A C-SPAN UPDATE: If you get a chance to hear Dan Rather answer Marvin Kalb’s questions on the Future of Journalism, check it out.

Rather made some interesting points about what makes a journalist, whether blogging is journalism and in fact who qualifies as a journalist.

For starters, anyone who wants to claim they are a journalist attaches their name to their report. Anonymous cheap one-shotters should not be listened to and certainly not trusted.

He said courage is his favorite word, and anyone who claims to be a journalist should have the courage to speak truth to power and be prepared to make enemies. If everyone likes you, you are not much of a journalist.

If a blogger makes an honest attempt to report the facts in front of them, it is a new form of journalism. Not so with anything anonymous.

So watch out for anonymous e-mail and anonymous comments on blogs. It is the modern equivalent of the late night, hate-filled threatening phone call from the Ku Klux Klan.

Mother of Slain Soldier Keeps Vigil in Crawford, Texas

by Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher
Locust Fork Publishing
LocustFork.Net

SOMEWHERE IN THE BLOGOSPHERE - Cindy Sheehan, the mother from Vacaville, Calif., who co-founded Gold Star Families for Peace after her son Casey was killed in Iraq, said in a blog conference call today that the U.S. Secret Service had been harassing her to leave Crawford, Texas, saying she was at risk of being run over by a car in the middle of the night.

She praised the Internet and the blogosphere for helping her cause and for keeping her safe.

“I attribute everything to the Internet and the blogosphere. When we put it out Saturday night that the Secret Service was trying to intimidate us into leaving, it went all over the blogosphere and the Internet,” she said. “I just wanted everybody to know that if something happened to us it was probably the Secret Service. They know that. They watch the blogs too.”

But she said she would not be intimidated into leaving or giving up.

“This is something that can’t be ignored and they can’t shut us down,” she said. “It’s truly amazing and thank God for the Internet or we wouldn’t know anything. We would already be a fascist state. Our government is run by one party, every level, and the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government. If we didn’t have the Internet, none of us would know what was truly going on.”

She said she never got involved in activism before her son Casey was killed in Iraq, “because I didn’t think one person could make a difference. But one person with millions of people behind you can make a difference. . . . I have said since my son died and the ‘elections’ in November that it is ‘we the people’ that has to cause the change.”

In response to a question from a blogger, Ms. Sheehan went into more detail about the treatment she received from the Secret Service.

“The first day we were here, they kept on coming and telling us, ‘you know you really don’t want to stay here because chances are you’re going to get hit by a car during the night,’ ” she said. “Finally, one of the people here with me asked, ‘Does that mean if we get run over it’s going to be one of you?’ And the guy goes, ‘That’s not what I’m trying to say.’ ”

When asked if she got the impression that the Secret Service was trying to intimidate her, she said, “Yes, definitely. They wanted us to leave. Of course they wanted us to leave. But they really don’t know who they are dealing with here. They know now, but they didn’t know then.”

When she was asked if she has had daily contact with the Secret Service, she said yes, and that the so-called “Camp Casey concierge” was asked about the number of people expected to show up.

“But we can’t tell,” she said. “People are just spontaneously coming. It’s been a really amazing thing.”

From another blogger, she was asked about the smear campaign from the White House and the right-wing bloggers, including Matt Drudge, saying she changed her story on what President George W. Bush told her in an earlier meeting with parents of troops killed in Iraq.

She said the comments Drudge used were taken out of context and she insisted she is telling the truth about how Bush treated her by calling her “mom” and making bad jokes.

When asked about the controversy over whether she would appear on Bill O’Reilly’s show “The Factor” on Fox News, she said she had decided not to go on the show after being attacked by the conservative talk show host who is not a journalist.

“I don’t like it when people lie about me and attack me for exercising my freedom of speech,” she said. “It’s one thing for Bill O’Reilly to disagree with my politics and my view on the war, but it’s absolutely another thing that he attacked me personally. I’m not going to dignify his show with my presence because I believe his show is an obscenity to the truth and to humanity.”

She also said she was not going to allow anyone to distract her from the true mission of her cause.

“The true mission is bringing attention to this occupation of Iraq and ending the war, bringing our troops home,” she said. “I don’t think they have the support of a majority of America. I think we do.”

She said there were only three things that would make her leave Crawford: A good meeting with the president, the end of August or if she is arrested.

She said if they try to force her to leave, “I am just going to sit my butt down on the ground. This is America. Every inch of America is a freedom of speech and freedom to peaceably assemble zone. If you want me gone you’ll have to carry me out of here.”

When asked specifically what she would ask the president if she were granted a meeting, she said she would ask what the noble cause is that her son Casey died for.

“I don’t believe a war of aggression against a country that was no threat to the United States of America is a noble cause,” she said.

She indicated she would ask about his statement that we have to honor the troops by completing the mission, since the mission is unclear and keeps changing.

“The only way they can honor my son’s sacrifice is by bringing the troops home,” she said.

She was asked how she felt about the media’s minimal coverage of her compared to crime news such as the ongoing story about the Alabama teen missing in Aruba.

“They don’t want this to be the story,” she said. “A lot of people have a lot at stake by keeping this occupation going. They are making lots of money. We all know who owns NBC. If they were truly reporting the news objectively, they would be reporting this. It strikes me as a bigger story than Natalee Holloway, which is a tragedy for one family. What we are trying to do here is save millions of families from going through tragedy.”

One of the callers pointed out that her story was the lead editorial in Tuesday’s New York Times.

“It is getting a lot of mainstream attention,” she said. “That is a gratifying result of what is happening. It’s putting the war back on the front pages, back in the news where it belongs. It belongs there every day whether a grieving mom is sitting outside the ranch in Crawford or not. We have to realize we are a nation at war.”

She said again if not for the Internet, “We wouldn’t know the truth about what is going on over there.”

The blog conference call was hosted by Joe Trippi of JoeTrippi.com, Bob Fertik of Democrats.com and AfterDowningStreet.org, and Jodie Evans of CodePink4Peace.org.

Editor’s Note: I will be calling the Secret Service this afternoon to get their reaction to this story.

But I just wanted to inform my regular readers that while I was working on this story, several things happened that make it clear there are forces in this country trying to prevent the truth from getting out.

First of all, just as I started to blog, this site was attacked again by a series of trackback pings and comments from a Texas spammer flooding us with Texas hold ‘em poker and casino sites. Our home phone and cell phone were flooded with telemarketing calls. And, although a minor, scattered thunderstorm came through this area during the conference call, it was over by the time I started to blog. Yet Alabama Power tripped the power here as I was trying to post, forcing me to restart the computer and reset the cable modem. Fascism indeed.

President George W. Bush was seen on cable news this morning signing the CAFTA trade agreement, in what CNN’s White House correspondent called “a gloatfest,” since the bill only passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by two votes. Are you feeling the screws turning yet?

Meanwhile, the Birmnigham Snooze did manage to eke out a story of sorts today on the sneaky visit of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Although it just demonstrates the pathetic and rear-end kissing nature of mainstream journalism these days.

Even in my early days in journalism at the University of Alabama’s Crimson White student newspaper, I would have been laughed out of the newsroom for reporting that a government official such as Gonzales was “pleased with Martin and the direction the U.S. attorney’s office is taking.”

So he is pleased that the U.S. attorneys office in Birmingham has lost every high profile case to come before it? And to change the subject, they indict former Jefferson County commissioner Chris McNair, who lost his daughter in the 16th Street Church bombing, for some renovation work on the photography studio dedicated to the memorial of his daughter?

Aren’t you so pleased that the Birmingham News is pleased with the pleasing idiots who are running the country? I guess it beats hiding out in the bushes and catching a Democrat in an affair with a reporter, eh? How’s that circulation doing these days? Do you think people are pleased with your pleasing BS?

Bloggers - those Internet-based writers without rules - are fighting back against criticism that their work is unreliable, libelous or just poorly written, the Associated Press is reporting.

More than 300 Web publishers were in Nashville Friday for a weekend conference heavy on training in techniques used by journalists in what bloggers term the mainstream media.

“If freedom of the press belongs to those who have the press, then blogging expands ownership of the press,” Conference organizer Bill Hobbs said.

Blog Nashville

Search For Truth More Important Than Title

Who is a journalist?

That is the question that Jeff Gannon, alias James Guckert, asked in his own defense during a National Press Club panel last week.

“One does wonder where the lines are these days that distinguish between legitimate reporters and anyone who has a laptop computer or a Web site. Where do the bloggers fit in,” long-time UPI correspondent Helen Thomas asked in her recent column devoted to the issue. “They may have something to say - and nobody is stopping them.”

“Still,” she said, “the description ‘journalist’ does not apply to what they do.”

Whoa! Ms. Thomas. Love your work over the years, but . . .

There’s more.

She quotes Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism at Washington and Lee University, who defines a journalist as someone who “is professionally dedicated to truth seeking.” He conceded that although the whole job description “has gotten muddied,” Gannon shouldn’t be considered a journalist.

“Gannon was a propagandist, a flack for the White House,” she said. “Thus, he fails to meet the requirement - as Wasserman wrote in the Miami Herald last September - that ‘anybody who enters the (journalism) profession makes a core commitment to do his or her best to determine and tell the truth.’”

Oh, Ms. Thomas. If only that were true.

Just because someone published on a Weblog does not mean they are all fakes like Gannon and do not seek the truth. And just because someone writes for a print newspaper or magazine - forgetting radio and television for the moment - does not mean they truly spend their time and resources seeking the truth.

In fact, it is painfully obvious these days that most “newsworkers” spend most of their time re-writing press releases.

A common phrase in D.C. offices is, “Are you committing journalism over there?”

The answer?

“Yes, I’m rewriting press releases. If we get done in time we can catch nine holes at Haines Point.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with the golf part of that. We all need leisure time, especially when it is 72 degrees with few clouds in the sky and the cherry blossoms are blooming.

It’s just that the public relations industry does most of the work of what passes for mainstream journalism today, the stuff you see printed in most daily and weekly newspapers and magazines. The same is true for television news, although news directors tend to rely on the print media’s factual reporting on breaking news.

More interesting questions that came up at the National Press Association session were: What is a profession? And: Is journalism a profession?

Shortly after introducing myself to moderator Rick Durnham, president of the National Press Club and White House correspondent for Business Week, I sent this link along in an e-mail message. It answers both questions in an academic paper I researched and wrote a few year’s back.

IS JOURNALISM A BONA FIDE PROFESSION?
What the literature and the law reveal.
By Glynn R. Wilson
A paper presented at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, Newspaper Division March 9-11, 1995.

I haven’t heard back from Mr. Durnham, yet. He said he would consider asking me to serve on the next panel discussion about it, since I was about the only person in the room who happens to be a journalist, a blogger AND a scholar on the subject.

I argue in the paper that under the law, journalism should never attain bona fide professional status in the U.S. We will never be licensed like lawyers, doctors, jet pilots and psychiatrists.

The problem with bloggers to those who want to call journalism a profession is that they can’t control the vetting process of who breaks out and becomes known in today’s celebrity-driven media culture. Limiting the careers of rebels in the ranks is a hallmark of the print journalism hierarchy, the journalism equivalent of peer review in the sciences and academe.

The problem with that system is the result: A bland product results from advancing only those who are good at PR and do not rock the boat and occassionally piss somebody off, like maybe the president.

Most of the journalists going after bloggers for going after Gannon fall into the journalism as a profession camp, whether they know it or acknowledge it or not.

Most of the bloggers going after Gannon do so because they have a journalistic instinct that sends up a red flag signaling that Gannon is not telling the truth about how he got his access to the White House.

There is more to this story, and it has a lot to do with a key question President George W. Bush himself told the American Society of Newspaper Editor to ask presidential candidates in the future. Transcript

President Bush: Somebody said, well, how do you describe the presidency? I said, it is a decision-making job; I make a lot of decisions. At your next editorial board, when you’re dealing with a future President, you ought to say, how do you intend to make decisions; what is the process by which you will make large decisions and small decisions; how do you decide?

Indeed. How did this president go about making the decision to go to war in Iraq? How did he decide to take on Social Security at this time? What prompts him to screw poor folks at every legislative turn, from bankruptcy laws to tort reform? Could the answer lie in the corporate interest of Bush’s friends and supporters? Duh.

Back to the Gannon question.

How did this administration decide to allow a gay male prostitute access to the White House to pose as a journalist and ask sympathetic, softball questions?

That is a question we do not have an answer for, yet - from the “professional” press or the blogosphere.

Is it just me?

Or does it appear that bloggers are spending more time and resources trying to get at the truth of this question than the press corps?

On his own Web site, Gannon is certainly not providing any credible answers. The best I can tell Mr. Gannon is not much of a journalist, a blogger - or a propagandist.

But more power to him for trying. The First Amendment allows it.

And let’s face it, it’s great fun to make fun of him.

He should be a complete embarrassment to the White House, the Republican Party and certainly the Christian Right.

Where is the Rev. Jerry Falwell on the Gannon story? In the hospital with heart trouble I hear.

Any connection? You decide.

GW