I’ve gone all year without a post criticising the media (I never get tired of that old joke) and I even went so far as to half way defend them yesterday. But for everything that’s wrong about the news business today, read the assault with a limp weapon perpetrated on Patterico part 1 & part 2. Mr. Hiltzik commits the classic emotional fallacy of believing that his name calling works. It doesn’t. Far better bloggers than I have responded, from Patterico himself, not just once, but twice, Armed Liberal couldn’t say it all in just one post, but fine writing stylist and all around classy guy Tom Maguire manages it in just one response.
Highlights of the Hiltzik’s essays were his informative comparison of right wing critics of the news media (not just Patterico BTW – and yes, I’m disappointed I wasn’t mentioned along with Hugh Hewitt and Mickey Kaus – not that I deserve it) to Stalin and their blogs to his show trials, his charming theft of Tailgunner Joe’s line about how he had all kinds of evidence in his briefcase but he wasn’t going to share, his claim that people who hadn’t worked in daily journalism had no basis of criticism of same, and his rousing defense of story placement in the times that “The written language is a linear communications medium” so “something has to come first”.
Argumentative, insulting, stupid, unsatisfying, remarkably fact free and misleading, and ultimately headshaking are the blurbs this critic ends with. Sadly, it’s the standard response to criticism from those who understand daily journalism from their employment therein.
