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The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Media on media

8 comments on Media on media

Media on media

: Just got called to be on Brian Lehrer’s show on WNYC and Sirius at 10:40a ET to talk about Zephyr Teachout’s post yesterday. Stream here.

:See Glenn’s additional posts here, including notes from Jerome that he quit blogging during this time and responses from Kos. Here’s Zephyr’s folo.

: On Lehrer’s show, I made something clear I’ll make clearer here: Kos and MyDD didn’t do anything wrong (one put up a disclosure, the other stopped blogging). That’s not the point of the discussion. If anybody did anything wrong in this, it could be argued that the Dean campaign did by trying to buy the voice of the bloggers (even though they already had their strong support). But that’s not the real point, either. The points that Zephyr raises about our opportunity to define our culture and how the expectations of our public are what interest me. That’s worth discussing (without all the brickbats back and forth from the various partisans here; I’m separate from that because I never backed Dean and you couldn’t have paid me to).

8 responses to “Media on media”

  1. Peter McCarthy Avatar
    Peter McCarthy

    Both Kos and the Dean campaign may be “wrong”, but the moral judgments here seem strained. Somehow it always seems to go back to the issue of transparency – that’s what the “expectation of the public” demands.
    While TV may indeed “explode” from the snap of the long tail, at least it’s clear where the commercials are. (That is mostly – product placement blurs the picture.) When I glance over at the Google ad inserts on many blogs, I can choose to click further or not. My choice. It’s understood the advertiser is trying to reach me because I am a reader of that blog, or viewer of a certain show. It’s an upfront and honest exchange.
    Celebrities paid to be seated on the runways of fashion shows, bloggers being paid to espouse candidates — it all seems oily to me and diminishes my trust of both sides immediately.
    In the interest of transparency – and your chiding, I’m joining the ranks of full name signers.

  2. HH Avatar
    HH

    What Kos did wrong was so readily attack 50% of the blogging and/or pundit community as bought and paid for when he was so easily bought off himself.

  3. Brandon Avatar
    Brandon

    Is it concievable that this Wonkette issue is yet another attempt from the right to cloud up the issues around a possibly damaging controversy? If Dailykos indicates that it’s a paid Dean partisan, and MyDD quits blogging while it consults, there’s a world of difference between them and the Armstrong Williams case, where no such disclosure took place (and where, I might add, a great deal more cash exchanged hands). Am I wrong to suspect that WSJ might have picked up on the Wonkette story in order to make these cases seem equivalent, so that the public says “what does it matter, both sides do it,” when it’s obvious, in this case and I suspect in many others, that the far greater abuse has occured from the right?
    This is not to say that the issues Wonkette has with blog transparency aren’t worth discussing. But it seems to me, that they’re being used at this particular moment as a smokescreen as well.

  4. Angus Jung Avatar
    Angus Jung

    I can see how someone would confuse Kos with Wonkette. Neither one is funny.

  5. Dishman Avatar
    Dishman

    It’s not Wonkette, it’s Zonkette…
    My only problem with Kos in this is:
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/10/124045/880
    Until names are named, we can assume every conservative pundit is on the White House’s payola rolls.
    At the same time, he refuses to disclose who else is “buying his services”.
    I’m ok with one or the other, but not both.

  6. h0mi Avatar
    h0mi

    It’s also a bit disingenuous to try to describe Williams’ “bribe” as being a thousand times worse than the TANG document controversy given the fact that the “bribery” of Williams is being made the central issue (and not simply his failure to disclose it) and the realization that other bloggers mentioned acted identically (except they disclosed it.)

  7. p.lukasiak Avatar
    p.lukasiak

    Once again, Jarvis shows his own lack of ethics by refusing to take the right-wing media to task for its emphasis on this non-story.
    Any discussion of journalism, blogging and ethics has to start from the way the right wing media is willing to give credence to whatever shows up on blogs that suits their prejudices–then goes well beyond what appears in the blogs, and simply makes stuff up.
    (I mean, when Rush Limbaugh is telling his national audience that I got Mary Mapes directly in touch with Bill Burkett—and he is basing that on what appears in a New York Post (?) column by some idiot named Podhoretz, and Podhoretz is basing it on no evidence whatsoever…)
    When Jarvis starts applying the same standards to right wingers (including himself) that he applies to anyone that is not a right-winger, he will be qualified to discuss ethics. Until that time, he’s just another right-wing propagandist.

  8. Jaybird Avatar
    Jaybird

    P.lukasiak, it’s obvious to anyone with even a shred of intellectual integrity that Jarvis is a left-wing hack for defending obvious wingnuts like Kos and MyDD!
    “Obvious to anyone with even a shred of intellectual integrity” is one of my favorite things to throw into a paragraph to get the other person a little nuttier. “Shred of decency” works well too.
    That said, I don’t think that Jarvis’s take on this issue is anything but his honest opinion.
    If it is possible to hold Jeff’s opinion in good faith in the first place (and I believe it is) then it’s very possible that he is holding it in good faith (and I believe that he is doing so).
    The fact that his take is different than yours does not make him a propagandist.