I am sorry, but this is truly, truly lame:
Saying he is a "big newspaper junkie," President Obama expressed hope on Friday that newspapers can find their way through the financial crisis most are now mired in.In an Oval Office interview with editors from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade, the President talked about the vital role journalism and newspapers play in American society.
"Journalistic integrity, you know, fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting, how to retain those ethics in all these different new media and how to make sure that it's paid for, is really a challenge," Mr. Obama said. "But it's something that I think is absolutely critical to the health of our democracy."
Across the country, newspapers are struggling to maintain readership and advertising revenue that has been lost to the Internet. Thousands of journalists have been laid off, and over the last year several newspapers have closed.The Rocky Mountain News in Denver ceased operations, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer now publishes only on the Internet, and several large newspaper corporations have filed for bankruptcy, including the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Obama said he noted the trend. "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," the President said. (Emphasis added.)
"What I hope is that people start understanding if you're getting your newspaper over the Internet, that's not free and there's got to be a way to find a business model that supports that."
Wow. He's already shown he's not afraid to throw progressives under the bus on healthcare reform, climate-change legislation, and DADT to name but a few, but now it's the bloggers' turn, too?
Apparently our President prefers to place his trust for news in the same Serious & Respectable People who obediently pushed the establishment party line on Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, WMDs in Iraq, Suck on This, and the Saddam-Osama alliance than the shrill and unruly likes of Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall. Jesus.
Note to Barack Obama: We are the fact-checkers in today's mass media. Companies like the Times and the Post don't employ those types of workers anymore. And yes, of course, there will always be plenty of fact-free shouting in the blogosphere as long as there's a Corner, a Red State, or an Atlas Shrugs to service the fever dreams of the Glenn Beck voter demographic, but as the President might say, let's be clear: Some of us out here have dedicated our blogging careers to debunking patently phony Beltway nonsense, not parroting it; to calling out the myriad lies of serial fabricators in government; to providing more accurate context to the news of the day; and to promoting a richer and more complex understanding of current issues than the loudmouth Tea Party headline-grabbers who stand athwart history yelling "ACORN"!
Oh, and a few of us helped get you elected President too. Do you still really want that second term?
---Vitelius
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