Here’s what I emailed Vargas:

Before you engage in the usual droll oh-how-cute, citizens-think-they-can-do-journalism condescension, you guys might want to get your own house in order.

“Journalists, he continues, ‘follow a set of standards, a code of ethics. Objectivity rules. That’s not the case with citizen journalists. Anything goes in that world.’

And sometimes the facts go out the window.”

You mean, the same way they do in the Washington Post?

Yesterday, Dan Balz reported on the Giuliani-Romney spat over whether crime had gone up or down in Massachusetts while Romney was governor. He reported what Rudy said, he reported what Mitt said.

He could have reported the actual crime statistics, which two minutes’ Googling would have produced. This would have allowed readers to conclude which candidate was closer to the truth. But sometimes the facts never come in the window to begin with, huh?

Or take Howard Kurtz, also in yesterday’s WaPo:

“On the morning of Jan. 4, 2008, the winners of the Iowa caucuses — one Democrat, one Republican — will blast into the stratosphere as if they were strapped to a booster rocket.

It’s an immutable law of political physics that those who prevail in Iowa will hurtle toward New Hampshire with bulked-up poll numbers, gathering blinding momentum on the path to nomination.”

But a quick check of Wikipedia tells us that in years where Iowa was seriously contested, the Iowa winner usually lost in NH.

Kurtz didn’t bother to report that. So much for the importance of facts in the MSM.

And that doesn’t even get to the failure of MSM outlets such as yours to provide the facts that we need, like simple comparison/contrast pieces on where the candidates, and the parties, stand on the major issues of the day, such as Iraq, health care, global warming.

Nor does it address the insanely skewed view of the MSM as to *what* the major issues might be. Take the WaPo’s “Ideas Primary” series of unsigned editorials.

There have been 15 such editorials so far. Five have been on the still-distant, still-hypothetical Social Security ‘crisis.’ Two have been on health care, one on global warming, one on terrorism, zero on Iraq – all of which are much more pressing, and all of which have equally great (if not far greater) potential long-term consequences as Social Security’s projected shortfall.

Yet the WaPo editorial staff treats that potential shortfall as more important than Iraq, global warming, our healthcare crisis, and al-Qaeda combined.

You guys have a lot of housecleaning to do. I suggest you get to it, instead of patting citizen journalists on the head and telling them it’s cute that they’re trying to do what *real* journalists do, but they shouldn’t waste their time.

Suburban Girl @ 33

I will probably take some heat for saying this but please hear me out (as best one can in such a brief comment): standards and a code of ethics are fine things. Citizen journalists should talk about such things. However, the source here (Keen) and other professional journalists who critcize blogs, wikipedia etc don’t seem to follow their own standards or ethical codes. And, for those that do, they are completely caught in the GOP media/entertainment system that makes reporting a joke. Mainstream journalists lack credibility on so many levels that one cannot take their critiques of the rest of us seriously.

I think you are right, but I also think there is some serious oversimplification on both sides. When we criticize the MSM, we have in mind specific examples of really terrible journalist because we want and expect the good ones to be the norm.

I don’t doubt that when they criticize us they have in mind, specific examples (Can you say Pam Atlas?) if really goofy blogs… and be fair there a way way way more goofy blogs than good ones, and they think theat good serious blogs, like this one, are some kind of aberation.

You know what? FDL is an aberation. This is not the work of someone just looking to vent in public, this it the product of a ridiculous # of hours by people already accomplished (and often published) in other spheres.

All day long there is a running discussion going on backstage about what stories are developing and what we might be able to cover that day or that week.

Just like in a regular newsroom. One of my sisters was a “Professional Journalist” (shestarted out in print, moved to radio –BBC–and then was an anchor blond. Now she teaches journalism) and she tells me that what we do is actually run a virtual newsroom.

The biggest difference is that we have a less “top/down” structure than most.

Yes, the nuances here are important. Not all blogs are created equal as we well know. FDL and others are doing that important fact-checking and critical analysis we hope “professional” journalists would be doing.

=

http://www.comedycentral.com/m…..ideo=91639

Klein was once very industrious: he wrote regularly for the New Yorker, and must have an impressive resume’. He must also have made a pile of money from Primary Colors, which seems to have finished his career/reputation as a straight reporter. He has since joined (if he did not always belong to) the neo-con, deception-is-fine-if-it’s- for-the-little-people’s-own-good school of thought. He appears to enjoy the good things of life.

Etymology:
French, from Latin amator lover, from amare to love

From Merriam-Webster.

From the perspective of amateur/professional, if getting paid for your work, earning a living at it, Van Gogh was an amateur, as was Edward Weston, Tchaikovsky and many others. Salieri was more the pro than Mozart.

I will probably take some heat for saying this but please hear me out (as best one can in such a brief comment): standards and a code of ethics are fine things. Citizen journalists should talk about such things. However, the source here (Keen) and other professional journalists who critcize blogs, wikipedia etc don’t seem to follow their own standards or ethical codes. And, for those that do, they are completely caught in the GOP media/entertainment system that makes reporting a joke. Mainstream journalists lack credibility on so many levels that one cannot take their critiques of the rest of us seriously.

I think you are right, but I also think there is some serious oversimplification on both sides. When we criticize the MSM, we have in mind specific examples of really terrible journalist because we want and expect the good ones to be the norm.

I don’t doubt that when they criticize us they have in mind, specific examples (Can you say Pam Atlas?) if really goofy blogs… and be fair there a way way way more goofy blogs than good ones, and they think theat good serious blogs, like this one, are some kind of aberation.

You know what? FDL is an aberation. This is not the work of someone just looking to vent in public, this it the product of a ridiculous # of hours by people already accomplished (and often published) in other spheres.

All day long there is a running discussion going on backstage about what stories are developing and what we might be able to cover that day or that week.

Just like in a regular newsroom. One of my sisters was a “Professional Journalist” (shestarted out in print, moved to radio –BBC–and then was an anchor blond. Now she teaches journalism) and she tells me that what we do is actually run a virtual newsroom.

The biggest difference is that we have a less “top/down” structure than most.