i was so thrilled to read the common ills and see wally's kind words. as most of my readers know c.i. & the common ills have the college campuses sewn up so i'll happily take the high school 1s.
wally, i promise not to disappoint the high school readers i just learned i have by toning down the language or the topics. you have my word that my site won't take a turn to pg-13. we're an r-rating here, a hard r. possibly drifting towards nc-17 from time to time.
so let's get going. i'm reading cjr daily today because a reader copied and pasted it into an e-mail. (smart move dolly, i don't visit that site.) and looks who's back, montopoli's back, bri-bri's
back on the blog report.
struck me kind of sad. sad that the great watchdog cjr who calls every 1 else out on their conflicts of interests and plays watchdog doesn't appear to patrol their own backyard.
yes, folks, little bri-bri took a big dump in the dog dish and the great cjr just let the turd float around in the bowl.
at a time when people are finally starting to notice that the mainstream has shut out female bloggers, perhaps it's time to scream, 'bri-bri, get your hands out of your drawers and tear down your gender apartheid wall!'
regardless, bri-bri's back on the blog blog, who put 'em back on the blog, oooh ah, back on the blog report? (as the newly inducted rock and roll hall of famers pretenders might sing.)
let's review.
cjr daily is part of cjr the way touchstone's part of disney. yeah, it can be a little more wicked than cjr the way touchstone can sneak in a topless shot but that's about all.
so cjr's a watchdog but they're so busy watchdogging every 1 else that they can't keep an eye on their own pup bri-bri need a watchful eye.
see bri-bri does some blog reports for pretty much a year and writes about blogs that he's supposed to be noting for some reason like the writing is notable, the topic is noteable, something along those lines. and we get the same blogs over and over in the blog reports done by bri-bri.
you start to wonder, 'gee does bri-bri know these bloggers personally? there are other bloggers after all!'
well it turns out he did know the bloggers he was citing. they are all cluster fuck buddies.
(i wrote about this yesterday.) but they never disclose that.
not only that, they still haven't disclosed it.
they've done no "perhaps we should have informed readers of this site" type note.
there's been no expose all mea culpa. hell, there's not even been a tea leoni! (a pretty excuse that seems to say something but doesn't really.)
and it's ugly. it's really ugly. and it's not living up to the ethics of cjr.
let me put you straight if you're late to out of the gate on this.
blogger a is reported on by cbs news. a reporter feels that blogger a has conducted himself in an unethical manner. cbs does a story on that.
cjr daily doesn't. when they get around to covering it, they reduce ethics expert kathleen hall jameison to kathleen jamieson. which c.i. said, when we were working on a 3rd estate sunday review editorial with the gang from 3rd estate was like a constitutional law class c.i. took where c.i. was supposed to research, another was supposed to type and write and a 3rd was supposed to argue. long story short, c.i. researched, c.i. ended up writing and in the end arguing in moot court -- and won. but this was despite the fact that the team members on c.i.'s team did 1 and only 1 thing and that was to type the brief. and the typist turned in the brief as he dropped the class without letting the team read over it first. the typist reduced j. edgar hoover to 'edgar hoover.' the mock justices reading the brief had no reason to care about any section on edgar hoover -- who is edgar hoover?
it's the same problem when you take the 'hall' out of kathleen hall jamieson. hearing that kathleen jamieson said something doesn't carry the weight that a remark from kathleen hall jameison would.
let's quote from bri-bri because i feel i'm losing you:
We'd like to join the litany of bloggers wondering what, exactly, CBSNews.com senior political writer David Paul Kuhn was thinking when he put together a piece lamenting the fact that there are no government regulations keeping bloggers honest -- a piece that itself was inaccurate.
. . .
What did Kuhn do wrong? It's not so easy to tell now, because CBS has corrected the story since it was first posted -- without noting as much. But we've got a screen grab of the original piece, which includes this passage:
In the case of Duncan Black, this is what happened. The author of the popular liberal blog Atrios, Black wrote under a pseudonym. All the while, he was a senior fellow at a liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America.
"People are pretty smart in assuming that if a blog is making a case on one side that it's partisan," [Kathleen] Jamieson [dean of the Annenberg School for Communications] said. "The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan."
. . .
As Black notes, the name of his blog is "Eschaton," not "Atrios" -- but that's just the start of the problems. "I began writing this weblog in April, 2002," he writes. "MMFA only came into existence in May, 2004. I began working with them in June, 2004." Kuhn's piece -- with its accusatory "all the while" -- not only gets the facts wrong, it suggests an "ethical" problem that simply isn't there.
And what of the quote? "Jamieson's quote has nothing to do with the situation, either as it exists or as CBS seems to lay out," says Pandagon's Jesse Taylor. "You might as well have had someone from the Southern Poverty Law Center talking about the proliferation of racist hate groups on the internet . . .
[then they let atrios speak.]
Ultimately, it's too bad Kuhn's piece contained the flaws, because it's built on a solid hook -- documents that show that the two leading South Dakota blogs, which readers believed to be objective, were run by paid advisors to Republican Senator John Thune . . .
But the inaccuracies are inexcusable, especially coming from "a senior political writer" for a network website. And even more inexcusable is that the corrections took place without the editors of CBS.com informing their readers of the revisions. If either Kuhn or CBS.com wants to try to make the case that the government needs to regulate unprofessional behavior . . .
is bri-bri in a place to lecture any 1?
is bri-bri telling readers that he's clusterfucking with atrios?
no.
is he telling them that jess of pandagon is part of the clusterfuck?
no.
is he telling them that kathleen hall jamieson is the person speaking?
no.
cjr hasn't corrected this item so allow me.
bri-bri should reveal that he's not just writing about an issue that has some blogs upset, cbs commenting on atrios.
bri-bri is writing about 1 of his buds. notice how at the end, bri-bri's all over 2 republican bloggers as though that's the issue. the issue is bri-bri rushes in to defend his bud atrios without telling readers that atrios is his bud.
and if he had, they might wonder why all the sudden bri-bri's bringing up a new issue at the end (2 republican bloggers).
bri-bri goes to another cluster fuck bud, by accident apparently, to back up his first bud atrios.
we never learn that jess is a cluster fuck bud. and i guess it's an accident that kathleen hall jamieson is stripped of 'hall' and any import she might hold with a reader as a result. 'who is this kathleen jameison?' you can hear some readers asking.
he quotes his bud atrios defending himself and bri-bri, again, never says 'we're all part of the same cluster fuck.'
he then goes on to lecture cbs about ethics.
and yet cjr daily has never corrected this entry let alone done an apology for it.
and they damn well should have.
this is not up to journalistic standards.
so tell me why today bri-bri's back on the blog report.
was atrios wrong? i don't know. i don't go to the blog and i'm not given enough information to know. i don't really care.
was jess wrong? if she were (i'm assuming she's a she), i'd be the last to slam another female blogger. (though wonkette may or may not qualify. e-mail me at sexandpoliticsandscreeds@yahoo.com and let me know what you think there.)
what i do know is that bri-bri's wrong. what i do know is that this along the lines of jayson blair for cjr. see they are a watchdog. and bri-bri wrote a piece on a bud without disclosing the bud-ness. he wrote a defense of a bud where, at the end, he shifted the attention to 2 republican bloggers that he hadn't mentioned previously. (and atrios' excuse -- if he needs 1 -- is that he's never claimed to be non-partisan. by the excuse atrios offers, why is bri-bri attacking 2 bloggers for doing partisan work? only reason i can see is to shift the spotlight away from his bud.)
and on top of that, he goes to another cluster fuck bud to offer a defense of atrios.
look, c.i., 3rd estate gang, folding star and i all know each other. we've e-mailed. we've never hidden that. and when c.i. and i work with the 3rd estate in any way, it's noted right there in the front note to the readers.
so why doesn't bri-bri have to note that he's writing about a friend and quoting another friend?
why is he allowed to attack cbs and question their ethics when his own are in question?
better question, why does he still have a job at cjr daily?
he didn't just fail to disclose pertinent information though that alone should have been enough consider cjr's ethics policy. he went on to attack the ethics of cbs for doing a correction and not informing readers. if cbs did that, they were wrong. but if you haven't disclosed that you were writing about your buds then maybe you aren't in the position to attack cbs?
that's be like me attacking sherry for writing up a sex fantasy and e-mailing it. sherry, how dare you! in other words, it's total and complete crap.
and cjr daily has not done a correction to his entry nor offered any explanation of this.
and this goes to yesterday's entry because i was talking about how the problem is not so much that no women exist, it's that the mainstream media ignores us. and when they do cover us, they slight us. they slighted kathleen hall jameison and that's a name that cjr (mag, daily, whatever) should never get wrong. and if some 1 at cjr doesn't know who she is, then my gut says they shouldn't have been hired in the first place.
i told you yesterday that it's about who you know and it is. and apparently kathleen hall jameison has to much self-respect to be hot-tubbin in a cluster fuck. (cluster fuck is bri-bri's word. he used it on his own personal blog to describe the fun with the buds in an entry.)
for readers who don't know kathleen hall jameison, every link where her name appears takes you to something that will give you an idea of who she is and why her work is important.
but for those who don't click on links, i'll note this from the last link above (The Institute for Research on Women & Gender presents):
Kathleen Hall Jamieson is director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania where she is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication. The author or co-author of twelve books including Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership, Jamieson is a fellow of the American Philosophical Society, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Communication Association. She has won university-wide teaching awards at each of the universities at which she has taught, The University of Maryland, The University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a past board member of the Ms Foundation and was one of the founders of its White House Project, a project designed to increase the likelihood that the country will elect a woman president. In the 2003-4 academic year, Jamieson has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Stanford University.
are you starting to get how important she is to the field of journalism? i hope so.
cjr daily, under bri-bri, couldn't even get her name right. that's shameful. they've never done a correction to that or anything else in the entry i quoted above, that's unbelievable.
i got a really nice e-mail from luke today and he advised me to not go so hard on cjr daily. he thinks 'they're useless with their two to three items a day - from a paid staff! and they appear not to get to work until late since their first-of-the-morning posts pop up at noon. but if you keep this up, they probably won't link to you.'
luke i loved your e-mail all the way through. and i appreciate your concern at the end. but let me be really plain as i wind down here, cjr daily will never link to me. they will never link to the 3rd estate and they will never link to folding star and they will never link to the common ills. we all know that. we all knew going in when we worked on the 3rd estate editorial (folding star did not work on the editorial) that doing it would mean risking that. we were fine with it because somebody needs to speak up when something wrong has been done. we spoke up and i don't think any of us regrets it. i also don't think a lot of people read cjr daily anymore.
when they insulted their readers by acting like they had just heard a criticism that there the blog reports were too closed, they lost a lot of respect. why? the most read posts on their site were the readers commenting on the fact that they always highlighted the same blogs. and those posts go back to december.
trust me, bri-bri knows about 3rd estate. he could have highlighted the editorial and noted that yes, he should have disclosed the truth earlier but since he hadn't, he would do so now. he didn't do that. you will not see 3rd estate covered at cjr daily, you will not see the common ills covered there, you will not see folding star covered there, and you will not see me covered there. we can all live with that.
don't even bother sending items in to that e-mail address they offered their readers when they said they'd be more inclusive. i know things were sent in and i know that cjr daily ignored them.
but so fucking what? we've all got our readers. (c.i. would say 'members! common ills is a community. every 1 there is a member!') and look at the common ills. it was built up from the ground with very little help from the blog community.
yes, fair mentioned it, yes ms. musing's mentioned it, yes, buzzflash usually links to it once a month, yes, offshoring digest has. but it didn't get sung up on the big blogs.
and the fact of the matter is, the post on jeffery dvorkin from november should have been all over the place. that was something that no 1 was talking about. even when they did talk about it, they spoke of it without telling you the real conflict of interest (not that the speaker npr brought on to criticize john kerry was a neocon who supported the war, but that the speaker was married to a woman who works for dick cheney). nobody told you about that. nobody blogged on it and said 'look at this conflict of interest!'
the common ills did so. i saw that article via buzzflash. i didn't hear about it on a blog report or from bloggers who went on air america or any thing like that.
that was a big issue. approaching the election, npr brought on the husband of a woman who worked for dick cheney to criticize john kerry and npr never told you that the man was married to someone who worked for dick cheney. he was presented as a disinterested observer. and when listeners complained to npr ombudsman jeffrey dvorkin, dvorkin's reply never noted this conflict of interest.
this is pretty huge. this was during an election and it was a blatant conflict of interest that was left undisclosed and a lot of people still don't know about it.
so if it's a case of playing nice or telling the truth, i think we'll all go for telling the truth.
c.i. did and that's why the common ills is so huge. you get people in the u.k., for instance, posting it in reviews for dvds and cds. it'll be up for a day or 2 before the companies catch on and pull it. but that's why they have the international audience. and the fact that c.i. told you the truth about simon rosenberg when almost every 1 else was saying 'he's great!' is 1 of the big reasons the common ills is so huge with college kids.
i was in boston the other day talking to a friend who's a college professor and all she wanted to know was 'what's c.i. like?' because her students follow the common ills.
that wasn't the result of a cluster fuck bestowing their approval.
so it's nice of you to be concerned, luke, but trust me, i get enough e-mail and i have enough readers that i don't need to sell out with the hope that i might get a link from cjr daily or a cluster fuck.
and if i did sell out, i'd be no different than cokie roberts and believe me, when i hear her prattling on while she clutches her pearls, i am assured i never want that personal hell so i'll keep telling my truth.
wally and some of the students in his class know this site. reporters i mention know it. and i have so many wonderful readers like sherry who i will always stand by and support until john turek decides he has to choose between us. sherry knows i love her but that when it comes down to the final round for our cornhusker's decision, all bets are off. (though sherry has offered that we could share joint-custody of christian parenti.) (sherry offers that agreement only if she can have dahr jamail all for herself, so at present we have yet to reach a truce.)
and our community isn't a cluster fuck or a circle jerk (to use bill keller's term). we have always disclosed our bond. and there will soon be 1 more of us.
and i think you'll like her. if you visit the common ills regularly, you know that a member asked to have it posted that she was going to start her own blog. i got an e-mail asking me 'where is it?'
she and c.i. are working on it. she wants a portrait of sorts up in her profile. and she's been trying to figure out what she can add that will be different. she's e-mailed me two test columns and they were hilarious. but she wants to find her 'voice' and that's not easy, i know.
i had no desire to blog myself. but then when my friend elaine was slapped down (read my first entry), i had to step up to the plate. i e-mailed c.i. and asked for help. and c.i. talked me through setting up this blog and has been there to try to help with any problem i had with it. in the early days i would e-mail all the time asking 'is this funny?' or 'what's another way i could reference this?' talk to the 3rd estate gang and they'll tell you similar stories.
for me, i really didn't comment to the community that often. i was a member happy to read what others were saying. and though elaine would tell me over margaritas, 'becks, you need to do a blog!' i'd always say no.
i had to have a strong voice to write so i thought about all the anger i felt as my marriage was ending and tapped into that. by the divorce itself, we were fine and i am friends with my ex-husband. a lot of you e-mail asking why i don't spill on him and it may or may not pop up here from time to time but i really have no desire to trash him. if you'd caught me when the marriage was falling apart, that would be another story.
but i was angry about how elaine was treated and i wanted to write about that and really felt 'but what do i do on day 2?' so c.i. and i talked and talked and it came down to the fact that women don't often get to be angry so what if that was my way in, my voice.
and then i thought about what else don't women often write about? sex. in a nonclinical manner. in a way where they talk about men the way we (if we're straight women or gay men) talk about men. so there was the sex to add to the politics and i knew i wanted to keep my attitude. then i said to c.i. 'people are going to read me and say that i just screech' and c.i. said note it in the title. that's how i ended up with sex and politics and screeds and attitude.
and with that title, you should know what you're getting into when you come to this blog.
i'm laying it all out real clear. and people are responding to it.
so let me to try to have 1 of those moments c.i. has that gina labels 'oprah moments' and find the larger lesson not just because i have some younger readers i wasn't aware of until wally's comments but also because this is important.
you will never get any where in this world by being a copy. if you get riches or fame and you've done it by being untrue to yourself it will not mean anything. (and i'm sure my ex would agree with me on this, our marriage probably failed because we both kept trying to be what the other thought was wanted and it just made us both miserable.)
but if you are true to yourself and speak your truth you will be heard. some might not like you. but the 1s who do will appreciate that you are you. and isn't it better to have people like that in your life then people who may only be around because you're acting like who you think they'll like?
so if any 1 reading this is thinking of starting a blog, start it. get out there and get your truth out there. we do need more voices and that does not mean an echo chamber. we need to know your truth as much as we need to hear mine. that's the only way we'll ever be able to see one another as individuals as opposed to stereotypes. that's the lesson for today and don't worry wally, we won't start doing life lessons every day.
