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These video interviews that Pajamas Media is doing are revolutionary. They're far more in-depth than the sound bites the networks hand out, and which MSM cherry-picks so as to bias the news in favor of their outdated and counterproductive preferred political policies. Astonishingly, interviews like those PJM is doing, make it possible for Congressmen to be seen and heard in some ways for the first time.
Here's an example in which we've got Congressman Tom Lantos talking about cooperation on the part of leading Internet companies with China in repressing free speech:
Congressman Lantos: These enterprises which have grown so powerful, so wealthy, so full of themselves, apparently have very little social conscience. Apparently they don't appreciate that their success is the result of a free and open and democratic society. What I'm suggesting is, that they do something in addition to doing business merely according to the laws of a repressive regime. I still remember IBM'S cooperation with Hitler's Nazi regime. And IBM's excuse was that they are just obeying the law.
Roger L. Simon: Do you think that some of the difficulty may be related to their competition with each other? That one of them is afraid that if one of their opponents gets a foothold in China, the other will lose out and that's the end of the story?
Congressman Lantos: That's perfectly possible. But there are higher values than market share. Market share is not the ultimate value for which people have laid down their lives.
And here's another one, in which Congressman Hoekstra discusses the vast amount of intel that's been captured on pre-war Iraq, which has yet to be even translated, much less analyzed:
Congressman Hoekstra: There seems to be credible evidence that weapons of mass destruction moved [from Iran] to Syria, and at least that evidence needs to be followed up, to either be proven or disproven. [.....] There's somewhere between 35,000 and 55,000 boxes of documents that have never been fully exploited. There's information that is available. We just need a more intense and urgent effort to get into it.
...for the 35 to 55,000 boxes of documents, they're out of Iraq. They, from my perspective, they ought to be put on the internet. We ought to have Arabic speakers from around the world translating these documents, other people analyzing them, and unleash the power of the net on these 55,000 boxes of documents to see exactly what went on.
I was honestly surprised to see and hear these Congressmen speaking so well, so earnestly, and with so much of significance in what they said. It adds a lot to it to be able to see them. As soon as I saw these videos I realized that I'd been misled by a lifetime of listening to MSM's distortions, into thinking that all Congressmen were more or less blowhards who couldn't produce a straightforward, human, interesting thing to say.
These Congressmen are talking plain sense in a way you'd never discover via MSM's constant distortion, soundbite-based editing, and gratuitous distrust of all things pertaining to the U.S. government.
These Congressmen want to tell us what they mean -- but MSM has prevented them from doing so. MSM, instead of being the megaphone of the politicians, has become their muffler. MSM has become a gatekeeper that perpetuates its own power by severely restricting the ability of the politicians to meet and communicate with their public.
The blogosphere-based media is going to shake all that up and let these politicians be presented fairly to the public, in some ways for the first time.
(This blog is a PJM member site).
#1
#2Unlike "Observer" I do know what Vik meant when he wrote,
"I was honestly surprised to see and hear these Congressmen speaking
so well, so earnestly, and with so much of significance in what
they said," and I have the same reaction.
There is no news network in the United States that would
ever allow a congressman, or anyone, for that matter, other
than a news anchor to coherently and articulately speak at
length. Or actually I need to amend that statement, the Jim
Lehr Newshour does allow extended speaking although the time
allowed would be only one-quarter of what we saw here.
For every other network, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox, including
all their news or investigative shows it's brief soundbites,
or even if it's a live interview, much of the interview is
about the interviewer. To someone raised on this it's incongruent
to see people, other than media personalities, speak coherently
at length.
It is I think a bit hyperbolic to speak of "MSM's distortions"
because it carries the implication of the being deliberate which
is certainly sometimes the case, but not always. The Hoekstra
interview is precisely the sort of thing that would be suppressed
or minimized or given a curious spin. And Hoekstra is precisely
the sort of man to be a given a soundbite that by coincidence makes
him look unreasonable.
But the Lantos interview is something I can well imagine the
media taking up and stating at length and making it's own.
But here's the catch even if the issue were given a great deal
of time, say a Sixty Minutes segment, and Lantos were given
much longer soundbites than a congressman is normally given.
The punchline, the coherent and articulate message, would be
delivered by anchor of the Sixty Minutes segment.
This is meant as constructive criticism.
"As soon as I saw these videos I realized that I'd been misled by a lifetime of listening to MSM's distortions..."
This phrase seems utterly dishonest - pure marketing spin. Along with the rest of your comments, one gets the impression that you are shamelessly hawking a product, PJ media I guess, and in a very crude manner.
And of course it raises an obvious question. Why on earth should anyone come to this website, with the expectation of seeing an uncovering of the meaning of the news, when the site author admits to being so clueless about the news media that seeing a interview with a congressman is some great revelation? If you have been, throughout your lifetime, so incapable of using media resources to form an accurate picture of the world, then what value could their possibly be in listening to your analysis of the media?