Who is a journalist OR Americans ARE getting stupider...
 

Poll asks Americans "Who is a journalist?"
CBC Arts


A new U.S. poll reveals that 40 per cent of Americans think Fox News Channel personality Bill O'Reilly is a journalist, compared to 30 per cent who think Bob Woodward is a journalist.

Woodward is the reporter who – along with partner Carl Bernstein – helped break the Watergate story, which forced Richard Nixon from the White House. Now a senior editor with the Washington Post, Woodward is the author of numerous books.

O'Reilly is the television host who has been attacked by some for his unabashedly right-wing views.

Using a list of 10 names, the poll asked respondents to say if they think the person in question is a journalist.

ABC News anchor Peter Jennings rated highest, with 79 per cent saying they think of him as a journalist.

Woodward was on par with Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host who was rated by 27 per cent of people to be a journalist.

The other names on the list were 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace (at 64 per cent), morning-show host Katie Couric (48 per cent), NBC anchor Brian Williams (42 per cent), CNN interviewer Larry King (37 per cent), Hardball host Chris Matthews (33 per cent) and conservative commentator George Will (19 per cent).

Limbaugh told the Associated Press he is "not really surprised" with the findings.

"I am America's anchorman, doing news play-by-play 15 hours a week for nearly 17 years now, and this is just more evidence that the old media's monopoly-like dominance is finished," he said.

The study was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center from March 7 to May 2.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the centre's director, said Woodward would have ranked higher if the poll had been conducted after W. Mark Felt was unmasked as Deep Throat on May 31.

The flurry of stories that followed noted Woodward's role in helping to unseat Nixon.

Jamieson said the results provide "disturbing evidence that the public defines the word very differently from the way that most journalists do."

Journalists were also quizzed with a set of similar questions. Using the same list of names, they were asked to rate how closely the person comes to matching their "idea of what a journalist is."

Woodward rated highest on that question, with 72 per cent of journalists saying he comes "very close" to personifying the journalistic ideal.

O'Reilly and Limbaugh tied for last, with 1 per cent of journalists saying they came "very close" to being journalists.

There were no bloggers on the list.
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God, now I'm effing depressed. I think I'm going to puke AND cry.
http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/kotz/h0351.gifhttp://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/krank/f025.gif

Haha trust Lux to get say that :lol:

I agree though, but I don't think it's just America, it's the whole pop culture that the idea of knowing what you are talking about doesn't matter anymore :shrug:

What a depressing report :distress:

Without a blurb defining who Bob Woodward is, most Americans would have no idea. So to extrapolate from this poll that they think he is less of a journalist than O'Reilly is stretching things. However, the people that we know everyone knows have disturbingly high percentages. :distress: I don't know how people are so dumb. Then again, I live in a wicked smaht state. :laugh:

Sad but true I guess.

I know who Journalists are because as a journalism student I've been learning about them for years....

But Bill O''Reilly? NOT a journalist - by any means. Not at all.

That's one of the biggest problems with the media today... the line has been blurred between commentators like O'Reilly, Hannity and Coulter and actual journalist, reporting news. Most people aren't watching the news, they're watching propoganda and they're too stupid to realize it. :( This is why little things like the Downing Street Memo aren't being reported.

Instead of attacking his views, I wish they'd lambast the way he calls himself a newscaster & then gives vociferous commentary the whole show. It's not his views that need attacking (everybody already agrees or disagrees & no reasoned debate is going to sway either ignorant army) -- it's his method.
Entry No. 449 in the file "Stupidest Polls Ever Taken."
Entry No. 6,422 in the file "Stupidest Comments Ever Made."

Exactly, Ken.

Which is why I seek out Garrick Utley whenever I can.

Yes, what they are watching is "infotainment" not news. If you try to tell them, they think you are crazy. Somehow they still trust these egomaniacal, hypocritical, lying personalities. "If it weren't the truth then they couldn't say it." may be the belief.

Bush (not a journalist ;) ) recently admitted he uses propoganda in one of his slips of the tongue, he said, "In my line of work you gotta repeat things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in. To kind of catapult the propoganda." You can hear this here. This is a direct link to an MP3 of his words. I believe the context is his Social Security "plan". http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IM...propaganda.mp3

Bush and Rove are masters at this, repeating a lie over and over (with help from Faux News "journalists" like O'Reilly) until it becomes a fact... it's funny that Bush is dumb enough to actually admit to doing this! :laugh: They used this technique during the build up to the invasion of Iraq... how many times did Cheney go on some news/talk show and state that there were links between Hussein and Al Queda? After a while the majority of Americans believed it! :distress: They did it again during the last election with Kerry and the Swift Boat Liars... by election day many people believed that Kerry was a communist traitor!

EVIL, EVIL, EVIL!!!

Preach it brotha. :distress: I can't wait for all of the sh*t to be dug up on these guys. And it will be, it may take a while, but it will be.

Here is a fairly good article on the alleged contact. I think everyone getrs that there were minor contacts, but those contacts were not the smoking gun they were made out to be by W and crewe. I also think the important thing to remember is Rove is a mastermind of getting Fox News, etc. to assert what W cannot. Rove can get Hannity, O'Reilly (a little harder IMO) and that ilk to say exactly what Rove wants them to say and then Rove can claim W never said that. FUC*KER

washingtonpost.com

Bush Reasserts Hussein-Al Qaeda Link

President Draws Distinction Between Involvement in 9/11 Attacks, Other Contact

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 17, 2004; 3:00 PM


President Bush insisted today that "numerous contacts" between the ousted government of Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorist network showed that the former Iraqi leader was a threat to the United States, despite a report by the Sept. 11 commission that found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda [is] because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," Bush told reporters after a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Bush said the contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda provided proof of a relationship.

The report, issued yesterday by the bipartisan commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attack on the United States, said that all relevant classified information that it reviewed showed that the contacts that took place between Iraq and al Qaeda officials never led to actual cooperation.

In yesterday's hearing of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a senior FBI official and a senior CIA analyst concurred with the finding.

The report challenged one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq. Along with the contention that Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials have often asserted that there were extensive ties between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Earlier this year, Cheney said evidence of a link was "overwhelming."

Asked about the commission's findings on an Iraq-al Qaeda link, Bush said, "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two."

Bush said he had called Saddam Hussein a threat "because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like al Qaeda. Now, he was a threat because he had terrorist connections, not only al Qaeda connections but other connections to terrorist organizations."

Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, asked at a news conference about Bush's comments, said the panel did not dispute that there were contacts between Hussein's government and al Qaeda. But Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said the panel's staff found "that there is no credible evidence that we can discover, after a long investigation, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were in any way part of the attack on the United States."

Vice chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman, said, "I must say, I have trouble understanding the flap over this." The commission's position, he said, is that "we don't have any evidence of a cooperative . . . relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States."

The commission's staff report said that bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq" while in Sudan through 1996, but that "Iraq apparently never responded" to a bin Laden request for help in 1994. The commission cited reports of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda after bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1996, adding, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

The finding challenges a belief held by large numbers of Americans about al Qaeda's ties to Hussein. According to a Harris poll in late April, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent to 36 percent, believe "clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found."

As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein "had long-established ties with al Qaeda." Bush, asked on Tuesday to verify or qualify that claim, defended it by pointing to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken credit for a wave of attacks in Iraq.

In his remarks today, Bush again mentioned Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan who runs the al Tawhid terrorist network. Bush said Hussein had "provided safe haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocents inside of Iraq."

Bush also cited Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, whose Fatah Revolutionary Council was active in the 1970s and 1980s, as another example of Hussein's terrorist ties. Nidal died under mysterious circumstances in Baghdad a few months before the Iraq war.

Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), sought to profit from the commission's finding. "The administration misled America, and the administration reached too far," Kerry told Michigan Public Radio yesterday. "I believe that the 9/11 report, the early evidence, is that they're going to indicate that we didn't have the kind of terrorists links that this administration was asserting. I think that's a very, very serious finding."

A Bush campaign spokesman countered that Kerry himself has said Hussein "supported and harbored terrorist groups." And Cheney's spokesman pointed to a 2002 letter written by CIA Director George J. Tenet stating that "we have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade" and "credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression." Cheney's office also pointed to a 2003 Tenet statement calling Zarqawi "a senior al Qaeda terrorist associate."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the commission finding of long-standing high-level contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq justified the administration's earlier assertions. "We stand behind what was said publicly," he said.

Bush, speaking to troops in Tampa yesterday, did not mention an Iraq-al Qaeda link, saying only that Iraq "sheltered terrorist groups." That was a significantly milder version of the allegations administration officials have made since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official before the attacks, in April 2000 in Prague; Cheney later said the meeting could not be proved or disproved.

Bush, in his speech aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, asserted: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding."

In September, Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press": "If we're successful in Iraq . . . then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Speaking about Iraq's alleged links to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney connected Iraq to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by saying that newly found Iraqi intelligence files in Baghdad showed that a participant in the bombing returned to Iraq and "probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven." He added: "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s."

Shortly after Cheney asserted these links, Bush contradicted him, saying: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th." But Bush added: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties."

In January, Cheney repeated his view that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda, saying that "there's overwhelming evidence" of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. He said he was "very confident there was an established relationship there."

The commission staff, in yesterday's report, said that while bin Laden was in Sudan between 1991 and 1996, a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan, and that he had a meeting with bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden was reported to have sought training camps and assistance in getting weapons, "but Iraq never responded," the staff said. The report said that bin Laden "at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan."

As for the Atta meeting in Prague mentioned by Cheney, the commission staff concluded: "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred." It cited FBI photographic and telephone evidence, along with Czech and U.S. investigations, as well as reports from detainees, including the Iraqi official with whom Atta was alleged to have met. On the 1993 trade center bombing, the staff found "substantial uncertainty" about whether bin Laden and al Qaeda were involved.

At yesterday's hearing, commissioner Fred F. Fielding questioned the staff's finding of no apparent cooperation between bin Laden and Hussein. He pointed to a sentence in the first sealed indictment in 2001 of the al Qaeda members accused of the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; that sentence said al Qaeda reached an understanding with Iraq that they would not work against each other and would cooperate on acquiring arms.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, now a U.S. attorney in Illinois, who oversaw the African bombing case, told the commission that reference was dropped in a superceding indictment because investigators could not confirm al Qaeda's relationship with Iraq as they had done with its ties to Iran, Sudan and Hezbollah. The original material came from an al Qaeda defector who told prosecutors that what he had heard was secondhand.

The staff report on Iraq was brief. Though not confirming any Iraqi collaboration with al Qaeda, it did not specifically address two of the other pieces of evidence the administration has offered to link Iraq to al Qaeda: Zarqawi's al Tawhid organization and the Ansar al-Islam group.

In October 2002, Bush described Zarqawi as "one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

Zarqawi wrote a January 2003 letter to bin Laden's lieutenants, intercepted at the Iraqi border, saying that if al Qaeda adopted his approach in Iraq, he would swear "fealty to you [bin Laden] publicly and in the news media."

In March, in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet described Zarqawi's network as among groups having "links" to al Qaeda but with its own "autonomous leadership . . . own targets [and] they plan their own attacks."

Although Zarqawi may have cooperated with al Qaeda in the past, officials said it is increasingly clear that he has been operating independently of bin Laden's group and has his own network of operatives.

The other group, Ansar al-Islam, began in 2001 among Kurdish Sunni Islamic fundamentalists in northern Iraq, fighting against the two secular Kurdish groups that operated under the protection of the United States. At one point, bin Laden supported Ansar, as did Zarqawi, who is believed to have visited their area more than once. Tenet referred to Ansar as one of the Sunni groups that had benefited from al Qaeda links.


© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Of course they don't know who Woodward is. Like most of the planet, anything after a few years will be forgotten. Woodward and Nixon was over 30 years ago. Just ask anyone in high school to talk about WW1 or WW2 and they know very little. And those had a much bigger impact on the world than Woodward. Even worse ask about the Korean War. If MASH hadn't been a TV show it would be even more obscure to people. Don't blame the public, they are still the same as they have ever been throughout history. If it didn't effect them directly, history fades away.

There is no such thing as a "Neutral" journalist. It is human nature to bring their own viewpoint onto a story, even if it is only a slight nudge.

That is absolutely not true.

There are Neutral journalists for sure. When I enter my work mode my opinions etc completely leave. I can honestly say that in my reporting I take a neutral stance and report on all sides of the story where possible and necessary.

There are a great deal of ethical journalists still left in the world - sadly the hacks and bad journalists are the ones who get a lot of the attention.

But yeah - I do not bring my viewpoints into my stories because that's not my job - my job is not to opine on what I report but to simply report it and that is what I and my peers here do.

Well, if they'd stop watching Faux News...And to think, you people gave us that bastard Murdoch. :laugh:

I haven't seen that guy in ages. Where is he now?

I tend to disagree. I think it is impossible to eliminate the subconscious when doing a story. You may think it is absolutely balanced, but tiny descisions (Maybe not readily noticible) are included. Word choice, amount of copy to each side, editorial descisions....etc. You yourself wrote "report on all sides of the story where possible and necessary." That in itself is a descision. What is possible, and what is considered necessary? I am not saying these descisions are made for a particular agenda, or viewpoint, but that the descisions are influenced by the subconscious. I am not judging the journalist, I just think it is human nature. If you were just robots you could do it.

Alot of this has to do with the time and space given to stories that obviously deserve more of each. Hard to cover stories with all the nuainces and complete coverage in 5 minutes or in one column. I just wish they would give more time to real issues rather than who JLO had this week, what mess a sports personality is in, or what an actor thinks on an issue. But the majority of the public, any world public, doesn't want to put the effort in to learn anything anymore, or care to look beyond soundbites..

your turn. :)

Well that's not entirely accurate. I (or any other reporter) don't make the decisions - news directors or editors do and often many people with many different view points go into deciding what goes in and what doesn't - and it's not based on our views - it's based on a standard set of ethics used by public radio.

And it's one the strongest and best ethics statements out there.

What I meany by when possible and necessary is this:

If possible: We try everything possible to reach the appropriate people on stories - if for a story of man 1 vs. man 2, man2 isn't returning calls, or has refused to comment - then there isn't a whole lot we can do except report the side we have and say that while we tried the other side isn't talking...

When necessary - there are some stories that contain no conflict and don't require several viewpoints.

I stand by my journalistic standards and those of the people I work with - we are neutral because the job calls us to be neutral - what I think does not matter and I know that and frankly love that by my reporting the average person wouldn't know what side of the spectrum I sit on -



And to that I agree. Luckily NPR rarely reports on big celeb issues - if they do it's a very short blurb at the top and bottom of hour newscasts.

In terms of in-depth coverage that allows people to learn more - TV is not that place anymore - television "journalism" has become a complete joke. I have little respect left for it.

There is still some good journalism on tv if you know where to look - but overall I think nowadays the best content can be found on the radio and newspaper and even on the web...

I listen/watch to alot of NPR, APR, PBS, etc... I was just wondering - from your standpoint - if it is balanced, why is NPR generally regarded as more "left". I am not saying it is, but that is the persception. (And yes I know my spelling is atrocious...). :nod:

That is an excellent question and one that NPR is well aware of and has many theories on.

First off - people on the right say it's too "left" and people on the far left feel that NPR is too "right" so who's right?

I think NPR is about the closest thing you will find to balanced and accurate news. I mean they go out of their way to provide all sides of stories and a lot of times it just pisses people off to hear the other side of a story reported - it seems that a lot of people only want to hear what reinforces their own beliefs etc...and that's just not the way the world opperates, there are many different view points.

I don't have a good answer as to why NPR is considered "left" leaning - as is PBS - I know these organizations scare the **** out of the Bush Admin and right now they're doing a lot to try and majorly cut our funding :distress:

I'm totally not answering your question :laugh: But I guess - I have no real answer for ya :o

I have to agree with Jim, Deanna. I don't view journalists as neutral observers of society. I think it is impossible for any human being to be neutral. However, there is a difference between neutral and ethical, and I think journalists can and should be ethical.

I mean, think about how many news stories aren't reported to the public. The fact that a story makes the news demonstrates some bias.

Amusingly enough - right now on NPR - well on Talk of the Nation - they're talking about the perceived liberal bias of NPR :p

It is impossible to completely remove the observer from what is being observed. This is a principle of physics via Einstein but the name of it escapes me at the moment. Your opinions will affect the outcome. That said, you can control the degree to which this will happen and can be 99.9% neutral, never perfect, while the Hannity's and Limbaugh's don't even try to present a balanced story. I left out O'Reilly because I really think he does try but he's more like 40% neutral as opposed to Hannity's 0%. In fact, there is tape of Hannity saying, "God I hate these people, you have no idea" off camera during an interview with lefties.

Before the war I saw a political cartoon of Bush pointing to an easel with the message below on it. The caption of the cartoon is also below. At the time, it was amusing. Looking back, it isn't because 80% of people were not paying attention.

http://tinypic.com/5ywaky

I also listen to BBC overnight (That's what comes on here after NPR goes off for the night). I find they are fairly balanced, and do stories that NEVER show up here in the states.

Bush Admin is afraid of everything they don't understand or fit into their views. I am not gay (Nor do I play one on TV) but I heard the silliest response from the right on same-sex marriage on TV. "What will they want to do next? Marry a cow or a dog?" That is so ignorant and uniformed on so many different levels. So I will stay with my NPR, PBS, and BBC. You can't beat Frontline, Nova, and other programming.

See... You can't say the Ledgies aren't an informed bunch. :nod:

I LOVE BBC overnight :nod: I was so excited to come to a station that carries it.

Anyway - TOTN is REALLY good right now lol - talking about balance with NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin :D Es Muy interesante!!

on edit: I would never accuse the Ledgies of being an uninformed bunch :laugh:

You didn't understand what I said.

IMO, even Sumatra's history affect us, we only aren't aware how, and that's our fault. To prefer to live in a small cozy world doesn't cut the rest out.

Romy

OTOH, I was all of two months old when Nixon resigned, and I knew who Woodward was in high school.

David was saying that we can go after Bill O'Reilly's method of calling himself a newscaster, when his show is amost exclusively his own social commentary. However, most people will discuss his commentary instead of his method, which is a pointless waste of time, as one side is never going to change the other's point of view.

Not only that, but B.O. ( :laugh: ) says he is presenting the facts in a clear and straight forward manner, but he really does not do that. For instance, he concludes (or did at the time) that SH and OBL had contacts that justified the war in Iraq a la Bush's reasoning. On closer inpection however, these contacts were mostly insignificant and hardly rose to the level on immediate danger that W set as the bar for going to war. Here is a great site with the goods on B.O.

http://www.lies.com/wp/2003/10/23/bill-oreilly-lies/

http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/

fair and balanced indeed :rolleyes: