Monday, November 12, 2007

Bobby Calvan: Arrogant Idiot

I missed this story over the past week, but cannot resist posting on it. Apparently Bobby Calvan, a staff reporter for the Sacramento Bee in California had a little confrontation with an enlisted soldier in Iraq. The cause of said confrontation? Calvan did not have the proper identification to pass a checkpoint. Instead of behaving in a civilized manner, Big Man Bobby tried to pull the 'Do You Know Who I Am?' card. Not only did this card fail resoundingly, Big Man Bobby then blogged about his arrogance on his blog. Not surprisingly, his readers failed to be impressed by his 'courage' and responded overwhelmingly negatively. Bobby's reaction? He pulled the entire blog, rather than respond.

Fortunately, by the time Big Man Calvan showed the world his courage in real adversity, several other bloggers had saved the original blog, including many of the comments. They can be read at Doc Weasel's blog.


UPDATE: The original blog entry is now back up, minus the comments, along with Calvan's following note:
(NOTE: This post was previously edited, then removed. By doing so, I was informed, I have violated blog protocol. I have reposted it in its entirety, with the caveat that it was reproduced using a post from another blogger who had preserved my original post.)


Notice that Big Man Calvan is so brave when facing an American soldier trying to do his duty (protecting Calvan), but cannot even face negative comments on his personal blog. And also note how Calvan admits that he doesn't know blog protocol. This is a professional reporter? Someone paid to present the news and who is supposed to be a master of communication? Yet he cannot handle criticism and doesn't understand that he can't simply delete content that does not meet universal acclaim. Where in journalism school did he learn that? Or is this the Old Media tradition- never admit mistakes or slanted coverage and pretend that content one dislikes does not exist?

This arrogant little Mr. Big perfectly typifies all that is bad about the media, and explains why so many are abandoning the dinosaur media. As so many of the commentators wrote, this little boy is no MichAel Yon. Perhaps if Calvan spent some time with Mr. Yon, he MIGHT learn what real reporting is all about. of course, that would require him to leave his arrogant attitude at the door and also to actually report, as opposed to bloviate. Two things that I fear are beyond Calvan's capabilities. After all, he is merely a media hack, not a real journalist like Yon.

By the way- Michael Yon subsists entirely on his own resources, so drop something in his tip jar if you can. It is brave journalists like Yon that we rely on to counter the propaganda propagated by inflated asses such as Calvan.

Hat tips to Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds.

3 comments:

Leo of BORG said...

Here's the telling line in his [re]posted blog:

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docweasel said...

I exchanged some emails with Mr. Calvan and he did seem genuinely contrite, but this week his editor published an article defending him and basically saying the entire thing is a construct of the rabid right wing blogs and Calvan is a hero reporter and we are all assholes, something like that.

Typical of why the print media is dying.

がんこもん said...

Thanks, Doc,

I read your follow-up entries and I completely agree with you on that one. As an aside, you did a wonderful job commenting on it- I could not improve upon it, and I thoroughly understand your distaste with the whole affair. Kudos for the work you did on this whole story.