NPR Reporter Quits to Focus on Actual Journalism

Great short story here from Politico about Andrea Seabrook and her decision to leave NPR after 14 years in order to actually do some real journalism.  Most recently, Andrea was covering Washington D.C. and as she puts it:

“I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say,” Seabrook told POLITICO. “And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.”

People are waking up.  There is no doubt about it.  The media world is changing fast.  We are rapidly approaching the tipping point where alternative media completely takes over from the mainstream dinosaur propaganda media that nobody uses any longer except out of sheer laziness or confounding ignorance.  This story is a great follow up to the NY Times article where they basically admit mainstream journalism has devolved into nothing more than censored propaganda.
I think there is no better way to end this post than one last quote from Andrea:

“There’s a lot of great work being done,” said Seabrook. “I think the problem is the Congress itself. And we’re all in the same positions, scrambling to figure out how the hell to cover these a*sholes.”Full article from Politico here.

In Liberty,
Mike
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19 thoughts on “NPR Reporter Quits to Focus on Actual Journalism”

  1. Seabrook is the one who woke up — and found herself all alone. Going to “the officials” is what journalism has become. David Frum defended contemporary journalism by stating that he and others do just that, in his words, “to get the facts” while bloggers just sit behind their keyboards all day long. Another journalist (Shultz?) rigorously defended his access to the officials, claiming this was the key to his journalistic success. Fine and well to have connections higher up, but today that comes with a price: play along or get cut off. That’s why today’s white house press corps looks more like a gaggle of yes men in Goebbels’ ministry of public information than American journalists. They feel compelled to repeat and defend the official line rather than ask real questions. Or, heaven forbid, follow up on poor answers. The sort of princely deference Dan Rather had to give to Saddam Hussein in 1990, which outraged our nation, is on display by the modern accredited journalist. And most of them see nothing wrong with it.

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  2. The title should read, “Leaving the Congressional Assholes to become a reporter.” Unless NPR told her to repeat and shut up, then you can’t slag NPR. I don’t know anything about NPR, either way. Could she not have asked questions? Was she muzzled?

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  3. Former Journalist Speaking: Like the departing GoldmanSachs MD several months ago, Seabrook is to be praised, not just for dropping out, a lot of us have done that, but for using her resignation as an opportunity to make explicit her reasons for doing so. She is articulating and confirming for many the suspicions that the MSM is a propaganda arm of the Elite. Nothing more, nothing less.
    That said, in the lands outside the beltway we should bear in mind that in many states press credentials are issued by the state police on behalf of the state press association; also, that without a press pass a journalist is just a citizen, not exactly a venerated personage in our era. Now the police don’t have a lock on press credentials, but they’re an essential service helping to protect privileges enjoyed by the MSM.
    I have long thought that by selling out it’s Constitutional mandate (the press being the only profession protected by the national foundational document, a fact clearly envied by health insurers, until lately), state press associations should be boycotted and an alternative set up by a guild, union or new press association, for the purpose of issuing credentials.

    Yes, I understand that the first to undertake such an initiative will have to behave more like whistleblowers (who like citizens are another scorned/persecuted population), publishing their notes and docs on the web, vouchsafing them on servers in Iceland and other protected jurisdictions, as life-insurance. But I anticipate a speedy transition: a.) we’re at a tipping point and everyone can feel it; b.) only the craven and the pretty populate the MSM at this point. They’ll fold in a fortnight.
    Last, I forget which Eastern European country it was now but the collapse of its press/propaganda arm, and later the government, was accomplished alarmingly quickly, begun by residents in one neighborhood turning their TV screens around to shine out their front windows, while they took a walk at 6 pm during the newscast. Without confronting anyone the neighborhood’s action articulated the statement, “if the state is going to pipe poison into my house every night at 6 pm, I’m going out for a breath of fresh air.”
    My recollection is the Six o’Clock Evening Walk campaign spread very quickly. (Would some citizen-editor on this string fact-check-me: Was that Poland?) While I’m not suggesting that would work here in Amerika, the press as an industry that needs to make money is particularly sensitive to popular whim. Here it might be a mass repudiation of our cable bills. I don’t know. I mean, it’s shocking to think we pay to be lied to…
    Excellent post, Michael.

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    • Thanks Hank, I love the brainstorming you did in this comment. Would like to see more of this from you and others. Together we can figure out non-violent resistance to the depraved, pathetic criminal “elite.”

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