Salon’s indispensable Glenn Greenwald got into a dust-up with CNN’s John King after Greenwald called him on the
carpet for throwing nothing but softballs in an insufferably fawning interview with John McCain. King’s arrogant response is, to say the least, disappointing for its wounded-ego defensiveness and I-Live-In-A-Bubble-And-Proud-Of-It cluelessness. But beyond that, as Greenwald points out, it is fascinating in its similarity — both in tone and content — to likeminded missives from other aggrieved MSM mandarins decrying the cruelty and irrelevance of the blogosphere. It’s almost like they had a secret meeting and hammered out a boilerplate response to blogger slings and arrows. To wit:
It’s worth noting how often journalists’ responses to criticisms contain so many of the same elements which King’s email contains. They always want you to know that they never read what you write and that you’re an Unserious, biased, partisan amateur (without any recognition of the glaring contradiction between those two claims).
They boast of what they believe to be their reputation, assuring you that they are widely respected and admired by the People Who Count. Even though they never read you, they’re repulsed by the idea that you would dare to critique their work because you know absolutely nothing about the High Art of Journalism and never get any messages on your Blackberry from Ed Gillespie or Karl Rove or Anyone.
They invariably point to criticisms from both Left and Right as proof that they’re unbiased straight-shooters. They chide you for being unaware of the secret, concealed information (interview questions that weren’t broadcast, paragraphs that were edited out) which somehow disproves your critique of what they did broadcast or publish.
They proudly inform you that there have, indeed, been some instances over the many decades that they’ve been working when they’ve stood up to someone and asked something other than mindlessly reverent questions, and if you had looked hard enough, you might have found a couple. They tell you it’s appalling to comment on what they publish to their readers or viewers without first talking to them about it, even though you linked to or even printed in full everything they said and wrote. And they close by telling you that you have no standards, no ethics, no understanding of their Complex Profession, and no decency — that you’re just a shrill, ignorant partisan pushing a lowly agenda while they are in the business of Real Unvarnished, Objective Reporting. MORE