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Telegraph Blogs - Samantha Power’s “monster” slip and America’s pompous journalists, by Iain Martin

US and British journalists can get along in very jolly fashion when thrown together but their industries are based on different assumptions. The Americans, who have a knock-about tradition from the last century which they like to forget, take pride in having constructed a full-blown ‘profession’, equal to the law and medicine, with academic posts, a literature on the subject and very self-important prize ceremonies. Fine, but I blame Watergate.

British newspaper journalism, generally, would not be described as a profession: it is a trade, and there is a crucial difference. It means that the Brits as a breed have tended to be more rumbustious, cheekier, a little more inquisitive and wary of the powerful. There are excesses, but overall the sense is of British journalism being noisier and more vibrant. Competition is fierce, which until the age of the internet it was not in the US. And that might be the problem.

As British media groups, such as the Telegraph and the Guardian, expand on-line into North America and develop large audiences there, tensions have surfaced. US print journalists see the limeys muscling in and think their tactics vulgar. Perhaps they fear competition: after all, it took a British journalist to get behind the PR and spin that Samantha Power has been pushing.

And it takes a British journalist to give all of us Americans something to read without our eyes hemoraging and their brains atrophying.

Previously in the blog post, he says:

A total twit from MSNBC called Tucker Carlson (great name, sounds and looks like one of those types who appeared alongside Tom Cruise in early 1980s films such as Risky Business ) interviewed Gerri and took her to task on ethics (no, it’s not a county just outside London).

Gerri gave him what for, rightly identifying that American hacks are often too polite and trusting of politicians’ motives. Only this late in the race for the nomination is the press asking serious questions of Obama.

The interview with Power was on the record, the tape was rolling, she used the phrase monster and then tried to retract realising what she had done. Well, too late, she was in an on the record forum. One has to ask after this if Power was really cut out for the difficult, diplomatically fraught business of redesigning US foreign policy. Watch Gerri bash Carlson here.

Hehehe. Honestly, though, I would have prefered the woman who’d dropped the reality bomb was someone capable of giving Tucker Carlson a little bit more than what she did give him. I mean, “If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren’t doing a very good job of getting to the truth” is all very “ouch” and everything, but she could have been a bit more… British about it, I guess.

And how dare he insult the Scotsman?

Update (3.10): This is getting hilarious. Dude over at Salon just went nuts on the American press:

Salon - Tucker Carlson unintentionally reveals the role of the American press, by Glenn Greenwald

complete with a crapload of video samples of “low-standard” British-style interviewing (I love how it’s all about Republicans being cosseted by Brit Hume, never mind that this was an Obama adviser at the heart of this thing and if anyone’s used to being cosseted by the press….), and Shane Richmond at Telegraph Blogs posted that old video of John Stewart on Crossfire from 2004:

With his own lengthy rant on the subject.