We are poorly served by our media. Too often, we get misinformation and extreme partisanship instead of responsibility and journalistic integrity. Opinion writers exert a lot of power but there is no accountability whatsoever. The rest of us thus have no choice but to fight back in our own little blogs.
I encourage everybody to share their own experiences with Arkansas media.
this site has long been needed! would like to know more about the sponsor(s)!
No sponsors, just one fed-up blogger. I welcome contributions in the form of comments from other fed-up people. Don’t hesitate!
Good for you doing this!
Some of us have been critiquing editorials, columns, letters, new stories, and even cartoons via the newspaper blogs. How integrate with what you are doing?
I would like to see Mediawatch monitor the cartoons in the ADG, because pictures often slip into people’s consciousness even if they don’t really make sense and are based on harmful stereotypes.
Something I’ve noted is that Paul Greenberg prints a lot of pieces from neo-conservative periodicals.
Good point about the cartoons. Again feel encouraged to leave a comment whenever you come across something in particular. I am not going to “monitor” everything but I imagine this evolving into a community effort.
Hello, arkansasmediawatch.
Last weekend, you challenged me to explain why people should be grateful that the military is present in certain places. I can comment only on my personal experience.
First, let me be clear that I was never in combat. While many of my fellow soldiers were fighting in Vietnam, I was halfway around the world monitoring Soviet military communications. I like to think that the information we collected helped keep the Soviet Union at bay during the Cold War. They knew we were always listening and reporting on the movements of the Russian military forces in East Germany and elsewhere. Many other U.S. military units had missions that challenged the Soviet threat to Western Europe; the unit I was in was part of a massive American presence in Europe.
Most of the soldiers in my unit were college-educated enlisted men who spent one term in the army and moved on — and most of them detested the army. But we all took our mission and our jobs very seriously. Another thing we took seriously was the top secret/crypto security clearance that we had to have to be able to do our jobs. Even today, we normally don’t discuss what we did except in general terms. Having said that, you can go to this link to learn more about how one unit did its job in Berlin during the Cold War and the history of Teufelsberg, a mountain constructed from the rubble of bombed-out Berlin:
http://www.berlin-brigade.de/us-ins/us-ein16.html
Pavel Korchagin
Thanks Pavel. This comment belongs to a discussion thread at arktimes.
I don’t doubt it when you say that you took your army job seriously. I also don’t doubt it when you say that you detested the army. What I still don’t know is what exactly we are supposed to be grateful for?
More of everything, please!
Don’t forget Sync….this week their *food and travel columnist* discusses his never traveling abroad, not being into foreign food, and thinks baba ghanoush is a dude.
Hi. How can I find you on Twitter? I clicked the link at the top, but it just takes me to my Twitter page. No follow option.
Hi Steppin,
I can’t devote as much time as I wished to this blog but everybody is welcome to drop comments about pertinent media issues. Don’t hesitate to write a few lines about that travel columnist.
Anonymous, I don’t use Twitter. I will check into how to remove that link.
Wow. Cry me a river. A couple of right wing essays get published and you devote a blog to it? You guys control 99.9% of the media. Praising a president who has nor ever will do a thing to help the country. This might be the worst blog I have ever read. Worst of luck to you. Whhhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
And the “you guys [who] control 99.9% of the media” are–General Electric? Disney? Time-Warner? Saudi prince with major share of FOX stock? Mega-corporations?
No, unfortunately I expect you mean something else.
Here in NW Arkansas we have a double dose of journalistic doo-doo, in the form of the ADG and the Stephens Media wrappers that enclose the WEHCO turd ball.
Not only do we have the drivel from Greenberg, Gitz and even pseudo-liberal Pat Lynch, we have Mike Masterson (hubby of Laurie Lee Masterson, paid staff of the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and leader of the teabaggers).
The NWA Times, which was a center-left paper for decades, is nowadays just another mouthpiece for the Billionaire Boys Club.
You rightly point out the fact that Masterson’s wife is a Tea Party political activist. A newspaper that cares about editorial responsibility would never put somebody like that in charge of the editorial page. This point was well made by Richard S. Drake a year ago:
I found your site after reading Gitz’s latest piece of reactionary drivel and then wondering: is anyone else outraged by the number of factual errors in his columns? Like you I agree, of course, that everyone is entitled to his own silly opinions. But (as I think DPM said) not everyone is entitled to his own facts. Too bad Gitz doesn’t contribute a small bit to the economy by hiring his own personal fact checker. Or step outside of academia and get a job in the free enterprise system where tenure is non-existent.
Bravo to AMW!
Hey AMW – Big fan! Would love to chat.
Best,
Jeff Winkler, Managing Editor Washington County Observer, jeff@wcobserver.com