[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Thomas Sowell:

The Police are always guilty

either of "letting the situation get out of hand"

or of "overreacting".

And the poor/minority who are actual or potential crime victims suffer for the effect that has on policing their neighborhoods.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Why does not the New York Times headline, each morning, “Man Killed In Car Accident In Iowa”? Presumably because such a death, while undoubtedly tragic for the man’s family, has no broader significance. But why is that so different from the death of a single soldier in Iraq, which has no strategic significance whatsoever? One could argue that every highway fatality is newsworthy because it casts doubt on the success of America’s effort to promote highway safety. But our newspapers have no interest in promoting such a theory

. . . whereas journalism wants "another Vietnam" so bad it can taste it.

Saddam wants the same thing. That doesn't mean that journalists are pro-Saddam.

Democratic politicians want "another Vietnam" so bad they can taste it, too--but that doesn't mean that they love Saddam.

In both cases it is in the interest of their own professional advancement. So much so that they cannot truely hate the man. The journalists and the other Democrats give not a fig for his victims, only for their own advancement.

Overdone Press Coverage of Iraq Casualties

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Walter Cronkite, once called America's most trusted man, once disagreed with me when I called most journalists "liberal." "If by liberal," he told me, "you mean open-minded, then, yes. This is true."

 Cronkite, no longer constrained by the journalistic creed of non-partisanship, now writes a weekly column. About liberal reporters, he now pleads guilty: "I believe that most of us reporters are liberal, but not because we consciously have chosen that particular color in the political spectrum. More likely it is because most of us served our journalistic apprenticeships as reporters covering the seamier sides of our cities -- the crimes, the tenement fires, the homeless and the hungry, the underclothed and undereducated."

 Last week, I interviewed Mr. Cronkite and questioned him about his rationale behind journalists' liberalism. If, I asked, journalists become liberal because they see the underbelly, the downtrodden, the miscast, how do you explain the conservatism of police officers, who, after all, see exactly the same things? Cronkite, apparently uncomfortable with the question, simply said, "Why should I?"

Journalists' liberal bias: Why it matters, how it hurts TownHall.com ^ | 9/04/03 | larry Elder

This is a reply to Thomas Sowell's point above, that journalists either complain that the police "let the situation get out of hand," or that they "overreacted."