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Variously, a film/video editor, programmer, author, teacher, musician, artist, wage slave

26 August 2007

Random Likes and Dislikes

It's hardly time, given the lack of track record here at Time's Arrow, to expect that anyone might be interested in what I think about other "information-providers", as it hasn't been proven that I am one myself. So, instead of being interested because I believe some reporters and commentators are good, turn it around and judge me by the company I attempt to pay attention to.

It is difficult to think of a better reporter than Robert Fisk of The Independent. I have made no special research into his career, but understand from his dispatches that he usually lives in Beirut, the erstwhile Paris of the Levant. This recent article gives a good view of his appeal. Every article I've read by him has contained valuable revelations, born of his gentle and informed perspective from many decades of reporting and a fluent knowledge of Arabic.

Another favorite of mine is Greg Palast, an American independent journalist who has found popularity on the BBC. He first became known to me by breaking the story about Kathleen Harris' bogus list of felons, constructed from various sources, to invalidate some 60,000+ black voters in the 2000 presidential election in Florida. More recently, he has investigated the wretched failures and malfeasance of the administration in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. And, unlike most, he already has his eye's peeled for further GOP plans to try to throw the 2008 election.

America lost a real friend when Molly Ivins died on 31 Jan 2007, mere weeks after writing her last articles. Even Shrub had nice things to say about her. What else could he do? She was one of his most stalwart critics from back in his days as governor of Texas, and spared no effort to get at the truth. We would all do well to follow her example.

I have to confess I'm a long-time New Yorker fan. In fact, my parents had subscribed to the New Yorker since long before I was born (today, as fate would have it, many decades ago), and we had many stacks of neatly bundled issues to show for it. However, aside from the cartoons, it took Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", John McPhee's factual essays and some Donald Barthelme to get me started reading the longer articles some years after I was in college, and I've never stopped. It is amazing to me that the circulation of the New Yorker is only something like 940,000, for there are certainly many times that number who would enjoy its political observations and timely articles. It may no longer be the Parnassus of Harold Ross or William Shawn, and far too many of the old-timers have passed on, but what remains, helped with new talent, still has few peers.

On a different plane, the Columbia Journalism Review and Editor & Publisher are both well worth reading for a professional perspective on the performance of newspapers and other news sources. Many who proffer their opinions on the web are not trained journalists. Although we may decry the multiple lapses of the main stream media in wrongly aiding Bush by acts of commission or omission, this is better understood as an institutional failure due to media consolidation and business interests rather than a crisis in journalistic standards, per se. So, amatuer journalists have much to learn from their professional peers even if we think they haven't been performing as well as we would have liked.

It's hard not to be impressed with Canadian writer Naomi Klein, whose newest book The Shock Doctrine is coming out Sep 2007. She has written extensively on economic globalization issues, the Iraq war and corporate brands in the battle for consumer mind-share.

Sidney Blumenthal, whose work appears all over the place and often in The Guardian, is always an entertaining and informative read.

Pierre Tristram's essays on Candide's Notebooks are always worth keeping your eye on, as they cover a wide range of topics with passion and honesty. Refreshingly, Tristram writes about and features music and drama of note, aspiring, one suspects, to be something of a one-man New Yorker.

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