Charles Jaco (whom older people might remember as "C.D. Jaco" from his days as a reporter for NBC and CNN) goes a little berserk in attacking bloggers on the Romenesko Letters page. It's one thing to protest the idea that the press isn't positive enough on Iraq, but he lost me when he started mocking conservatives' lack of "opposable thumbs," not to mention the crackpot Nazi smear at the end:
One advantage to being spineless is that you can easily bend over backwards. How else to explain the media anguish and soul-searching due the anonymous bulk e-mails berating us for not covering more "positive" Iraq stories?
I first covered Baghdad in 1990. I've been back twice since then. I would suggest the bloggers who sent out the e-mails should get off their chickenhawk tailfeathers and go see for themselves. I would also suggest my colleagues in the media stop paying attention to people who don't let their lack of opposable thumbs get in the way of their blogging.
These fringe elements of our society are not "citizen journalists", nor are they "the media's conscience", nor are they "stakeholders". We had simpler names for them back in the day when they communicated with us through scrawled postcards and letters with unidentifiable stains and references to UFO's on the envelopes. They were known as "kooks", "cranks", and every so often, "escaped felons".
It is, unfortunately, not surprising that a media too spineless to ask the tough questions prior to the invasion of Iraq continues that grand tradition by bending over backwards to accommodate people on the far edge of American political life who yell "liberal" with the same gusto that Nurembergers shouted "Jew!" in 1936.
