Monday, December 27, 2004
Baldilocks on The Donald
The problem with the mainstream media is that so few of them are (or recognize) real men, that such foreign beings actually frighten them. Real men communicate with each other (and everyone else) without the…er…nuance that characterizes the exchanges between more neutered types.
Link.
I don't think it's that so much. There are real men all over the place. In all walks of life. But journalists thrust themselves into the impossible job of having to analyze, and provide perspective on, things they do not understand.
You know, like warfighting. Operations. Logistics.
There is nothing in a journalists' education which prepares him or qualifies him to do so to any useful extent. And it's not something he can learn on the job, because his editors don't have those skills either.
Some guys are quick learners - the ones who know their limitations, and who pick up the phone and ASK when they're in over their heads. The ones who are masters of negative capability. The ones who eschew 'gotcha' journalism and scoopism, and simply learn to tell a story. With the bejeezus reported out of it behind the scenes.
Those are rare gems. Those are few and far between. And those are real men (and real women!)
Murrow was one. Ernie Pyle. Today, I think of John Burns at his best. Esther Schraeder of the Los Angeles Times (most of the time). I think of William Greider when he wrote Secrets of the Temple (but not his execrable columns on the Iraq war.) Sy Hersh at the top of his own game.
The Donald is an alien being to the press because he's competent. Reporters, generalists that they are, are almost universally incompetent. At least, compared to those professionals on the beats which they cover.
And when I think of my own reporting two years ago, before the war, with a very few exceptions, I think "What an idiot I must have been!"
But that's good. It means I'm growing.
Splash, out
Jason
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