Thursday, August 21, 2008

My Morning Wooten

I'm a little perturbed this morning.
Democrats privately are questioning whether Barack Obama has a second-phase act, a follow-up once “change” wears thin, the Associated Press reports.
Faceless Democrats get a pass. Anonymous bloggers not so much. The sad fact is there are those who do not even comprehend the astounding level of hypocrisy in their accusations of agenda driven writing in blogs while simultaneously supporting an ever shrinking niche in the ecosystem which constantly wallows in the same mud.

I would comment on the rest of the article but instead I'll just refer you to this afternoon's Sean Hannity show or the GOP's website or whatever you prefer for your daily dispensation of Republican talking points.

Over 70 people were cut from the AJC with loss of institutional knowledge which may never be regained. Yet, some are allowed to retain the keyboard even though the core of their writing is simply parroting the tall tales of others.

And inevitably, sometime in the next six months, I will be the one who is questioned mercilessly because I do not attach my proper name to my writing.

7 comments:

Rusty said...

+1

rptrcub said...

I am convinced that the institutional knowledge for decades was all stored up in the Constitution, not the Journal, where Wooten came from. Yeah, I know it's a moot point since it's all "AJC" and they've been on the same side for a long time.

At least the Constitution and Ralph McGill were on the right side of history. I believe Wooten will find himself on the opposite side.

Anonymous said...

My favorite part is the idea that Democrats are telling Wooten what they are doing "privately." And even if they did, then what's so private about it? If someone with knowledge told him, Wooten should say so and identify this source, or at least explain how this unnamed person was privy to the private reflections of millions of voters.
He didn't, presumably because he just made it up. What a hack.

Anonymous said...

But Mike, he's not a journalist, he's an editorialist. I thought it was his job to get the papers to sell, not to report the news?

Anonymous said...

Nast, that's true. He's a columnist and not a reporter. That means he has no obligation to be objective. But he should still source his information when he is reporting news. If he thinks Obama's change stuff is wearing thin and will eventually turn off Democrats, then he can say so. But here he is reporting the information that Democrats are privately worried about Obama, and if he has come to learn that information through reporting, he should divulge where it came from. Mark Bradley is a columnist, so he can write that Bobby Cox is a moron for leaving Nunez in to face Delgado, but he can't write that Mike Gonzalez was upset about it unless he learned it from Mike or someone with the Braves, and he should say where he learned it. The obligation to be accurate doesn't disappear on the editorial page -- or at least it shouldn't.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it shouldn’t, but I always thought that is why these types of items were relegated to the “Opinion” section rather than a "News" section.

Stefan Turkheimer said...

This is really quality writing, grift's, not wooten's. I never read Wooten's, but one step removed, with commentary, it's palatable.