Posted on 05/10/2004 9:12:28 AM PDT by Mr.Atos
Posted at 9:30 AM, Pacific
This is really amazing: The editor of the Los Angeles Times branding Fox News as pseudo-journalism while asserting that the paper he leads is a repository of real journalism. Put aside the quackery of Scheer or the irrelevance of the editorial voice (see the post below), the robust line-up of news pages columnists every single one of whom is left or way left of center, the Times' photographer in the Church of the Nativity, the bizarre non-coverage of Gray Davis' money machine, the asleep at the wheel coverage of the electricity crisis or the decade-ago refusal to believe bankruptcy was coming to Orange County because it was a Republican candidate for office who took the paper work to the Times. Put aside the paper's refusal to cover a gathering of 40,000 supporters of Israel or the pacifist politics of its now retired television critic or any of hundreds of other example.
Rather, just recall the hit piece on Arnold days before the election which led to the cancellation of thousands of subscriptions. John Carroll evidently believes all those people are wrong, that his view of the world is right, and that his paper's default Pulitzer for covering the fires it failed wholly to predict some how give him license to act as a judge of other's work product.
John Carroll hates the market and the fact that Americans aren't buying his laughable self-importance or the apparent attempt to look the other way when his newsroom staff is assembled. There isn't 5% of Carroll's team of "journalists" that aren't reliably anti-Bush, pro-Kerry or Nader and predictable on every major issue of the day. He'll retire soon, and spend his days giving talks to fellow lefties dressed up as "objective journalists," wondering aloud why the country trusted Brit Hume and Rush and the Weekly Standard and not him and Jayson Blair and other fine "journalists" of the age. Does he really not know, or is he desperate to maintain appearances, like a fine old family living on the fumes of a fortune long squandered? Such families vanish quietly, as the Times is, from the circles of influence.
Carroll was lecturing during "ethics week" at the University of Oregon, sponsored by that university's Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Run down the list of speakers at the event. Do you see the name of even one participant who is known for having challenged the leftward tilt of major media, one conservative columnist or pundit, one academic who has any record of criticism of the dominant culture of the elite media or even a local blogger or two who act as watchdogs on the local media elite? The answer is no, of course, for even as self-criticism is obviously not Carroll's strength, this conference isn't indulging any temptation to assure even a tiny bit of dissent from the self-congratulations.
Ethics indeed. But only if ethics is understood to mean supreme arrogance combined with indifference to reality.
...Ethics indeed. But only if ethics is understood to mean supreme arrogance combined with indifference to reality.
LOL! Just when you think they can't go any lower...
...they prove you wrong.
The dirty little secret of "the media" is that journalism was politics at the time of the Revolution, it was still politics when Jefferson and Hamilton were sponsoring newspapers in which to wage their partisan battles, and journalism is never going to stop being politics.Journalism can be spoken of as an entity because it functions as a guild whose purpose is to "square the circle" of its claim of wisdom (a.k.a. "objectivity") on the one hand and, OTOH, its nature as a
genre of nonfiction publishing. Journalism squares that circle by a massive propaganda campaign which suffuses American culture and makes it very difficult to think outside the box it constructs. The box which says, "You have a right to know." "To know all" is the song of Sirens who tempted sailors to their doom in The Odyssey - and Ulysses would have followed it himself, had he not lashed himself to the mast and deafened his crewmens' ears with wax so they wouldn't also hear the song. If you actually had a right to know, you could sue newspapers over what they did not publish. And since journalists obviously cannot publish absolutely everything, such a "right" would destroy freedom of the press. You have, instead,
- superficial ("there's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" means that today'snewspaper will be worthless tomorrow).
- negative ("no news is good news" is true because good news is seldom surprising enough to be considered "news").
- unrepresentative ("Man Bites Dog" is news, "Dog Bites Man" is unsurprising and thus "not news").
We have no need of a "right to know" which is actually a duty to shut up and listen to the opinions of others.
- the right to your own opinion - and
- the right to publish your opinion,
- the right to pay attention to published opinions that interest you, and
- the right to ignore people who publish ideas which do not interest you.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
My own theory as to why the best writers are lefties is that this is a natural outgrowth of their college major(s). While we never get to see/hear the best scientists, engineers, businessmen, etc., we are constantly exposed to the best of those that perceive 50% of the population as victims and the other 50% as perpetrators of oppression and violence.
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