Subsidize this

DB told the LA Times to stop sending the paper when they replaced Robert Scheer with Jonah Goldberg. That was the last of many straws.

Today, as Los Angeles' biggest paper lays people off and swirls in turmoil, this blogger feels happier than ever not to be paying for bottom-feeding crap like this (Goldberg, at NRO):

How Bush Should Handle Loss
I think James Baker and Dick Cheney should take Bush out to the woods around Camp David. After 24 hours in a sweat lodge, he should be given only a loin cloth, a hunting knife and a canteen of water. Bush should then set out to track and kill a black bear, after which he should eat its still beating heart so he can absorb its spirit. He should then fly back to Washington in Marine 1. His torso still scratched from the bear's claws, his face bloodied and steaming in the November chill, he should immediately give a press conference at which he throws the bearskin on the front row of the press corps, completely enveloping Helen Thomas, declaring, "I'm not going anywhere."

This will send important messages to Democrats and well as to our enemies overseas, who are no doubt high-fiving as we speak.

These GOP shills really think the world is one big comic book, don't they? Somebody put a valium in Jonah's tube of Pillsbury.

Balancing competing agendas

Not a big surprise, but always refreshing to hear it from an insider... LAist Interview: Daniel Hernandez:

Why did you move from the Los Angeles Times to the LA Weekly? How are the jobs similar and different?

I owe The Times lots. They taught me so much. They gave me freedom and room to work, and pushed me to push myself. Everyday the people there amazed me, their talent and drive. But The Times has a very clear, very rigid tradition on how to report the news.

Shortly after I got there, I started having these long, tortured thought sessions with myself about my participation in the MSM. I saw how the people and places the paper chose to cover were automatically political decisions because for every thing you chose to cover there is something you chose to not cover. I started realizing that the mainstream style on reporting the news that most papers employ is not really concerned with depicting the truth, but concerned primarily with balancing lots of competing agendas and offending the least amount of interests as possible.

I saw how so much was looked at from certain assumptions and subtexts, and a very narrow cultural view. When I raised questions about such things, I was told we were writing for a "mainstream reader," which I quickly figured out is basically a euphemism for a middle-aged, middle-class white registered Democrat homeowner in the Valley. From where I stand today, I had very little in common with this "mainstream reader" and I didn't care to be in this person's service. I wanted to talk across to people, not up or down to people. I had to get out. So I thought, why not experiment? Try different forms? Laurie Ochoa and the editors at the LA Weekly said, 'Go ahead, abandon rote objectivity and embrace the subjective lens through which we all see the world—Just report it all out.' It was ON.

The jobs are basically the same: go out there, report the story, think about it a lot, write, turn it in, get edited, learn from it, and start all over. It's been a real challenge. The Weekly is more challenging. At The Times I was just challenging the institutional and cultural barriers of an ultimately very conservative place. That was exhausting, and not very fulfilling. At the Weekly, there's all this freedom, and that means you have to be more careful and more thoughtful.

I see your outrage, and raise you a pink slip

DB returned from a weekend in a midwestern Red State and saw immediately that the excellent source of media outrage that we were looking for has lost his column.

That's reason No. 1,204,345 for dropping the already sinking L.A. Times circulation rate.

Found: Media Outrage

When the Libby indictment came down last Friday, DB wondered where the media outrage was.

After all:

Members of the administration were lying to reporters. Take one example, one which Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball caught: Libby told Judy Miller that the still-classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq contained "even stronger" evidence of the uranium claims. The document, later declassified, revealed the opposite. Not only should this be an outrage to reporters who put trust in sources, but -- memo to Pat Roberts -- there's a reason you should be investigating "Phase II."

As Arianna Huffington points out that Chris Matthews points out (and DB now points out), they used the grey ladies and the boob tube in concert to play the American public like a pipe, planting stories in the NY Times to control the topics on their Sunday morning TV appearances and bolster the credibility of their claims.

Members of the administration were lying on TV shows. Take one example: Dick Cheney flat out lied to the American people on "Meet the Press" when he said he didn't know anything about Joe Wilson, his trip or who sent him. All host Tim Russert had to say about that interview when the Libby indictment came down was that it "would be scrutinized." Come on, where's the outrage? He used you.

They directed the prosecutor to the media and placed a significant burden on reporters. This should be the biggest source of outrage. According to the indictment, Libby told Fitzgerald that he heard about Plame from Russert. He caused reporters like Russert to fall under the scrutiny of the prosecutor. All the legal fees, hastles, worrying and damage to their reputations, inability to report on the case with the appearance of impartiality... all of it because of Libby's loose lips and pointed fingers.

DB continues to be baffled by the revelation from Russert that Libby "didn't call me as a source; he called me as a viewer." Then why on earth did you fight a battle all the way to the Supreme Court? To protect viewer mail? Members of the media fought an important battle for the First Amendment, only to have it undermined by the administration's cynical use of the press.

Well, as promised in the title of this post, DB has found some quality media outrage, a column in the LA Times by Robert Scheer.

Let the rage flow, media members. You will all feel better. You'll trust just about anybody, apparently. Why not trust DB?