The operative word in my first sentence you missed is "just", as in yes, they are concerned about job security but it isn't their only agenda item by a long shot.
I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I think you're over-thinking the entire matter. Yes, they want to keep their jobs but the leftism isn't as abstract nor as necessarily tied as closely to the process of journalism as you state. For one thing, journalism has been around for a very long time. It's been in this country since we landed at Plymouth Rock, basically, but it only became a strong instrument of the left in the last fifty or so years.
At any rate, I subscribe more to the Fifth Column theory, which is really a cart-before-the-horse argument in terms of our discussion. I think leftists seek out journalism careers because they have an agenda to undermine and bend this country to their will and their world view, rather than them conforming to the demands of the industry as being the sole reason for journalism being leftwing.
Of course I agree that people who dedicate their careers to writing contemptuous articles about the people upon whom we (and they) depend for food, clothing, shelter, fuel, and security have political issues a priori which make that project congenial to them. My point is not to reject that. My point it to delegitimate the very idea that anyone should in principle accept journalism, or any other industry, as the definition of the public interest.I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I think you're over-thinking the entire matter. Yes, they want to keep their jobs but the leftism isn't as abstract nor as necessarily tied as closely to the process of journalism as you state. For one thing, journalism has been around for a very long time. It's been in this country since we landed at Plymouth Rock, basically, but it only became a strong instrument of the left in the last fifty or so years.The Second Amendment comes much closer to saying that I should have a gun to serve the public interest (in a "necessary" militia) than the First Amendment comes to saying that the Sulzberger family should have a printing press to serve the public interest. At a time when dialog between the WH press secretary and a reporter can go,
Reporter: The news from Iraq is all bad.it is not (remotely) too much to say that journalists conflate their interest with the public interest. And in fact and logic there is precisely zero justification for that attitude. The only justification for that attitude is that, with their propaganda power, they can get away with it. But here on FR, that should cut no ice at all - and that is my point.Tony Snow: You aren't reporting the good news from Iraq.
Reporter: Bad news sells, good news is boring.
Reporter: What are you doing about the bad news from Iraq?
Larry Sweigart (FReeper LS) says he's writing a book on the topic of the political tendency of journalism in the past 50 years; I will be very interested in his conclusions. Because if you read Ann Coulter's Treason, you will understand that at the very dawn of the 1950s Big Journalism executed a jihad against people (Whittaker Chambers, Senator Joseph McCarthy) precisely because they were right about Communist infiltration in the US government. So IMHO it won't do to say that leftist activism in journalism has been building up over the past 50 years; it was in full flower at the dawning of that time period.At any rate, I subscribe more to the Fifth Column theory, which is really a cart-before-the-horse argument in terms of our discussion. I think leftists seek out journalism careers because they have an agenda to undermine and bend this country to their will and their world view, rather than them conforming to the demands of the industry as being the sole reason for journalism being leftwing
. . . and my point is that the two are not mutually exclusive. If you are willing to do the work of a journalist I think you are not conservative.