Do you find it difficult to detach yourself from such current history as the War on Terror for analytical purposes?Not really. I am of the view that while no historian can escape biases, one should neither pretend they do not exist (the "empiricists") or seek to counterbalance them with antithetical concepts (the New Left).
If you look at my previous book, "The Entrepreneurial Adventure," published in 2000, I went through 1996 or 1997 and (so far) my assessment of what was happening at the time I wrote it does not appear to be too far off.
I am interested in the nature of factual reporting, and the limitations of topical information ("the fog of war"). Part of my brief against journalism as we know it is the fact that journalists IMHO continuously hide from the judgement of history by taking refuge in the fog of breaking news. That is, they simply change the subject when events threaten the template in which they have been cramming the news into.For example, "the Cold War is over" - but who won it, and who lost it? From the Tet offensive until the disintegration of the USSR, journalism was unanimous that the Right Wing Cold Warriors such as Reagan were the great threat to peace and safety of the world. Yet Reagan can be buried full of honors as the statesman who won the Cold War without the least implication that journalism, and journalism's pollitical organization known as the Democratic Party, fought Reagan tooth and nail from the start of his campaign for the presidency to the inauguration of his sitting VP as president. And beyond, with the Iran-Contra investigations.
As I said - the subject of journalism's wrongheaded perspective during the Cold War simply never came up when Reagan's life was celebrated. Yet the signal virtue of Reagan was that he was able to do what was necessary over the bitter opposition of journalism and its lackeys.
Do I get a discount on your book for invoking my ping list? : )
Media bias bump.
In PHUSA, WE WON the COld War, pure and simple. Sorry, the discount on Amazon is as steep as it gets. But I will autograph.
LS
That's an interesting take. I'd almost say you were wrong in your assessment if reporters did what they were supposed to do and report the news. However, they continually try to spin it to fit their view of "the way things should be." Therefore they fancy themselves as present-day historians, never really taking into account what has happened before that created the events which they are reporting.
The main reason I asked about the detaching ones self from recent history for analysis is that I've always heard that it's nearly impossible to truly analyze the effect an event has on history without at least a generation or so between the event and the analysis, otherwise your analysis would be too buried within the world created by the event (does that make sense?).