Glenn Greenwald, writing a sort of response to yesterday’s NYT Ombudsman piece (in which he wondered whether NYT journalists should challenge the “facts” they are presented when working stories), really nails the MSM’s ongoing stenography problem. It’s not so much that MSM journalists dutifully and uncritically write down (and then print) what they’ve been told, but that they only do so on behalf of those already in a position of power (be it economic or political):
…there is one important caveat that needs to be added here. This stenographic treatment by journalists — of simply amplifying what someone claims without any skepticism or examination — is not available to everyone. Only those who wield power within America’s political and financial systems are entitled to receive this treatment. For everyone else — those who are viewed as ordinary, marginalized, or scorned by America’s political establishment — the exact opposite rules apply: their statements are subjected to extreme levels of skepticism in those rare instances when they’re heard at all.
[…]
The most damaging sin of this stenographic model isn’t laziness — the failure to subject false statements to critical, investigative scrutiny — although that is part of it. The most damaging sin is that it’s propagandistic: it converts official assertions and claims from the most powerful into Truth, even when those assertions and claims are baseless or false. This stenographic model is the primary means by which media outlets turn themselves into eager spokespeople and servants for the most powerful factions: the very opposite of the function they claim, with increasing absurdity, to perform.
Yep. Read the whole thing.
Lemkin 