Abby Martin sits down with seasoned news anchor Larry King on Breaking the Set, and soon it becomes clear they’re both in very different schools of thought regarding the media establishment. The conversation takes an interesting turn when they begin to discuss the role of journalism and Obama’s war on whistleblowers.
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Larry King: Glenn Greenwald ‘Not a Journalist’
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Where does Larry King get off claiming that journalists cannot bring opinions to their reporting or interviews. Edward Murrow did and he is a god in the pantheon of journalism. King brings opinions to every piece he does. Most of his work is pro-corporate schlock. Sometimes he does good work, but he is still a creature of that nice warm fuzzy big biz “news” bullshit.
Giving Bush a pass for the war on terror and 9-11 and Iraq is the sign of a total establishment buffoon.
Interesting how Larry excuses the WMD argument by saying “it’s just what they believed!” Well, based on the bulk of intelligence reports coming in the contrary was true. As we now know there was one single source the CIA/DIA was leaning on, a guy who’s alias was “Curveball.” Curveball was later found to be lying about his intel — that Saddam had WMD’s. Why? In order to exact revenge against Saddam for exiling him!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/16/colin-powell-cia-curveball
Funny how King’s optimism about the justification for Iraq and Powell is so bubbling too; especially seeing how Powell himself is on the record demanding for CIA/DIA accountability for falsely framing the issue. Right after “Curveball” had admitted to lying in 2011, a report in the Guardian states:
“Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons capability.”
King claims to respect Powell more than a lot of people do, and yet he glosses him with past tired truisms like “he did his best” and is ignorant of what Powell currently stands for: a man with a conscience that demands answers for the atrocity that took place after we aggressively invaded a sovereign country with dubious intel from some dude that went by the nickname “curveball.”
King respects Powell for all the wrong reasons, nostalgically preserving him in some time of yore that King “believes” was true and honorable.
King is a semi-journalist. A quasi-journalist. He’s the margarine of journalism. The Diet Coke of journalism. Just one calorie, not journalist enough.
Imagine Larry King on BBC’s Hard Talk instead of Stephen Sackur? LOL
I think the trend towards commentary rather than journalism has really become noticeable over the past decade or so – there aren’t nearly as many real journalists who fulfill the primary role of information gathering anymore (I’m sure cost has a lot to do with this). Instead the same bit of information is spun different ways on different radio and t.v. stations and websites. A variety of opinions is good but there is a noticeable dearth of basic information out there, and much of that “information” is supplied ready-made by government and interest groups instead of being gathered in accordance with the methods of professional journalism.
As for the idea of being “unbiased” or “objective”, I don’t think we can expect journalists themselves to be that way, but a professional journalist is supposed to be trained to gather information in a manner that minimizes any bias they might have. King makes a good point about minimizing his own presence when interviewing people, I think that is crucial to the whole process and it is something we don’t see much of today. On the other hand, one can’t be so passive that the interviewee gets away with saying whatever they want unchallenged, otherwise you might as well just read their press-release.
Here is a passage from Pew’s latest State of The Media report that touches on some of these points:
“…a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.
At the same time, newsmakers and others with information they want to put into the public arena have become more adept at using digital technology and social media to do so on their own, without any filter by the traditional media. They are also seeing more success in getting their message into the traditional media narrative.”
Anyway, I think this is a subject worthy of further discussion here; I hope to hear others’ thoughts on this.
This was interesting, I’ve only heard a couple of Larry King shows before so I don’t know if he is considered a “real journalist” but he does make a good point about the distinction between journalism and punditry. I’ve only seen Abby’s show a couple of times and I would say it leans more towards punditry – but then again so do most news shows now. There is a place for both commentary and journalism – of course nobody would claim that journalism can ever be bias free, but it is a question of degree.
Ms. Martin reveals herself as biased, opinionated, and naive (particularly with reference to WMD and Edward Snowden. Therefore, her comments can be presumed to be subject to her opinions, biases and naivete. If you want an objective opinion, based on a fully-rounded view of the facts as they can be observed to exist, and allowing for a rational consideration of the various points of view, a person with this bent cannot be trusted to provide it.
Bullshit. You don’t make any sense, and your arguments are keyword invective.
(You must have been looking in the mirror when you wrote this.)