Thanks for giving this a refresh as I would never have seen the original post. Very well said, right on the money and ever more pertinent. Excellent.
To: I Gig Gar
The [American Mainstream Media Party], meanwhile, is regarded with ever growing suspicion by American voters, viewers and readers, who increasingly turn for information and analysis only to non-AMMP outlets that tend to reinforce the sectarian views of discrete slices of the electorate.. . . as opposed to the MsM, which reinforces the sectarian views of - the MsM. Specifically, the view that nothing actually matters except PR.Yes, I know: A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics.What's with the "purely?" Claiming to be objective is claiming to be wise, and claiming to be wise is arrogant, as only a journalist writing in his own paper or on his own radio station can be.Yes, I know: Today's media foodfights are mild compared with the viciousness of pamphleteers and partisan newspapers of old, from colonial times forward. Yes, I know: The notion of a neutral "mainstream" national media gained a dominant following only in World War II and in its aftermath, when what turned out to be a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country.When your opposition is politically crippled, you think you are moderate because nobody points out limitations in your thinking.Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it's pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things.Story selection - what's the lead, and what's on page A13, and what's not even in the paper - is in the eye of the beholder. And there's nothing "neutral" about those decisions. That makes a mockery of "the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press."36 posted on 01/12/2005 11:16:38 AM EST by conservatism_IS_compassion