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For my part, I meant it as more a metaphor for the average American journalist's cluelessness about what they are writing about, their generally carefree attitude towards this cluelessness, and why this is the case.
Why is the American journalist typically clueless about what they are writing about? This is for a number of reasons which feed each other.
First, journalism training is, generally speaking, pretty specialized, a branch of speech and communications. Like accountants, one is not educated in a subject, one is trained in a craft. Knowledge of the subject one is going to write about is a good asset to have, but certainly not required. The proof? This article migeru is citing, where not only the journalist, but her editor(s), are clearly clueless about major parts of the story she's writing about in the (so-called) paper of American record.
Second, the American educational system does little to nothing to teach Americans about the rest of the world (the secondary schools being egregiously bad on this score), and the US is a very insular place to begin with. I'd reckon that if maybe a little more than half of American students with a college diploma can locate Belgium on a map (and forget about those with only high school diplomas), maybe one in five hundred can identify the two main linguistic communities there much less give you a bit of color and background as to the history and culture of these. They go to cover a land they know little to nothing about, and unsurprisingly they become unwitting vessels for whatever ignorant crap happens to be in the air the time deadline hits. I especially loved this one's treatment of vlaams belang in this regard.
Third, and this is problably the most damning, you have to be the child of wealthy parents to become a journalist in the US these days. How's this? First, j-school is not cheap by any means. Second, you don't make money to help pay for j-school or attendant expenses on summer holiday. No, if you want to work for the NY Times one day, that resume better be full of some good internships, starting now. And those internships, in the US they're mostly non-paid. So daddy and mommy are going to have to foot the bill for more than just school. And, once you're done with j-school? Another internship, this time perhaps paid (though quite poorly). Journalism is not a well paid profession when one is getting one's start. Want to get the Time's attention and catch on as a cub reporter? Probably best to work in New York. Not a cheap place to live, New York. So, daddy and mommy are going to have to foot some more bills. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what sorts of parents can afford to give their erstwhile budding reporter this kind of shot at big time journalism.
So you have three factors contributing to this - no knowledge requirement to be a serious journalist, great insularity of most Americans, and journalism opportunities limited to the children of the upper middle- and upper-classes (with the attendant ideological biases). There is no meritocracy, and ignorance is not an elimating factor; unsurprisingly, American journalism is pretty bad and getting worse.
You ask me for English-language newspapers worth reading? Aside from the Independent, I can't really think of any. As a general rule, if it's in English and in a major media outlet, it's far more likely than not to be either false, biased or (more likely) both. Go back and read the English-language coverage of the run-up to Iraq war in everything from the Washington Times to the Guardian to see what I'm getting at. Does this mean everything in the Times or the Post is for shit? Heaven's no. But I don't think either is worthy of support, and I prefer to let the blogs filter out the shit for me - if something at either is worth reading, I'll hear about it from someone I trust. I certainly don't trust the name of either anymore, nor am I alone in this distrust, which explains the rise of blogs in the first place. If anything, some of the smaller outlets (likme McClatchy) are "getting it" with far more regularity than the self-satisfied gasbags at the Times or the Post.
As for the ideological references you make to American papers, I'd say your estimations are slightly off kilter. The Wash Times is definitely biased hard, hard right, but the post is biased to the right as well, albeit a fair amount less. The New York Times is generally center to center-right, the Chicago papers definitely conservative, and so forth.
Within these papers (and in most others in the US), there are definitely places which are systematically biased to the right, in particular the business and finance sections and the sports pages, the combination of the two making up more than half your average American paper. On the other hand, there are no systematically left voices in any section of any paper, nor is any mainstream paper generally left.
And this is unsurprising, given who owns the papers, and how journalists are made. "C'est un scandale !"
Let's simply recall the ignorant, bigotted crap she came up with, shall we?
First we have a racist, xenophobic political party from Belgium, the reconstituted party of a racist, xenophobic party which had been hounded out of existence by the Belgian justice system but a year or so ago and with whom no other of the many mainstream parties in Belgium will speak. We note that said racist party actually loses seats in the recent parlaimentary elections. We note also that the Socialists are the biggest losers in said election, which is important because unlike other political groupings, Flemish and Walloon Socialists get on pretty well all things considered. Big winners are Flemish Christian Democrats on the right, and Greens on the left.
We note again that no one will speak to the racists in Vlaams Belang, thus complicating the making of a coalition, while the leader of the largest bloc in the new parlaiment, the Flemish branch of the Christian Democrats, is led by a man who is given to insulting Walloons (thus alienating prospective coalition partners) while at the same time demanding devolution of powers to the regions.
We note that even if such a devolution might be desirable (and leave this discussion 100% aside, also ignoring the thorny Brussels region issue, a big one that the Times reporter doesn't really get into), having a leader given to insulting the party likely to be hurt in the process is not a good way of moving forward in that process.
Now, given this dynamic, the last person I would expect to be quoted, first and foremost, in this environment is one of the leaders of the racist, xenophobic party no one else (save, apparently, the Times Paris bureau chief) will speak to.
Not only does the New York Times reporter do this, but she provides him a forum of legitimacy by quoting him, in a paragraph which sets up the rest of the article, citing some ahistorical bullshit which his party demogogically uses to justify its crude separatism, a separatism that she only by paragraph like 26 acknowledges is not even supported by a majority of Flamands.
This is crap journalism. Crap, crap, crap.
That it comes from the (supposedly seasoned) Paris bureau chief instead of someone with an excuse gives me pause. I knew the Times were on some real hard times, but not this hard. Very ugly indeed. "C'est un scandale !"
LOL. Indeed, good analysis. We've seen so much crap about Belgium we're becoming to tired to react anymore. The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)
One, the statistic about half of American college students knowing where Belgium is on a map has to be countered by the percentage of Americans who go to college.
In other words, compare to Canada. 15% of Canadians go on to higher ed. 50% of Americans go onto higher ed.
What can we conclude? That American higher Ed. is watered down by the numbers. A true test would take the cream of the crop from the top 15% of American universities, and then pose the same question to them.
As for J-school, I agree it's a professionalizing school that doesn't bring out the best in our young journalists (some J-schools however do a great job. For instance, at Boston U you take 4 courses in J., and the rest are in a subject field in History or Political Science or Economics. As for who pays for or attends grad. school, it's not solely the province of te rich. I know plenty of MFAs that sent themselves into servitude for the student load industry by attending Columbia. One more point: let's look at the academic backgrounds of our well known journalists. A vast majority do not come out of communications programs, but they come out of the humanities. I mean, so what's Linda Miller's excuse? Tim Russert's? And hundreds of others that never went through J-school?
It's pretty apparent that these guys get ahead by towing the corporate line. Seymour Hersh is reduced to writing for the New Yorker for a reason. Steven Erlanger was shunted to the back reaches of the NY Times for a reason. Bob Kuttner got a swift kick to the rump for a reason. Jack Germond has been writing in obscurity for the better part of half a century. That's the answer right there. When a so-called liberal like Sumner redstone puts his media empire at the behest of the Bushes because "it's best for the corporation" then you know why all is lost.
60 Minutes, primarily an entertainment vehicle with occasional lapses of journalism, has even felt the mihty hand of the corporate master.
