Mr. Zero’, or would I put more credence in “Mr. 60 Points”?
Yeah, the sources would want to fudge the numbers, but nevertheless even the act of laying out the sidebar would at least make a reporter think, “Okayyyy… maybe I’d better not quote Kristol on Iraq…’

Then repeat that process for sources on climate change:
– has published peer-reviewed articles in respected scientific journals
– has obtained a tenured position in a publicly funded research institution…
– has received recognition from scientific peers…
…. you get the idea…

Looking forward to your follow-up.

Biological systems require good internal communication; for instance, the body is always monitoring insulin, oxygen levels, etc, etc, etc… information loss is a sign of bad health.

Same with cultures.
This whole business about media credibility is more about the health of a society facing big problems than it is about ‘partisan agendas’, IMHO.
Bad information leads to terrible decisions.

That’s would be one small change for newspapers.
One giant change for credibility.

Yeah, I’m a dreamer….

File under: Duh!

Retired generals tend to support the military. Well, yes. They spent their lives making a career there, and they’re probably still getting pensions from the military. If there’s evidence of arm-twisting to get a retired general to go on TV and spew bullshit, or if there are undisclosed conflicts of interest, then by all means tell us about it. (Speaking of which, where’s the story titled: “Former Clinton Insider Moderates Clinton/Obama Debate”?) Otherwise, I’m not sure what the story is here.

Retired Republicans will tend to support Republicans. Retired Democrats will tend to support Democrats. Retired college professors will tend to support colleges. Retired police officers will tend to support the police. And so on. These people aren’t going on TV as objective, dispassionate observers. They’re there pretty much BECAUSE they’re biased in favor of the military.

Barstow, the Times’ Michael Clayton. Will he have an epiphany, or get another company car and bigger bonus?

I accept Mr. Barstow’s conclusion; there was no “quid pro quo”. After all, he works for the Times, our newspaper of record. If he made a claim, he’d have to have proof to back it up.

But I’m troubled by that unqualified declarative statement. There was no quid pro quo. Did he research that thoroughly and prove a negative? Or did he suspect the obvious, but not have enough time or facts to confirm the existence of what would presumably be well disguised exchanges of value. In which case, why such a strong verdict of “not guilty” rather than “not proven” or “the jury’s still out”?

As an analogy, consider a few of the incentives US companies thought of to gain access to the closed, but huge and potentially profitable China market. Science and MBA scholarships to Ivy League schools for children of influential players. Design and research centers, contributing technology and training, but with little ability to control its “informal” disclosure. Guaranteed local employment or other social spending, solving headaches for local or national politicians whose networks determine which investors and investments to allow in.

The point is that there are as many ways to “exchange value” without violating US anti-bribery laws as there are smart lawyers. So also, there are lots of ways to exchange value with retired generals without documenting an explicit quid pro quo. Based on the Times history since 2001, it would seem foolish to take Mr. Barstow’s assertion at face value.

Marcy — As you explain, citing chapter and verse, Barstow’s frequent job at the NYT is managing the Times’s own image of itself. I would say that that has been the primary consideration for much of the MSM, and the Times in particular, for a good while now, and that this in itself has become the crucial and single most corrupting force in the overlapping worlds of media and politics. That is, everything that the Times prints, or NBC or ABC or CBS et al. broadcasts, has become a form of advertising for those entities themselves — as in “Can ‘we,’ do we want to, dare we, what what will to mean to ‘them’ if we say this or say that.” It’s corrupt but mostly I think a form of delusory self-corruption, as though one were trying to perform a fairly complex athletic feat in front of a two-way mirror, judging what one is doing both on the basis of one’s reflected image but also on who one assumes or guesses is standing on the other side of the mirror (and is thus not visible to you) and what you think they’re thinking about what they’re seeing you do. Thus, for example, Judy Miller was someone’s idea at the Times of how to best protect the Times’s image-franchise from actual present stress– or (as, or even more, likely) imagined future stress — from the quarters of power that it was understood (internally at the Times and externally in those quarters) Miller was connected to and more or less represented. It’s as though the Times were saying, “Look, we’re giving you Judy Miller — is that enough?” Examples of this could be multiplied a thousandfold and are not confined to the Times.

Iago:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Othello Act 3, scene 3, 155–161

Think that these mouthpieces realize that their reputations have aquired the taint of “whore”?

While much that Greenwald says is sound, I think he finally drops the ball by saying this: “The single most significant factor in American political culture is the incestuous, extensive overlap between our media institutions and government officials. The former is a dependent appendage of the latter far more than they are anything else.”

This blurs the fact (or so I believe it to be) that it is the media’s own actual or illusory fears and weaknesses that led to its need, developed over the last 30 years or so, to engage in an incestuous overlapping relationship with ANY significant, external-to-itself entity that it thinks is more powerful, more successful, and that possesses more authority and cultural resonance than it does itself. That is, the media is not dependent on government officials, or the lowest-common-denominator aspects of popular culture, or anything else like that because it has been seduced by those forces but because the media previously had come to see itself as a failing, gutted enterprise. The answer to those fears, perverse as it may seem, was to deny (in deed more than in word) the media’s Fourth Estate status, to shed or cede any claim that media itself was an authoritative social force that had an authoritative role to play. Once such steps were taken — they began in the mid-1970s at the paper where I worked from 1977 to 2002 — all the rest was virtually inevitable.

The administration – here meaning primarily Rumsfeld and Cheney (no doubt the “boss” Rumsfeld mentions who wants “this” done immediately) – took extraordinary steps to orchestrate these supposedly individual private efforts and then to hide that orchestration. It’s a strong indicator of the falseness of their claims and that despite their and Barstow’s protests, some value was exchanged, presumably once or twice removed.

That value may have been board seats, consultancy contracts, allowing otherwise retired golfers to stay in the military limelight. The options are as varied as the egos of those involved. By design, it would take considerable digging to reveal. To paraphrase a different player than Iago, Mr. Barstow and his Pentagon sources protest too much.

The methodology revealed by this story is not new. It is disturbing, a threat to democracy and to the credibility of the government and the press, but new. It is standard operating procedure for this administration.

It’s how they responded “immediately” to the Wilson/Plame threat, and to revelations by the few non-housetrained reporters like Sy Hersh. It’s how they deal with routine announcements of policy, whether about the war, education, or the environment. They use planted stories from supposedly neutral experts to persuade citizens that its extraordinary, radical or incompetently executed policies are business as usual and helpful to them.

It is a fraud perpetrated by frauds. And John McCain wants to give us four more years of it. Juan Cole has his number:

In other words, elect McCain, my friends, and you are summoning the awful genie of another 9/11. I said it. I mean it. I’m not taking it back. That man’s announced policies could well produce a blowback that will lead to the end of democracy in the United States. It is a momentous decision.

http://www.juancole.com/

One other thing that needs to be mentioned: ‘retired’ officers can get nailed for speaking out against this maladministration.
The military version of retirement means that they still own you; if they want to yank your chain, they’re legally entitled to do it.

The media, in purporting to rely on the “objectivity” of these retired generals, hides behind the supposed professionalism of these military experts in the same way that Bush pretends that Iraq policy is based on what the still-serving generals tell him what is needed on the ground. The media likes to use these generals as commentators because it makes it look like the media is consulting disinterested professional. The fact that these commentators used to wear uniforms, and perhaps even served in combat, does not change the fact that they are now essentially unregistered lobbyists for Pentagon interests. At least when a drug industry or oil industry lobbyist goes on TV (s)he is identified as such, a retired general is always given deference and is never identified as a lobbyist for the Pentagon or the merchants of death in the M-I Complex. The media just loves a man in uniform, from Ollie North to John McInsane.