being ‘right’ about health care doesn’t give him the right to violate laws, though.
To be a journalist, one has to be accurate and be held to a higher standard than one that is just giving out opinion. Moore has used the “its not meant to be straight journalism” to defend his inconsistancies, and he can’t now claim he is a journalist to get special priledges regarding going to Cuba.

microphone head totally missed the point.  I’m SO surprised.

Nice one, Artmonkey.  Welcome to the mosh pit, brother.  :)

Thanks, Jim. Good to be here in the mosh pi...(Ow! my knee!)

As for microphonehead, don’t be so harsh on him. He’s actually one of the more levelheaded libs around, methinks.

But to his points;

There is no argument with that. Just all the official reports on one side and the right wing conspiracy theorists on the other.

Okay, I’ll admit, I didn’t understand this, at all.
Are you saying that it’s right-wing moonbats that are saying there is NO WMD?
Because, you do know we found a bunch of it, right? I mean, this isn’t some rumor from a nutjob’s website. This is really documented stuff, here. 300 cannisters of mustard and sarin gas. Nasty stuff, and exactly the kind of stuff we had on Mr. Blix’s little checklist in the first place.
Thing is, when we found it, the liberal blogosphere tried ignoring it at first, and when it became apparent that they couldn’t, they just waved it off with a “oh, not THOSE WMD’s, it’s the OTHER WMDs we were looking for!”
(Of course, all the while remaining sufficiently vague about precisely WHICH WMD’s they were referring to.)

But that’s not the point of the post, really. It was just a sideways snark.

As for proof that Moore interviewed Smith twice, I recommend you see Manufacturing Dissent. I promise, it will open your eyes to the true Michael Moore.
While you’re at it, check out Michael Moore Hates America, and the book, Michael Moore is a Big, Fat, Stupid White Man.
These are all required material for anyone who claims to be open minded about Moore, after all.

Or, you can just be lazy and google it. Either way, knock yourself out.

So what’s your point? he said he was a journalist to get to cuba for his documentary and you don’t think he is really a real journalist?

The point is, he’s either going to have to admit he’s not a journalist, and accept punishment for not only breaking the law, but lying in order to do so, or he’s going to have to prove that he’s actually a journalist. The latter is not a matterof opinion, by the way.
There are certain qualifications you must meet to heft that title upon your shoulders. Some are mildly subjective, such as presenting your stories with a demonstrable degree of factual accuracy and political neutrality. (Moore? Haha.)
The others are undeniably out of Moore’s reach by even the standards of his most rabid followers; for example, the current enrollment or employment by a news reporting agency or entity (visual media or print.) Moore has no such affiliations, and the first responders he also listed on his travel application as journalists certainly do not, either.

Botoom line, Moore either does the impossible job of proving he’s something he’s not by yanking these qualifications out of thin air, or he gets slapped by the law. Period.

(The other point is, he is obviously having a meltdown over this, knowing the spot he’s in. That’s why he’s contradicting himself, and getting profane on his critics.
It’s sad to see a human being go through that kind of pressure. To see Moore do so, however, is kind of funny.)

boo hoo - doesn’t change the fact he’s right about healthcare.

Two points; first, as has been stated, breaking the law is not a justifiable means to the end of making a political point, even if its correct.
Second, he’s not ‘right about health care’ anyway. Not specifically, anyway.

Now, it can be argued that one of his general points is correct; that U.S. health care has some problems that must be dealt with.
And if this was Moore’s main point, then I’d agree.
But his point was not just that it has problems, but rather that those problems can only be fixed by (or even, can best be fixed by) Cuban-style socialization.
Not only is this wrong, but it’s laughable on it’s face. Understanding of the world health care market and how the nationalized systems of Europe and Canada and elsewhere are essentially propped up by the U.S. free market system s something that must be completely ignored in order to make the leaps of Moore’s ‘logic’.

So, no, he’s not ‘right about health care’.

I think you forgot the fat jokes too.

Are you kidding me?
Porcine Propagandist? Size 54 waders? Jumbo-jowled face?
These are pure gold!

So what’s your point? he said he was a journalist to get to cuba for his documentary and you don’t think he is really a real journalist?

Well, Mother Jones magazine didn’t think much of his journalistic professionalism . . . they fired him.  The fact that Moore violates the code of ethics established by the profession means he ain’t one . . . he’s a propagandist . . . or as artmonkey so aptly put it, you might call him El Journalista . . . a writer with an agenda that doesn’t include in-depth balanced presentations.  Moore is the king of meaningless one-liners designed to create illusions.  I see it works on you, but don’t fault us for seeing through the smoke and mirrors.

This whole question of who is a journalist and who is not is a little slipperier than is being represented here.  There is no license to practice journalism comparable to a CPA exam, the law bar exam, medicine, etc.  You can study to be a journalist, as American universities are hot to encourage.  However, that’s also a problem.  Look at the resumes of the top journalists at the major newspapers and I am betting over half majored in something other than journalism: Political Science, English, History, Economics.  In fact the AEJMC accrediting program for college journalism degrees stipulates that the journalism major can not be more than 30 hours of credit.  The thinking is that a good journalist should be knowledgeable about things other than journalism.  You should take a course on journalism ethics, one on law, one on the history of journalism, and then go do it.

That being said, there are good journalists and bad journalists.  Journalists who lie and should be fired and journalists who we look forward to reading and who may receive the Pulitzer prize.  Seymore Hirsch is a fantastic journalist, to my mind, but the guy or gal who writes the obituaries and covers city hall at the Podunk News is also a journalist.

Journalists do research and present a story.  The research involves interviewing, reading, chasing down documents, etc.  Arguably, Artmonkey just performed an act of journalism.  So did Moore when he went to Cuba, whether you like the story he tells or not.

In the case of Roger and Me, however, you have a different animal.  Artmonkey says the core of the film is Moore’s quest for an interview.  I don’t agree.  Moore on the voiceover says he wants to ask Roger Smith to come to Flint and look at the devastation.  That’s not really a sit-down, journalistic interview looking for information and opinions.  Moore’s premise, and it’s a bit farcical, is that if Smith looks at what has happened to Flint he will have a change of heart and bring the jobs back.  That’s a bit like when Scrooge sees Tiny Tim and gives Bob Cratchet a raise, or when Jimmy Stewart convinces the corrupt politician of his evil ways in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I would argue Moore doesn’t believe it would ever happen, it’s just the organizing principle of the movie.
This has some kinship with a trend in Journalism in the 1960s called “The New Journalism.” Examples were Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson and the method was they always put themselves at the center of the story, acknowledging their own subjectivity and making themselves a character in the unfolding story.

If the story of Roger and Me is that Moore just wanted an interview, then he got it when he jams a microphone in Smith’s face at the GM stockholders’ Xmas meeting.  We see that and we see how little it explains.  Moore had also quizzed Smith at another meeting about GM’s tax incentives from Flint that the corporation had reneged on.  “American Film” broke that story in 1990.  Now there apparently was another 15 minute interview Moore had with Smith in New York around the time of the film.  But again, the quest of the movie is not to get that interview, the quest is to get Smith to come to Flint and look at the devastation.

I think from the git-go Moore knew his quest was a sham, a sort of McGuffin if you know Hitchcock’s term.  The real story is what happened to Flint and other cities in the rust belt.  He’s a good journalist if he tells that story well.

Posted by Lowbacca on 06/18 at 10:10 PM (Link to this comment)

being ‘right’ about health care doesn’t give him the right to violate laws, though.

But how can comedy be wrong. :)

Posted by Buzz on 06/19 at 06:36 AM (Link to this comment)

Well, Mother Jones magazine didn’t think much of his journalistic professionalism . . . they fired him.  The fact that Moore violates the code of ethics established by the profession means he ain’t one . . . he’s a propagandist . . .

Plus thats an opinion mag, not a news mag.

I think from the git-go Moore knew his quest was a sham, a sort of McGuffin if you know Hitchcock’s term.  The real story is what happened to Flint and other cities in the rust belt.  He’s a good journalist if he tells that story well.

I wonder in this “journalistic” endeavor of Moore’s if he bothered to mention the union having anything to do with their own demise?  Given GM’s present financial condition I doubt Moore wants to discuss that point with a journalist.

Since Moore is a journalist, why does he repeatedly violate the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics?

sl0re, that’s true about Mother Jones being an opinion rag, but left-winger Paul Berman wrote an article that Moore tried to censor because Berman was slightly critical of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  That was the final straw for the owners . . . they fired Mikey.

You say Mother Jonesis an “opinion rag,” I would say it’s a leftish/liberal magazine featuring investigative journalism that caters to San Francisco yuppies.  Certainly it’s not Time or Newsweek.

There’s a brief reference to Owen Bieber and the UAW in Roger and Me but it’s followed by a black activist who says something to the effect of “Some people just don’t know what time it is.” (Classic montage editing) This pissed off the UAW enough that they never supported the film.  I haven’t seen “Manufacturing Dissent” yet, but I think one of the reasons his old compatriots from Flint are ready to denounce him now is that Moore started the film in cahoots with union people but gradually pulled away from them until the final film reflected “Roger and ME” rather than “Roger and FLINT.” I would argue that Moore was right about one thing: the movie-going public would be much more entertained and therefore ready to support ME at the box office rather than FLINT.  Generally the American public is not real sympathetic to the UAW and may care less about Detroit or Flint.

That Society of Professional Journalists code is a pretty good document, but there’s still a lot of wiggle room in how it is applied.  For instance, in “Roger and Me” Moore lies about who his crew is to get into a plant that is closing.  The code document says you aren’t supposed to misrepresent yourself unless that’s the only way to get the story.  If Moore said, look I am an independent filmmaker trying to tell the story of Flint’s demise, the plant won’t let him in to film.  But if he says “We’re a tv crew from the PBS station in Toledo,” which he did, then he gets in, which he admitted in the film.  So was he unethical by that code?  I would say it’s a judgment call often dependent on your predisposition toward Moore’s politics.

I think it might be possible to make a case for Moore as a journalist. He goes places and meets people and asks questions, and then puts his version of the answers in a film. You could argue that this is some form of journalism. I think he’s full of crap and really doesn’t qualify as anything but a Genuine American Eyesore, but that’s just my opinion.

I think it will be a lot more difficult to make a case for listing the 9/11 first responders as journalists. It seems to me that Moore will have to establish their actual journalisitic work, such as asking questions, hunting down leads, checking facts, and then establish that the results of this labor was instrumental in the production of his film. It seems to me that these journalists would also have to be listed in the credits, perhaps as writers or producers. If he can’t establish these things, he lied to the government, and deserves some sort of penalty.

In a couple of interviews he has told a story about one of the 9/11 workers thinking the whole Cuba thing was a show for the American camera.  She decides to go downstairs without the camera to see if she can get the same treatment, which supposedly she does.  Now if that’s true, I would say she’s investigating.  But still, you’re right, saying the 9/11ers were journalists is clearly an attempt to evade the law.  The thing is, if he gets punished for it, he’ll turn it into a big publicity show that makes him a martyr and generates more box office.  This guy is slick.

Make your own damn movie.

Rebellion isn’t rebuilding. Ridiculing isn’t replacing.

esoteric,

Moore censored Paul Berman’s article because it mildly criticized Fidel Castro’s good buddies down in Nicaragua, namely the Sandinistas . . . who, by the way, were paid a visit by one Michael Moore to check things out.

And why did Moore censored Berman’s article?  As Moore said on a San Francisco radio broadcast, he felt that Berman was being a traitor to the left-wing by giving aid and comfort to the President, namely one Ronald Reagan.

What code of journalistic ethics endorses that nonsense?

Michael Moore will be the very first person to tell you he doesn’t believe in objectivity.  He thinks all journalism is subjective.

What code of journalistic ethics endorses that nonsense?

Moore told Lou Dobbs that his writings are political comedy, therefore there can be no inaccuracies.

He also said that “Roger & Me” was just entertainment . . . like the movie, “Sophie’s Choice” and such.

Now he a journalist that went to Cuba.

What Moore really is what he wants you to think he is at the time.

As for Roger & Me, which was mostly a rambling piece of hysteria, Moore makes it clear that he thinks corporations should exist for no other reason than to provide employment to workers . . . for life . . . as if market forces are controlled by corporations . . . a severely flawed concept that cannot be taken seriously.  It’s the fictional dream world some children of the 60’s just can’t get past.

Buzz,
I would agree that Moore censored Berman and there are grounds to say that was unethical.  That being said, there is also a context for Moore’s decisions.  Reagan’s administration had been illegally running arms and money to a group of mercenaries known as the contras. There was an additional scandal about this being done with drug money that caused more cocaine to come across our border.  The Sandinista ousting of Anastasio Somocza was not done according to Robert’s Rules of order.  It would be easy to find excesses and injustices they committed--my sister-in-law lost a family banana plantation to the Sandinistas.  Moore felt the bigger story was not the Sandinista excesses but the Ollie North excesses.  There was also some talk about Berman not learning Spanish and not doing a thorough job of investigating--probably subjective judgments.  But if you are an editor you make judgment calls, Moore thought Berman’s piece didn’t advance his agenda, so he canned it.  That’s what editors do.  There’s also additional intrigue about Alexander Cockburn and Adam Hochshild being involved with this, but I’ll leave it there.

No journalist works in a vacuum.  There are always contexts, pressures, subjectivities.  You try to be objective, but there is no such thing as absolute objectivity.  That you tell the story is the first act of subjectivity.  That you decide to tell one story and not another is an act of subjectivity.  And there always is another possible story.

Moore doesn’t agree with your political views of labor unions.  That doesn’t mean he’s not a journalist.

Make your own damn movie.

Why should we? We have a website to counter MM’s movies!

No journalist works in a vacuum.  There are always contexts, pressures, subjectivities.  You try to be objective, but there is no such thing as absolute objectivity.  That you tell the story is the first act of subjectivity.  That you decide to tell one story and not another is an act of subjectivity.  And there always is another possible story.

Let’s not kid ourselves here.  Moore makes no pretense at objectivity.  He doesn’t even try . . . not even close.  Ethical journalism isn’t defined as the selective suppression of certain truths for political reasons.  That’s what propagandist do.

If you define objective journalism as telling both sides of the story, no, he sure doesn’t do that.  But a lot of us are bored with supposedly balanced story telling, we prefer Colbert and Stewart.