Rago Holds Up More of a Mirror Than an Indictment

Joseph Rago writes in the December 20 Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal what at first might appear to be a scathing indictment of the blog community, but it is fact a mirror reflecting the worst of the mainstream media and ultimately explaining why blogs rise and newspaper circulations plunge.

Rago's entire take on the WWW and blogs in general is broad brushed, elitist tripe:

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.

Wow; I'am glad Rago has moved past this elitism stuff, otherwise I might think he was just another traditional media snob. Journalism requires journalist? Tell me Mr. Rago, where do you pick up your journalism license? I majored in Journalism, was managing editor of my small college weekly, won awards from various collegiate press associations, worked for a while at a network affiliate, in public relations and in politics and have yet to meet a journalist that was such by any other virtue but educational emphasis and a decision to work in that field.

There is no standard, test or commission that ensures one is a good or bad journalist except for the court of public opinion. As far as the blogs picking up scraps, it sounds exactly like picking up a dozen different dailies from around the country and reading the same AP news/opinion/can't tell the difference story. The MSM chases its own tail with frightening regularity and if Rago does not see this it is willful blindness. Watch any White House Press briefing, read the major daily papers, watch the network news and cable news (Yes, including Fox) and you see an automaton of frightening proportions when you consider this is supposed to be the vanguard of truth and accountability. The press has become a lazy, following and often politically driven institution that mistakes self aggrandizing as asking tough questions and too often gives out free passes to those in our public service considered "friendlies."

But what really seems to bother Rago more than anything (except that the right seems to dominate the blogs) is that there are so many non-journalist writing these days. We're not as serious as Rago and his pals, we don't posses the same faculties for introspection, seriousness and we are just, darn it, NOT journalist. It's obviously so vexing to Rago.

Rago complains that there is "rarely...sustained or systematic blog thought." Oh dear God. Watch any C-Span panel of journalist and often what passes for "rigor" or systematic thought" is simply the systematic regurgitation of the same press releases and/or quotes again and again without the slightest hint of skepticism or real intellectual digging for underlying fact or verification. If bloggers are the cattle of journalism, the MSM has become the great Bison herds of the 1800's.

His writing about the blogs also underscores the complete lack of introspection among "professional" journalist these days; their defense of even their most glaring mistakes is reflexive and vacuous, so lacking in intellectual honesty that it has led to the blog explasion he so decries.

But what really offends me about this hit piece posing as the rigor and careful thought trumpeted throughout is the anti-democratic notion that the competition in the marketplace of ideas is okay, so long as the ideas are put out there by the right people. Like the thoroughly trained, intellectually fit journalist of Mr. Rago's caliber:

But democracy does not work well, so to speak, without checks and balances. And in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress.

Without the checks and balances of a highly qualified journalist to tell us which opinions are valid, Mr. Rago? Are there lots of bad blogs? You bet. There are also lots of bad journalist. There is a lot of fault to be found on the blogs, but they do not erode democracy or the great debate, Mr. Rago, just your over-inflated opinion of yourself and your occupation.

Anyone who reads the last quote from Rago's piece and does not detect the malodorous scent of a snob is suffering from an common sense head cold.