Here's a curious collection of TV news people making gaffes or showing their true colors. It begins with Katie Couric insulting the Palin family, and get much worse. Some of these clips are offensive (the second and third particularly), and there's a good one in the middle of Rush Limbaugh's comments about NFL Quarterback Donovan McNabb, which is not a gaffe at all, but the context around his comment which got him removed from that sport's show. Watch the whole thing and you'll hear what he's saying and that at least of his co-hosts believes he is making a good point.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air describes more of the coverage of the JournoList revelation, talking about the few reporters who stood up for honesty on occasion:

James Surowiecki offered a longer exposition on the same theme after Journolisters started debating whether the media should report on Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan’s ties to radical Islamist terrorists. When Luke Mitchell of Harper’s argued that reporting on the ties would lead to something “alarmingly dangerous, such as the idea that there is a large conspiracy of Islamists at work in the United States,” Surowiecki reminded Mitchell and others of the entire purpose of journalism, emphasis mine:

“I find it bizarre that anyone would argue that an accurate description of what happened is somehow pointless,” Surowiecki said. “That is, that it’s not useful to offer up an accurate picture of Hasan’s actions because nothing obvious follows from it. We want, as much as possible, to have a clear picture of what’s actually going on in the world. Describing Hasan as a violent Islamist terrorist is much closer to the truth than describing him as a disturbed individual.”

One has to wonder why a journalist from Harper’s — and other publications — would need that reminder, especially about terrorism.

The Daily Caller has an exposé of a Journalist discussion group called JournoList.

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.

Read more on The Daily Caller.

Politico.com did a story on this list last year, giving it a much less radical appearance. Perhaps the comments at the time were much less radical. The senior editor of The New Republic described the conversations on this exclusive email list.

“There is probably general agreement on the stupidity of today’s GOP,” he said. “But beyond that, I would say there is wide disagreement on trade, Israel, how exactly we got into this recession/depression and how to get out of it, the brilliance of various punk bands that I have never heard of, and on whether, at any given moment, the Obama administration is doing the right thing.”

The story this week is that JournoList members assume the worst of conservatives, and perhaps each other occasionally, pioneering new interior ground on the quest to learn how much hate they truly have. Maybe they should read Chesterton. Then they'll get an idea of who is at fault for the world's ills, and it isn't Bush.

Our friend Dale Nelson sent me a link to this New York Times column by Ross Douthat, all about why many “literary” authors are turning to writing historical novels, rather than setting their stories in contemporary settings. His interesting conclusion is that modern culture just doesn't present the kind of conflicts that made the family sagas of old work so well:

You can write an interesting contemporary novel based on the “Anna Karenina” template in which the heroine gets a divorce, marries her modern-day Vronsky, and they both discover that they’re unhappy with the choices they’ve made — but the last act just isn’t going to be quite as gripping as Tolstoy’s original. You can turn the Jane Austen template to entertaining modern purposes, as Hollywood did in “Clueless” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” but the social and economic stakes are never going to be as high for a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet as they were for the Regency-era version.

I think he's got something there. If you want to write a novel about, say, an unwed mother, you can suggest that your plucky heroine's Neanderthal, Bible-thumping parents don't want her to have an abortion, but there's really nothing they can do to stop her. The only other problem her romantic passions are likely to get her into is that of sexually transmitted diseases. In that case, she either takes medication to get better, or she's stuck with the problem for life. There's little scope for her to heroically defy convention and shame the small minds; there is no convention to defy.

P. G. Wodehouse wrote stories about couples being kept apart by unsympathetic fathers and guardians, well past the point in history when such parental figures had “sunk to the level of a third rate power” (to quote “Uncle Fred Flits By”). He was able to get away with it because his stories were light confections, not intended to reflect real life in any serious way. If he'd been forced to be realistic, the fun would drained out like water from a lion-footed bathtub.

Is it an indictment of modern society to say that it doesn't offer scope to certain forms of fiction? Probably not.

But I often think of the popularity of Amish stories in the Romance genre, as I've mentioned here before. I don't think it's unrelated to highbrow authors writing historical novels. I think there's a hunger out there to be able to live in a society where people care enough about you to tell you when they think you're messing up your life.

The autonomous life, in the end, is a pretty lonely one.

The Sun Chronicle hasn't appreciated reader feedback recently and has now guarded its article comments with a 99 cent fee. So you can fill out the order form, pay almost a dollar, and comment freely thereafter. I don't know if that system will apply to only this Massachusetts paper or also to the other two papers the D'Arconte company owns.

I attend a Lutheran congregation in north Minneapolis, one that belongs to the church body I work for. It's large but not huge. The senior pastor has made himself visible in the media for a number of years as a critic of the liberal church, and of modern trends such as universalism, women's ordination, higher criticism of the Bible, and the normalization of homosexuality. He is a single man.

Last night, while watching local news on television, I discovered that he'd been “outed” as a homosexual.

He was not discovered in a “gay” bar. He was not discovered having sex with another man in a public rest room.

According to the news accounts I've seen (emanating from liberal sources) he was discovered attending a support and accountability group in a Roman Catholic church. He was speaking honestly, to men he trusted, about his struggles, slips, and temptations.

In other words, he was doing precisely what people on our side of the argument say a man in his situation ought to do. He is the very opposite of a hypocrite.

On the basis of the accounts I've read, the “journalist” who produced the story infiltrated this accountability group, lied about his purposes, and then broke the promise of confidentiality he made to get in.

The television story pretended to be a high-minded think piece about whether it's ever appropriate to “out” someone against their wishes.

I don't believe that was the real purpose of the story. I believe it was to splash my pastor's picture all over TV screens in our state, with a metaphorical scarlet letter on his chest.

My pastor has my full support, and my prayers. God bless him, and all godly men in his situation.

Here are five things that we think should never change in journalism.

Jane Friedman of Writer's Digest says we should not worry so much about grammar. "Perfect grammar has nothing to do with great writing," she blogs. "Certainly, I will admit that people who are better at grammar often have more sensitivity for the nuance of language—and tend to be better writers—but for the most part, facility with grammar has nothing to do with storytelling talent."

FTC may propose internet taxes on news sites to fund old school journalism outlets. "[G]overnment policy would encourage a tax on websites like the Drudge Report, a must-read source for the news links of the day, so that the agency can redistribute the funds collected to various newspapers. Such a tax would hit other news aggregators, such as Digg, Fark and Reddit, which not only gather links, but provide a forum for a lively and entertaining discussion of the issues raised by the stories. Fostering a robust public-policy debate, not saving a particular business model, should be the goal of journalism in the first place."

Chris Pash reports the phrase at the end of the day "is the most popular cliche in journalism globally. It is all-pervasive." Headline writers also love "Man Bites Dog" in some fashion. For example:

• "Man bites dog: Pawlenty has kind words for Obama" from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on May 4
• "The Nation: What Happens To Welfare Mothers?" Lead sentence: "It's the man-bites-dog story that never ends." from NPR today
• "Groin ailment slows St. Louis Cardinals' Holliday" leading with "This is man-bites-dog material." What the? That's from the St Louis Post-Dispatch May 8.
Get more fun journalist's cliches through the link.

How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media

Angela Lu of WORLD Magazine contemplates a story from last week.

Atlanta Progressive News (APN) reporter Jonathan Springston was fired last week because “he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News,” according to an e-mail from his editor.

What a fascinating story. And it raises so many interesting questions.

I don't deny APN's right to make the termination. They would appear to be an ideological news website (here's their link), and it's no more out of line for them to fire someone who denies their ideology than it would be for a Christian web site to fire someone who converted to Wicca.

But I have to wonder, what are the rules for subjective journalism? Is it possible to fact-check a story, when the editor's reality and the reporter's are held to be completely unconnected? And why would anyone go to them for news, if they admit from the outset that what they're reporting may not apply in the reader's world?

What if a subjective journalist committed plagiarism? Maybe there's nothing wrong with plagiarism in his reality. Or maybe the original document doesn't exist for him. Who's to say?

And indeed, how can the editorial board be sure that their subjectivity rule applies in Jonathan Springston's universe? Maybe he works for an Atlanta Progressive Journal that embraces objectivity.

These are a few of the dilemmas of postmodernism. And one reason why the whole structure is collapsing.

Over at the mighty Powerline blog, Scott Johnson publishes an exclusive statement from the great Stephen Hunter. Hunter writes about his latest Bob Lee Swagger novel, I, Sniper, and about what it was like to be a conservative journalist at liberal newspapers. Well worth reading.

I know you follow my health with passionate interest, so I'll mention that I saw the doctor again yesterday. She told me that (contrary to my own views) I'm recovering from my bronchitis. It's just taking a while.

I also asked her about the sore shoulder I've been enduring for some months, in the Norwegian manner—“No point spending money on medical advice. It'll probably get better by itself. If it actually starts to turn blue and the fingernails fall out, then I'll have it looked at.” I figured it was probably bursitis.

To my delight, she informed me it's not bursitis, but tendonitis. This was gratifying, because in my mind bursitis is something old people get, while tendonitis is something that happens to young athletes. It appears I'm not doomed to feel like this for the rest of my life, but will be permitted to continue to delude myself that my gray hair is premature.

Nielsen Business Media, which is closing down Editor & Publisher magazine, is also stopping production of Kirkus Reviews, which was known for it's honest, even blunt, book reviews. “There was no sense of any financial distress within the Kirkus brand," the editor said.

Editor & Publisher, a magazine which has covered the newspaper industry for 125 years, is closing down this month. The editor, Greg Mitchell, says it wasn't a complete surprised, but it kinda was.

Describing E&P, Mitchell states, "I don’t think there are too many trade publications that were as independent and critical as we are, and we made some people angry because of that. We were calling for more Web focus way before it was fashionable; we were critical of many moves the industry was making and not making . . ."

A new age of information without newspapers

I don't see how this helps anyone but Fox News. Maybe we should call for a nationwide beer summit.

The Greensboro News-Record dropped it's book pages a while back, probably following the lead of other newspapers. No doubt the decision was made by a secret cabal of news editors and producers who hate independent thinkers and truly want to crush reading throughout the country, at least reading outside the approved list. But readers still live in Greensboro. This editorial explains some of the popular demand that brought the book pages back to the newspaper.

More than 150 book clubs are affiliated with the Greensboro Public Library and dozens more operate on their own in dens and living rooms throughout the Triad.

Greensboro's One City, One Book initiative ranks among the most successful community "read-ins" in the country.

The Barnes & Noble store in Friendly Center is one of the chain's highest-volume stores in the Southeast.

I doubt this will become a trend. Everyone knows people who read newspapers don't read or care about books.

If they want to abuse their women, let them.

Michael Weiss writes, "Misogyny as multiculturalism," in response to media flak over an academic book on religious abuse and suppression of women. The left in the British press (at least some of them) are afraid of Muslims and will self-censor just to get along. "Cowardice gets dressed up as cultural sensitivity;" Weiss explains, "an eagerness to please semi-literate reactionaries becomes a form of willing internal exile, whereby independence of one’s own mind is held in suspicion, if not thought to be lethal in itself."

When a Washington Post writer profiled a leader for the cause of traditional marriage and freedom from homosexuality, she meant for the piece to be "condescending" or perhaps "snide." She didn't mean for liberal readers of the Post to rake her over the coals for giving a conservative a fair shake.

Frank Wilson links to "The Narrative," a presentation on PJTV on the playbook many media outlets use to present their views. It's incredible. The war against Western culture and by extension the God whose words informed that culture has been waged for decades by the people with the bumper stickers "War is not the answer."

Terry Teachout writes about new media: "Everybody in America was talking about TV early in 1949, though comparatively few Americans owned a set of their own. Network radio was still the dominant mass entertainment ­medium." There are lessons for today, but they aren't detailed. Making money by reporting news or providing entertainment online is still a pioneer territory. The old ad model may not do the job anymore.

One of the classic scenes of the Icelandic sagas comes from Njal’s Saga, in its description of the deliberations of the Icelandic Althing (national assembly) over the issue of converting to Christianity, about the year 1000 A.D.

As the debate raged, news came that a volcano had erupted, and the lava was threatening one of the leaders’ farms. The heathens in the assembly immediately pounced on this as evidence that the old gods were angry.

At that point Snorri the Chieftain (who happens to be a character in my novel West Oversea) stepped up and asked, “Then who were the gods angry at when this lava around us flowed?” He was referring to the rugged Icelandic landscape, which is all formed of cooled lava. The argument was dropped, and eventually the Icelanders agreed to be baptized (thus becoming, I’m told, the only nation in history to adopt Christianity through legislative action).

I tend to agree with Snorri (though he’s hardly my favorite saga character). I won’t go so far as to say that signs never come in our day, but I’m leery of them. Whenever I’ve thought I’ve seen a sign in my own life, it’s turned out to be an embarrassment. My church body believes that, in our time, those who have the Scriptures don’t need any further input on divine matters.

And yet, sometimes…Read the rest of this entry . . .

Mike Adams over at Townhall.com (sorry for the pop-up rich environment) posts what seems to me a splendid piece today. It's in the form of an address to his students at UNC-Wilmington, which he plans to give at the start of the school year. In it he throws down a gauntlet, declaring that he plans to violate the school's speech code, and see how the administration defends the suppression of ideas in an academic setting.

By the time these three speakers are finished, at least one of you will have filed a formal complaint claiming I have created a “hostile environment.” You’ll be relying, of course, on one of our university’s illegal speech codes.

I will respond by doing something that may surprise you: I will use the same illegal speech code to claim that the speech in your complaint is hate speech, which creates a “hostile environment” for people of faith.

Ben Stein used to write for the NY Times. He does not now, because according to his editors, he had the appearance of a conflict of interest in his writing and commercial endorsements. It's very much like the clear conflict Rush Limbaugh had with Pizza Hut several years ago. I mean, he probably ate a Pizza Hut pizza before and even after his commercial deal with them. Ridiculous. Stein, pictured right on April 4, 2001, wrote about finances in his column and endorsed a company which offers credit checking services. Both things are related to money; he probably even carried money on his person--clearly a conflict of interest.

In related news, the Times tossed out a column in which Stein criticized the president's power grabs. They did that just before they let him go. Bad timing, no doubt. Lots of people complained about Stein's columns over the years. Only now do they get through to the editors. Stein states:

The whole subject reminds me of a conversation Bob Dylan had long ago with a reporter who asked him what he thought about how much criticism he was getting for going from acoustic to electric guitar. "There are a lot of people who have knives and forks," he said, "and they have nothing on their plates, so they have to cut something."

There's a quote to put on tap.

Barbara Oakley, a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, write in a blog on Psychology Today's site:

Soviet Socialism, as it turned out, was a perverse system that killed motivation even as it made fear as natural as breathing.

Why wasn’t this widely reported in the Western press?

As it turns out, the preponderance of journalists are Democrats. And socialism, with its idyllic, “progressive” programs, has formed an increasingly important role in Democratic policies. Who wants to investigate a possible dark side of your own party’s plank?

... there’s a critically important concept that students of journalism are rarely taught. It’s easy to find any number of targets to write about in capitalist societies with an open press. But totalitarian governments are journalistic black holes.

(via Frank Wilson)

You already know that I keep novelist Stephen Hunter's picture in a locket, close to my heart. He proves (once again) his worthiness of such adoration in this marvelous piece in Commentary about Bonnie and Clyde--both the movie and the actual persons.

I always held pretty much this opinion. I just didn't know enough to say it so well.

Tip: Threedonia.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece reacting to a call from U.S. News and World Report to crack down on hateful speakers who supposedly encourage murders like those of the abortionist, the security guard, and the soldier over the last several weeks.

"If [last week's] Holocaust Museum slaying of security guard and national hero Stephen Tyrone Johns is not a clarion call for banning hate speech, I don't know what is. . . ." writes Bonnie Erbe in U.S. News and World Report. In response, James Taranto says,

This is not Islamist Iran or communist Cuba or some tin-pot military dictatorship. Our government does not simply round people up. It cannot deprive people of their liberty without a legal basis to do so, and it has no authority to punish people merely for expressing political views, no matter how odious.

This is not even a close call: The expression of prejudice and hatred is protected by the First Amendment. In America, neo-Nazis have a constitutional right to hold a parade in a neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors (National Socialist Party v. Skokie, 1977). That's about as hateful as you can get.

I surprised at emotional responses like Erbe's, and I can only assume she doesn't know the law or founding principles of our country. Of course, I'm not a legal scholar either, but what kind of philosophy leads one to advocate making hateful ideas a crime? A disjointed one, I'd think, one based in feeling, not truthful reason.

I like the way President Bush said it. Murder for any reason is hateful. There's no need to specify punishment for some motivations over others.

Napolitano: From Dimwit to Visionary. How do neo-nazis (or Jew-haters by any other name) get labeled right-wing extremists? I'm starting to hate right and left terminology.

News Corp. may be selling the news magazine The Weekly Standard to a Denver billionare. Also this week, The National Review is asking for your support.