I feel like I've squandered way too much of my last two nights. I've allowed myself to be diverted by things that won't even matter next month. Below is a record of one such waste of time.
NOTE: There are much better things for you to be reading right now. I've posted this here mainly because I want to have the ability to link to it for another project I'm starting. That link will exist for the sole purpose of providing evidence that I've been wasting my time.
The trigger for last night's waste of time was a HuffPost piece focusing on the assertion by AP's Ron Fournier that President Obama's routine use of a teleprompter when reading prepared remarks amounts to a "crutch." The HuffPost piece, which is not in and of itself a waste of time at all, is
here.Fournier's not-especially-analytical "analysis" piece that startd all this is
here.My comment follows. I posted it -- as I always do -- using my real name.
Posted 01:06 AM on 03/26/2009
Just remember that mainstream journalism is pristine. We here on the blogs are the ones who inject bias.True, Fournier is AP's Washington bureau chief. But he's discreet. He writes these "analysis" pieces and then keeps them secret from everyone at the D.C. bureau, including himself.Incidentally, the dictionary tells me "analysis" means: "The separation of an intellectual or material whole into its constituent parts for individual study."Now, that definition is clunky as hell. I don't claim to know what it means. But it sure sounds painstaking.Fournier's piece isn't painstaking. His "analysis" doesn't analyze. He's just kicking off his wing tips and easing into a format that doesn't demand shoe-leather reporting, doesn't even demand logic.So we get lazy passages like this:"One of the few times (Obama) summoned raw emotion came after a reporter demanded to know why it took him so long to express outrage over the AIG executive bonuses."'It took a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak.'"Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter."Yes, when Obama improvises a pithy, withering, effective response it's yet more evidence that "he likes to have it up on the teleprompter."I didn't write "analysis" when I was a reporter -- not even at home, for fun, using pseudonyms. You can't just switch hats. Why does the AP institutionalize a form of writing that sabotages its own supposed credibility?
