A very good article. The plain simple truth for me is that I don't trust any media that isn't objective about its subject-matter. Part of being objective is adhering to the Joe Friday "just the facts, ma'am" approach to reporting (a/k/a the five Ws -- who, what, when, where, and why). Another part of being objective is stating
all of the relevant facts, not just the facts that support the particular bias of the reporter or the media outlet in question.
None of the major media -- not even Fox News -- meets this criteria for me, but at least Fox makes more of an effort and is much more honest about the distinction between hard news and editorializing in the phony guise of hard news, or between facts and opinions or speculation. Outlets such as the NYT, the Washington Post, network news, and CNN are so non-objective that they border or even cross the line of intellectual dishonesty.
"None of the major media -- not even Fox News -- meets this criteria for me, but at least Fox makes more of an effort and is much more honest about the distinction between hard news and editorializing in the phony guise of hard news, or between facts and opinions or speculation...."
The editorial board of the NY Times and the editorial staff for the three major networks are so mired in the Georgetown cocktail party circuit that thay lack any perspective outside of east coast liberal politics. Or as writer Joan Didion said after Regan's 1984 landslide "I don't know how Regan won, none of my friends voted for him." .
Bernard Goldberg's book "Bias" gives a sense of how culturally isolated most of the editorial personnel in the "elite" media truly are. The idea that taking the daily DNC talking points from the Fax machine and repackaging it as news is biased would not occur to most of these people.