“Journalism” isn’t a monolith
The intellectual bodyguard of perpetual war, perpetual debt, the creeping Surveillance State, and authoritarianism both foreign and domestic have an irritating habit of constantly patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on being defenders and champions of JOURNALISM, and branding any attack on themselves as an attack on journalism at large. But they are not journalists in any truth-seeking sense, they are gatekeepers of established opinion, toadies of the Political Class. They give themselves awards for the terribly-written, sanctimonious nonsense they peddle as “columns”, for which they receive six-to-seven-figure salaries. And, this New Year’s Eve, several of these sanctimonious establishment propagandists lined up to drop the ball in Times Square. All in the name of JOURNALISM, of course. But the assembled lackeys were from CNN, NBC, Time magazine, etc. They may have done something resembling actual journalism in the distant past, but the money in gatekeeping was too good, so they sold their soul, flushing their integrity down the drain in order to kiss the ring of the Political Class.
Real journalists don’t normally receive awards, or gigantic paychecks. Quite the opposite, actually. Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, reflecting in the midst of treatment for advanced cancer, lamented the fact that neither he nor his website has received any award or recognition for its repeated accurate predictions regarding the post-9/11 era of total war. The column, The Awards I Never Got, is painful to read, partly because it comes with a recent picture of Justin in his hospital bed in between treatments, but mainly because his frustration comes through:
However, now that I’ve got to slow down I’m struck by the total lack of what we used to call in science fiction fandom Egoboo: awards, medals, proclamations of solidarity, and the presentation of the keys to the city – any city will do! I mean, they do have awards for writers – and specifically for libertarian writers! Why just the other day I was reading about how the Reason Foundation gave away a trophy, the “Bastiat Prize,” in the shape of what looked like a royal scepter: a $10,000 check goes with that. The winner was a poor downtrodden unrecognized neocon columnist for the New York Timeswhose prehistory of squelching Palestinian voices on campus is surely proof that losertarianism gets you farther in this business than libertarianism.
And then they have this thing called the “Webbies” which are handed out to the sponsor’s friends I guess annually. It’s a good excuse to hang out at a mid-level juice joint and have a few laughs, but aside from that, most of the sites that win those things are never seen or heard from again, so there’s that…
What I’m getting at is the total resentment I feel now, near the end of my life, that Antiwar.com has never gotten any award or even any acknowledgment from the legacy media, let alone from the “Official” Libertarian Movement. Decades of laboring in this rockiest of vineyards, proving 100% right about every foreign conflict since 1995, all of it analyzed from a libertarian perspective and posted daily on the Internet before there was such a thing as Twitter. Indeed, Drudge had just gotten started.
So there I was, lying in bed after a particularly difficult night, slowly coming to consciousness that morning. The clear Indian summer light fell directly on my iPhone, where I’d been listening to Bastiat Award winner Bari Weiss justify the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) using Palestinian children in Gaza for target practice. And suddenly the years of resentment rose up in me, bilious and unabashedly angry: Where’s our fucking award?
Isn’t there some kind of award for not being Bari Weiss?”
He does go on to admit that the true reward has been the feedback from his thousands of weekly readers, but he does have a point. And the fact that he hasn’t won any of those awards is a sign that he’s been doing something right. Rousing the anger and fury of the powerful is also a reward in itself, something real journalists such as Raimondo take great pride in.
Real journalists aren’t overweening, sanctimonious asses, don’t drop Times Square New Year’s Eve balls, dub themselves a ‘Journalist’, pick up a seven-figure check, or schmooze within the DC Beltway. And if you’re winning awards from Establishment-funded think tanks and institutions, you are either a gatekeeper or a prolific arse-kisser of one.
Real journalists are hated, in their time, by the Establishment. They are persecuted, forced into hiding, and sometimes murdered, unfortunately. But that persecution is the sign that they’ve been doing actual journalism. Awards and access to the Political Class’s inner circles are a sign you’re doing the opposite.
