There is a scene in the classic Disney movie Alice In Wonderland where Alice happens upon the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. At some point during their tea party centered ravings, the Mad Hatter poses the question to Alice: why is a raven like a writing desk? It's a nonsense question that Lewis Carroll penned in his book. There was to be no answer but writers, scholars and everyday people have created a variety of possible answers to this question meant to have no refrain to echo back. Detroit Free Press columnist (as well as radio personality, author and journalist at large) Mitch Albom tried to answer a similar question in a recent column that began by discussing the recent media dust up between Andrew Breitbart (of ACORN expose fame) and Shirley Sherrod (formerly of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) and video footage that Breitbart released where Sherrod admitted having racist attitudes towards white farmers seeking aid from the department in the 80s. Breitbart did not release a portion of tape that followed where Sherrod says that she went on to help white farmers seeking aid and was glad she did. The mainstream media has since pounced on Breitbart with a number of accusations ranging from race baiting to the issue of truth in journalism.
What Albom was most incensed about was not what concerned me greatest which was the idea of racism and racist attitudes within a department of the government. The government, its departments and various agencies are supposed to be colorblind and treat all of its citizens fairly and equally. The fact that these personal attitudes arose in Ms. Sherrod, even if they weren't acted upon, needed to be addressed and corrected. Personal beliefs and attitudes have no place within the federal government (as the separation of church and state is constantly pointing out ad nauseum). Albom, along with most other mainstream journalists, despise Breitbart for being an outsider who took a page from their own handbook. Albom and his ilk are toiling away at a dying media. The public has become disgusted with the fabrication of truth and facts that has become so rampant in mainstream media and have sought to stay informed through other alternative, less costly methods. Enter Internet media and Internet journalists (among them bloggers like Breitbart). As far as the mainstream public is concerned, mainstream media is a self-serving lot and the beauty of living in a society with freedoms, if you don't like the government mouthpiece press (hello NBC!), you can go elsewhere to spend your cash or create your own press. They can't say the same in Cuba or North Korea. Of course they have bigger problems like surviving national poverty to deal with.
Albom argues in his column that bloggers aren't real journalists (why do I feel a pitch for unionization coming on?) and that Breitbart is dangerous. The truth is the media is still pissed at Breitbart for taking ACORN down and emphasizing the longtime connection between ACORN and their Savior-In-Chief. And the fact that he used guerrilla journalism, something mainstream journalists believe they had patented, against their agendas only enrages them more. And they are going to crush him however long it takes and whatever it takes. That's the oath of the mainstream journalist after all. The following are my musings as I emailed to Albom.
Mitch,
With all due respect, your indignation and outrage at Breitbart in your Sherrod column had to be a tad inflated right? Because if not, I'm really shocked that a seasoned journalist like yourself can still look at mainstream media (forgetting the Internet media and blogging for a moment) like it hasn't already permanently sullied itself. Journalism was fact manipulation media long before bloggers like Breitbart were even conceived. Print journalism is nothing but collecting subjective quotes to weave a story and the nightly news is the arrangement of carefully orchestrated sound bites. And though you as a mainstream journalist would like nothing more than to distance yourself from those knock-off journalists known as Internet bloggers (per your column), Internet journalism is the mainstream media's illegitimate offspring, out committing sins of the father so to speak.
I'm 28 years old and it's been like that for as long as I can remember. There hasn't been a time in my life when I took mainstream journalism at face value. And I put Internet media and their journalists through the same sieve. I view both as being equally without merit. I look at someone like Dan Rather and the scandal he created some years back, having to leave his career disgraced because of disregarding facts, and I think about all his years as a journalist and how many other stories he must have dirtied or outright fabricated.
What I'm trying to say is that your anger is 30 years too late and it's misdirected. Breitbart is just the latest manifestation of the world's second oldest profession. If you had said that it was throwing gasoline on the fire regarding race relations in America today or shook your finger (like my father does) at Generation X and said the whole stinking generation is nothing more than a bunch of godless mercenaries with no respect for anyone, I could understand your argument. But Breitbart's and Rather's methods aren't so different. Manipulation through media.
