NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has started a weblog called PressThink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine. It’s one of the best new reads to come out of the ether in quite a while.
This morning, Rosen published an interview with media critic Todd Gitlin that succinctly and correctly assesses John Ashcroft’s disingenuous refusal to talk to anyone other than local broadcast television entertainers. A Justice Department spokeswoman explained to Howard Kurtz that the scheme is merely a way of “explaining key facts directly to the American people and not having as much of a filter from people who are already invested in having a different view of it.”
Gitlin’s take: “Ashcroft is practicing sheer demagoguery. He knows that, with nifty chosen sound bites, he can dominate local television, which harbors few practitioners of anything that can be called journalism. Since most local TV journalists are little more than stenographers, he can safely stay ‘on message,’ rally his partisans, and keep annoying critics at bay. This is the politics of no-politics, the politics of l’etat-c’est-moi.”
Rosen goes on to neatly deconstruct the multiple rationales behind Ashcroft’s scheme in “Ashcroft: National Explainer.” The logic behind Ashcroft’s media performances reads sort of like an Al Franken book title.
Very highly recommended.
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