Remember that story about White House sources leaking the CIA connection of Valerie Plame, as a move to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson?
Sure you do. I remember it. So does Salon blogger Michael Parker. I bet the CIA does. But Big Media cares a lot more about Michael Jackson.
I looked for that story in Google News this morning–gone. Erased from the planet. Karl Rove and George Bush and Dick Cheney must be so happy.
The most recent mentions (last week) come from (I kid you not) Manila and Pakistan.
It’s just not an important story. Big Media, left and right, agree about that.
Michael Jackson, OTOH, made the front page of the New York Times.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Betsy Devine // Nov 24, 2003 at 8:14 am
Correction: Michael Jackson is on the front page of the NYT online–not the paper made of paper I saw at the store.
2 Michael // Nov 24, 2003 at 12:41 pm
Hi Betsy Devine! Thanks for the link. I’m still shaking my head on how this important investigation has been sidelined.
Nice work on finding an article from Manila and Pakistan, of all places. Pakistan better watch themselves or they’ll end up on the “if they’re not with us, they’re against us” list.
Best wishes,
Michael
3 Gary Farber // Nov 24, 2003 at 2:57 pm
I rather take your general point, and agree that I wish it were otherwise, but your phrasing is a bit, um, sloppy. News publications have to report news. Not what they think is important from three months ago that they wish they had news about: news. News has to be “new.” There hasn’t been any recent new news on Valerie Plame. Do you have any? Are you aware of some specific new news on Plame or the investigation that Big Media is ignoring? If not, they cannot be blamed for not publishing non-existent news.
That Karl Rove is happy about this is not the fault of the NYTimes, WashPo, etc., whom I rather expect would be thrilled to publish a leaked FBI memo revealing that, say, Scooter Libby has been discovered to have first called Robert Novak cackling with glee.
In trivia, when I just went to Google News and entered “Valerie Plame,” I got 68 stories in the past month, which is not precisely “wiped from the planet.” Only 35 were original stories, but that’s still a tad more than zero.
4 Betsy Devine // Nov 24, 2003 at 3:24 pm
Michael, I felt relieved when I found your post, so I’m glad you found mine. Gary–honored to see you here, and yeah when I say things suck then I am being kinda informal. I liked the idea that news media went after news, hunted sources, asked questions, etc.–at least on important stories. How much media ingenuity went into keeping that Mormon kidnapping, basketball rape, or Lacey whatsername on the front pages for weeks? I’d like to see a tad bit of that kind of effort going on here. That’s my point.
5 Richard // Nov 24, 2003 at 4:30 pm
There’s also the small matter of your being a political opponent of the Bush Administration. Would you like the story about Dean’s comment about the confederate flag to be still alive today? He was taken out of context, yes, but being taken out of context has never stopped the media from continuing with the story.
The point you’re trying to make is a good one: that the traditional media are only interested in what’s “new” now, not new 3 months ago, and that this scandal, for many, still has legs. But how much better is blogging than traditional media? Mark Pilgrim, in his sidebar b-links, kept fairly good track of the responses to the Clay Shirky article on the Semantic web, but then, after a few days, dismissed anybody that wrote any more on the subject. (The kicker is that I can’t even prove what I just said: he has no archives of his sidebar links. Granted they’re still in my aggregator at home, but showing that is a tad more difficult than pointing to Mark’s archives. As a disclosure, it should also be noted that I’m actually a partisan of Mark’s in debates about the web.)
So my question is, how much better is blogging, where if you don’t respond to something in the first few days of it happening, you’re branded as being behind the times?
6 Betsy Devine // Nov 25, 2003 at 6:12 am
Hi Richard! I think blogworld is better because there are so many of us, with such different points of view. You’re right that fashion and scandal and political viewpoint exist in blogworld. And my solution is–let’s keep on listening for new blog voices, so that we don’t turn into yet one more closed echo chamber.