He should quote the statement about five years ago by Washington Post editor Marie Arana who said, "The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness.... If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings at the Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democratic candidates." And he should challenge them to report the stories they now bury, especially about Obama's past.Part of the problem is that we dont even name the name of our opponent. Media are ways of receiving other peoples stories or opinions. Things like TV sets or broadcasting towers, or movies, that sort of thing. And while fictional TV shows and movies certainly have their leftist tendencies, it is IMHO impossible to censor fiction in any principled way.
It is my settled opinion that the problem is not the communications media, it is the monopoly of journalism which inheres in wire services. It is said that Drink makes a man more so. Loosens the inhibitions, allowing Freudian slips to emerge. Well, wire services have the same effect on journalists. People become journalists because they lust for power and influence - they want to make a difference, they want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Wire services - the Associated Press, principally, but even if the AP has competition somewhere, that would still be a distinction without a difference - have the effect of bringing the incentives of journalism to the fore.The need/desire for attention and influence are reflected in the well-known rules of journalism, If it bleeds, it leads, Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man, Always meet your deadline - theres nothing more worthless than yesterdays newspaper. Those rules make perfect sense for a newspaper as a business matter, but have nothing to do with "the public interest. They relate only to interesting the public, which is quite a different thing. Stories that get picked up and repeated over the wire satisfy the editors of the newspaper as meeting the criteria for interesting the public, and we are solemnly assured that those rules reflect the public interest and are objective. Those rules do in fact systematically emphasize the superficial and the negative. Negative superficiality is cynicism, and cynicism is the opposite of conservative.
Well said.
For honesty - replace headline editors with truth tellers.
But that wouldn’t “sell papers” or elect liberals.