Dr. Dawg

Lazy journalism

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An object lesson, perhaps, in just what’s wrong with the great, grey, rancid mindset that passes for mainstream Canadian “journalism” these days. First, this clunker:

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Rabble.ca is “promoting” a crazy theory, howls the distinguished new editor of Walrus Magazine. Then Justin Ling decides to run with it, with a Twitter rant excoriating Rabble.ca. Journalistic standards! Ethics! Sources!

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And here I am, a Rabble.ca blogger. Should I high-tail it out of there?

The piece was indeed offensive in every sense, including intellectually—a delusional truther-type article in which the author claimed that Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by the Ukrainians, not the Russians. It relied upon globalresearch.ca as a source, a tinfoil website that threatens to create peak aluminum all by itself.

But wait one. A Tweeter pointed out that an all-time smackdown had been delivered by another contributor. Stuffed with facts, written by someone who obviously knows what he’s talking about, it leaves not a molecule of oxygen for the first blogger.

Nothing from Kay, however, about Rabble.ca “promoting” a damned good article on the airplane incident. That wouldn’t square with his ideological preconceptions—nor with what he was trying to accomplish with his Tweet. Once that inconvenient rebuttal surfaced, Kay, with the indomitable courage of his breed, went silent.

But Ling just kept digging. This is priceless:

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Ling is a relatively young man, who handles goalposts like javelins.

Rabble.ca is a news and opinion aggregator that actually encourages debate. And I mean serious, wide-ranging debate, not the distinctions without differences that one tends to find (with honourable exceptions) in the regular effusions of the group-thinky Canadian punditocracy. As a part of that, rabble.ca hosts a fairly large pod of bloggers, who do not speak for Rabble.ca but have a platform there, and who most assuredly are not all in even basic agreement with each other. (The Left, eh? Thinking for ourselves is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.)

A blogpost may invite comment, or even another blogpost. In this case, the response was a doozy. But a couple of lazy journalists, oozing a particularly nauseating professional chauvinism, proceeded to lecture Rabble.ca on journalistic standards while signally failing to meet them themselves. And needless to say, no apologies for their poor conduct are likely to be forthcoming.

The irony of this is, of course, mucho tasty and delicious. As a parting shot, I’d ask them to go look at themselves in the mirror—but RenĂ© Magritte (see above) seems to have their number. They are, after all, serious professional journalists. Self-reflection and humility aren’t in their job description. Nor is—and here we must be blunt—the slightest trace of intellectual honesty.

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This page contains a single entry by Dr. Dawg published on November 10, 2014 6:19 PM.

Kicking down was the previous entry in this blog.

Remembrance Day as empty signifier is the next entry in this blog.

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