"they" will take a run on the "out of control" blogs. The political blogs are just too frickin' effective. So when Wolff says that the blogs are are expecting that "journalists" are expected to take a political stance.

No, we want more than stenography. What expect journalist to seek and publish the truth. And sometimes, Wolff, Gregory, etc., you will have to have the likes of the VP, or his next iteration, accusing you of being "political" to publsih the truth.

BTW, did yo notice how Snow changed the subject when the woman on his right said she believed in the first amendment. Look at his body language, how he turns his back and raises his right and to his head blocking her from his view. There's the story.

Without the blogs and internet it scares me to think where America would be today. Left to the mainstream media we would be more propagandized than we are. Thank God for the internet and blogs.

no one has quite figured out all the ramifications of this new medium. But being afraid of it is stupid -- instead there should be lots of discussion going on among the various media about the blogs and the Internet in general, with the goal being how best to get information out to the public.

And of course it's laughable to think that the MSM are "asking questions and getting information." We wouldn't be in Iraq if they had done their job.

(Yes, I was your caller Monday night. I can't always listen in but will try to when I can.)

at this gathering... is that in fact Jeff Gannon in the front row?

OMG.

The screencap is genuine but we're awaiting confirmation that it was in fact male prostitute James Guckert/Jeff Gannon (who was accepted uncritically as a peer by the White House Press Corps until bloggers exposed him) depicted there.

Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt Gregory and Snow and what's-'is-nuts from their lecture on the loose and shoddy standards of bloggers.

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Oh my my. I am sincerely enjoying the implications of that little revelation.

My favorite quote comes from Richard Wolffe of Newsweek: "A lot of the blogs are unduly devoted to media criticism."

You know... in light of this new development - this quote gives it a run for its money:

“They want us to play a role that isn’t really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. … It’s not a political exercise, it’s a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.” - Richard Wolffe, Newsweek

I certainly hope this is verified so we can laugh at the irony of a political hack manwhore (famed for the softballs he lobbed to the WH) that you uncritically accepted as your peer showing up in the front row to wordlessly rebut you far more eloquently than I ever could have.

How to Blog

See far right column Blogging Basics, airing March 12 and Advanced Blogging. Airing March 28.

I got the impression from the reporters that made up the discussion panel that blogging was polorized and bloggers were among the worst offenders. If Blogging has a detrimental effect, why would they air programmes about how to do it on their website? Isn't that a contradiction?

Obviously the conclusions I drew from the panel discussion were in error. L0L

-----

You're right Escher, my error: Jeff hasn't as yet made his February 20 diary entry. Perhaps he will report on the National Press Club Conference later today or tomorrow?

Richard Wolffe, White House correspondent for Newsweek:

“They want us to play a role that isn’t really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. … It’s not a political exercise, it’s a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.”

XXX

The "fantastic job" Newsweek's Richard Wolffe claims he is doing
Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday February 21, 2007 08:25 EST

(...)

By Richard Wolffe -- Financial Times -- August 1, 2002 (via Lexis)
Iraq's military poses a substantial threat to US forces if the Bush administration orders an attack to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, military and Iraqi experts warned yesterday.
However, without US intervention, Iraq is likely to develop nuclear weapons within two years, as part of an intensive and covert weapons programme, a Senate committee heard.
The expert warnings to the Senate foreign relations committee reinforce similar concerns by senior administration officials that renewed weapons inspections by the United Nations are unlikely to detect the full extent of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

By Richard Wolffe -- Financial Times, September 14, 2002
The Pentagon believes that Iraq is developing missiles with a range of up to 1,500km that could be operational within the next three years. . . .
The Pentagon sought to reinforce those warnings yesterday by detailing both Iraq's links with terrorist groups and its development of chemical and biological weapons. In recent days the White House has distanced itself from the suggestion that Iraq was linked to the hijackers responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks last year. But the administration insists that there is a serious threat to world security posed by the overlap between terrorists and rogue states developing weapons of mass destruction.
A senior Pentagon official said yesterday that there was evidence of continued development of chemical and biological weapons. "We continue to see suspicious activities at sites that we believe are related to their CW (chemical weapons) and BW (biological weapons) programmes," the official said.

By Richard Wolffe - Newsweek -- December 11, 2002
"In '62 you could have Adlai Stevenson producing pictures of missile sites being constructed in Cuba," said one senior administration official in the Roosevelt Room, with more than a hint of disappointment. "In the last 40 years, countries like Iraq have become practiced in denying us the ability to collect these types of information and have invested great resources in that type of objective."
So if you're waiting for a smoking gun at the U.N., don't hold your breath. This is not your father's missile crisis.
By Richard Wolffe and Michael Hirsh -- February 3, 2003 -- Newsweek cover story
While the French argued that U.N. inspectors had "frozen" Iraq's weapons programs, Powell was blunt and dismissive. "Inspections," he told reporters categorically last week, "will not work."
One senior State Department official explains Powell's change of heart as a gradual awakening: "People ask why Powell is becoming increasingly hard-line. It's because every day, when we wake up in the morning, the facts are clear that Iraq has gone back to its old ways and is refusing to disarm, and trying to prevent the inspectors from disarming them. It's a big decision, especially for a former general who knows what this is all about."

By Richard Wolffe - Newsweek, February 5, 2003
All this came after Powell made a compelling presentation--not just against Iraq, but against the inspections process itself. Playing tantalizing intercepts of conversations between Iraqi military officers, Powell made what seemed to be a cast-iron case of Iraq's concerted efforts to hide its weapons from the U.N. inspectors.
Satellite pictures showed convoys of trucks outside what Powell called chemical-weapons plants. Warheads were being hidden in groves of palm trees. Biological materials were being produced in rail cars and cargo trucks. If Iraq is hiding so much, how could the inspectors ever lay their hands on Iraq's illegal weapons?

By Richard Wolffe - Newsweek - February 17, 2003
As Powell cranked up the pressure to go to war, America's threat barometer was moving in the same direction. At the end of the week, the administration raised its official threat level to Code Orange--the second highest security alert--based on fresh warnings of Qaeda attacks on American targets. Intelligence sources say the planned attacks appear to be timed to take place between the end of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, in mid-February, and the start of war in Iraq.
"Our reporting strongly suggests that Al Qaeda has completed preparations for multiple attacks with spectaculars set for the United States and probably Saudi Arabia, and is delaying them until just before or just after a war begins with Iraq," says a classified FBI bulletin obtained by NEWSWEEK. "In that situation, Al Qaeda attacks will be described as an effort to defend Iraqi Muslims against the attack of the U.S.-led Crusaders."
NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the administration's most immediate concerns is the possibility of multiple attacks on American Jewish groups and businesses. Late last week FBI field offices across the country began contacting Jewish leaders and rabbis and urging them to enhance security. Other threats include reports of an attack using chemical, biological or radiological materials. "We had much more information on chem-bio stuff," says one senior law-enforcement official. "That really unnerved me."
That is the absolutely "fantastic job" which Wolffe did -- all by "asking questions" of his administration friends, "get[ting] information," and then dutifully passing it along -- and doing little else.

And, as Wolffe explained last night -- with the narrow, slothful, and self-defensive mentality of a low-level bureaucrat -- that is his only job. They're not supposed "to take on the government and grill them" -- that would be terribly impolite, very "political," and beyond his job description. Bloggers who think that Wolffe should have done more than regurgitate what he was told by a war-hungry administration are the real problem here -- not Wolffe and his gullible journalistic colleagues who are doing a "fantastic job," nor the administration officials who fed them these falsehoods.

And just for good measure, this is one "fantastic" paragraph which Wolffe told his readers in September, 2002:

The constitution gives the president the right to declare war but it gives Congress ways to counter that power. In 1973, Congress passed the war powers act in response to public alarm that unchecked presidential prerogative during the Vietnam war had led to an unacceptable toll on American lives.

Maybe his good friends in the White House told him that the power to declare war lies with the President, and nobody has grounds to complain about Wolffe's reporting because he just passed along what he was told, and that is his job.

Reporters like Wolffe develop such close affection for the people that they are covering that they see themselves as part of the Government -- which is what they become -- rather than watchdogs over them. As Eric Alterman recounted when reviewing a documentary by Alexandra Pelosi:

If you want your mystery summed up in a single sentence, it would be hard to outdo Wolffe: "The Gore press corps is about how they didn't like Gore, didn't trust him.... Over here, we were writing only about the trivial stuff because [Bush] charmed the pants off us."

(...)

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