I ran across that quote this morning because I was looking up the word "news" in the OED. It's the last of the quotes listed under the definition, "The report or account of recent (esp. important or interesting) events or occurrences, brought or coming to one as new information; new occurrences as a subject of report or talk; tidings... esp. such information as published or broadcast."
I got interested in the history of the word "news" as I was reading "How ‘pink slime’ journalism exploits our faith in local news/The disappearance of local news outlets has been weaponized by partisan interests" by Ryan Zickgraf (in WaPo). That begins:
The 17th-century word “courant,” which once meant “newspaper,” is obsolete, according to Merriam-Webster, except in the rare case of the title of a periodical. Papers with that moniker in their masthead got grandfathered in because they were founded hundreds of years ago. Hearing something called “courant” today, I imagine a time-tested media institution anchored in a specific city or region, such as Connecticut’s Hartford Courant, which is a decade older than the United States government....
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The loan-phrase au courant is still hanging around on the fringes of our language.
The Greek word for newspaper is εφημερίδα in which one
can see the ephemeral.
Jesus this guy is unhinged. Local newspapers have always been how Democrats foisted their political agendas on local communities and suppressed opposition by not printing their letters or attending their meetings. Only reporting on Republicans when the news was bad.
Glenn Reynolds oft notes that the media's role in our society is to cover news. With a pillow. Until it suffocates and dies. Lest it damage the Democrats. Who get unhinged when Republicans use the Democrats' methods against them. As this unhinged writer demonstrates.
Peter Ackroyd's "Rebellion" does first 3/4 of 17th century England. Chapter on "What News?" - the blossoming of Courants and coffee houses. A good read. Some gaps, like English Civil Wars and Reconstruction after our own CW, hard to find a good book.
Some of the people I miss today include P.J. O'Rourke, Charles Krauthammer, Tom Wolfe, and especially Christopher Hitchens.
It just doesn't seem like we have those minds with that writing talent running around today. I'm sure we do. I just can't think of any this morning.
tom wolfe definitely, christopher hitchens had his uses, i guess glenn greenwald holds that slot,
What jumped out at me was that word "weaponized."
I've probably used it before, too.
But it's kind of an idiotic word, right?
It's like saying "the internet is a weapon, and it will kill you if you're not careful."
No, it's just words. You fuckers who think words are "weapons" need to go to war and be reminded what weapons are. Mr. Never Been on a Gun Range (me neither, I'm a dog man). But I would just like to register some mockery at the idea that words are weapons and we need the government to oversee those weapons.
"Pink-slime journalism is a practice in which news outlets which appear to be local publish poor-quality news reports, often to push a right-wing agenda and gather user data.
According to the New York Times, the sites operated by Timpone's networks don't typically post false information, but "the operation is rooted in deception, eschewing hallmarks of news reporting like fairness and transparency".The sites typically do not disclose that they are funded by advocacy groups or that they are paid to run articles." (Wikipedia)
The Times is hardly in a position to criticize.
That article was incoherent. The attempt to blame all social ills on imaginary right-wing radical journalists, when nearly all print media is hard left, including leftist pink slime "local" weeklys, which he barely mentions, made the WaPo writer's job -- to condemn the right always, for everything -- an impossible task.
Pink slime is leftist in leftist cities and centrist in conservative communities. Having lived in both and dealt a lot with journalists, he's delusional to imagine conservative media is dominant, even in conservative places.
Per the article's lunatic "examples," does anyone really believe that Chicago schools aren't firmly in the grip of anti-white policies and pedagogy? It was a full two decades ago that their city council passed a law requiring schools to equalize suspensions of black and white students -- in districts with virtually no white students. He even contradicts himself.
The front page of the NYT today had an article that was so hated filled towards anyone to the right of Joe Manchin, plus 700+ comments hand wringing about how best to suppress and purge them, that, as a student of the time between the wars, I've read a lot of Nazi anti-Semitic media propaganda that is more subtle.
This will not end well. I don't care about the consequences: leftist's lies, academic persecution, selective prosecution, racism, and bureaucratic weaponizing is today's fascism and must be fought against as fascism, or we are going to end up in camps. I predict this blog will be blocked or censored within a year. If the latter, I'm sure Ann would shut it down before submitting. I have been reading the Times for 40 years, and today's daily-hate-the-right quotient out-does virtually any edition I've seen. Yesterday, they simply purged some risible errors in an article I contacted them about regarding Atlanta police chiefs, again without citing the changes in the corrections section. They are increasingly fierce in disappearing and revising the past.
For those who might not know, “news” is a direct translation of the French word “nouvelles”: new [things].
This essay was fucking hilarious! WaPoop, and the NYSlimes are the very definition of propaganda outlets, and the writer of this essay is just one of the slimers sliming the other slimers. Does this guy even realize how hypocritical he is, or does he simply not care?
My own local paper, The Knoxville News-Sentinel is published in a region that votes Republican 65-35- only the city itself is Democratic controlled, and even it is barely majority Democrat. Yet the newspaper's reporting and editorial page is 100% Democrat talking points every single day My mother takes a subscription, and if she dies before I do, I am going to take great delight in cancelling the shit rag.
I have a simple definition of news: Something I don’t already know. Virtually everything in corporate media left and right fails that test because actual reporting (the act of finding something we don’t already know and telling us about it) has been replaced by the recycling of boring opinions about the world; once you know the opinions you could write the boring stories yourself in your sleep.
Blogger Yancey Ward said...
My own local paper, The Knoxville News-Sentinel is published in a region that votes Republican 65-35- only the city itself is Democratic controlled, and even it is barely majority Democrat. Yet the newspaper's reporting and editorial page is 100% Democrat talking points every single day
The Orange County Register was almost comically right wing for as long as I read it. 50 years or so. Now, some other chain bought it and it is indistinguishable from the LA Times. Fortunately, I moved about then.
Craig H said "For those who might not know, “news” is a direct translation of the French word “nouvelles”: new [things]."
There's more. Noël was a common street contraction of "nouvelles" in the 17th C. You still hear it today in rural Québec and northwestern France. Shifting a central V to W is a common contraction when speaking French, like "cheval" --> "joual" [=horse]. Or "pouvoir" --> "poouoir" [=power, which is exactly how we borrowed it into Middle English from Middle French]
Also ditto on "au courant". See also "current affairs". Roughly 40 percent of English is actually French. 1066 and all that.
Pretty much all journalism is propagandistic partisan slime. The campaign against "pink slime" journalism, is a fight to determine whose slime actually gets published.
However, I do have happy memories of the gooey, sticky pink slime sold as a novelty toy in the Sixties or Seventies, so thank you for that. Younger folks may have similar memories of Nickelodeon "sliming" people on TV. Apparently, they made a fortune selling multicolored slime in the Eighties.
I've been getting email spam claiming to be an emergency weather alert that happens to mention that Trump had nuclear documents in the next headline down.
Am done with WaPo until November but even if I weren't, I wouldn't have read the Zickgraf essay since he seems to think that a lexicographer's declaration of obsolescence is a quasi-legal act that binds... everyone, I guess, like one of Kant's categorical imperatives. Pft.
9 of 10 people in the news business are Democrats.
But Ryan Zickgraf insists it needs to be a full 100%.
There is a need for local journalism in every community. My local newspaper is pretty good. But the local journalism model doesn't scale well. On a national level, publishers present us with a pastiche composed of news items drawn from an infinite sea of events; and is designed to sell the publishers' world views. This used to work when that world view was aligned somewhat with the values of average people in the real world. As the publishers' world views became more and more warped, the news turned into a funhouse mirror. And when publishers decided that their mission was to actively model public perceptions, the news became evil.
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