Weiner Pic/Whats happening with Journalism?

What is the big deal about what Anthony Weiner may have done?  Seriously, its a picture of a guy's lower half and he is in underwear.  How is this any different than a female sending a picture of herself in a low cut top thats pretty revealing?  People do that all the time on twitter but don't get criticism.  Is it a double standard that women do this all the time (thats what modeling is in a very basic sense) but one guys supposedly does it and gets criticized?  And you can't even see his face.  Its just the ridiculousness of our 24 hour news cycle that this is the huge news this week.

This has seemed to have gotten even more time than Christopher Lee's incident on some news sources (I'm looking at you, fox).  This would actually be a big issue if it was his face, but you can't see his face.  The whole thing seems kinda fishy.  The unidentified female deleted her twitter account over this?  And the source that "broke" the story is the only one with information on this unidentified female.  To me, this is somewhat of a non-story that has been artificially been built up by the media who at times, build their own story.  I feel bad for the guy.  Now, the Wall Street Journal is saying he is guilty because he won't use the FBI to pursue the supposed hacker.  Bull-Shit.  The guy has just had the worst week of his life and has been grilled by every news source about a story that is completely inane and people are building this up to be his legacy as a politician.  I feel he also feared being taken out of context like he has been in the past.


This is relevant to an interview on the Daily Show I saw on Bill moyers because he speaks about some of the problems he sees with media.  Bill moyers is a great journalist who has won an Emmy, Peabody, and helped his newspaper to win 2 Pulitzers (in a 4 year period) when he was publisher.  He had a lot of interesting stuff to say on the Daily Show, the best of which is quoted below.

"I think we're lost in what Thoreau called the mere smoke of opinion.  The news is about what people want to keep hidden, the rest is publicity.  People don't want to keep their opinons hidden, they want to keep their facts hidden.  It takes lot of money and time and effort  to go and explore the facts and bring them out...and so a lot of news organizations no longer do much reporting, they simply rely on opinion....its all about entertainment today...your people do a good job of juxtaposing.  you don't attack people, you put what they said 10 years ago and what they said last night together and thats what good journalism is about.  Its comparative, its not declarative....I admire what politicians do but I don't like to interview them because their language is designed to conceal.  I like to interview people who reveal thinking....You can't speak the truth on Television because someone will find a way to turn it against you, therefore people are very cautious, very careful, there not willing to engage...I vowed after that never to do an hour with one official because they are always trying to make sure you don't understand what they say even though they use simple words to express it sometimes.

Upton Sinclair

I agree that the real news is about what you don't want to hear.  The Jungle was a phenomenal piece of journalism (technically, was a novel but Upton Sinclair carried out one of the greatest feats of undercover muckraking in US history by going into the meatpacking plants).  We need more muckraking because that stuff is the real news.  Unfortunately, when you look at the extent of "muckraking" in the US, it has been mostly limited to recently michael moore (who gets solid info, but has a serious bias which often affects his information gathering) and Julian Assange (who is a rogue player in the game).  


Unfortunately, its too hard to do a "hard news" story.  its not called that specifically because its supposed to be difficult, but because its got meat.  There is no meat in journalism, its all opinion and entertainment.  CNN panders to the youth by having the "youtube video of the day" but limiting the actual time hard news gets.  Frivolous opinion blogs are ruining this (I, on the other hand try to attempt harder subjects).


One of the great things about what we can do now of journalism is take a quote or clip from 10 year ago and today and juxtapose them.  Journalism is about showing whats there and comparing things, not shouting out from the highest mountain your opinion.


The last few quotes tie together, especially with this incident.  Because so many news sources take people out of context, people like Anthony Weiner (and other politicians) are unwilling to engage.  If you speak the truth, it will be taken out of context, twisted, and will incriminate you.  It is very frustrating how semantic arguments make up so much of the political debates we have.  They feel they need to get the exact words down, or else it will be used against them.  


I will end with a quote that is about statistics but can also apply to the things politicians say: "Statistics (or words) are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."  What is more vital than what people are saying these days is what they are not saying, but just hiding.