I put it to you that journalists will gleefully attack a manufacturer, or the police, or the military, or the water company - and that the common feature of the preferred targets is responsibility to a bottom line.If you are a fellow journalist, of course you get a pass - professional courtesy (and fear of retaliation, of course . . .). But you also are safe from journalistic attack so long as you do not attempt to gain credit for actually accomplishing something - and do not publicly come to the defense of those who do. Rather than (as journalists and like minded so-called "liberals" do) by criticizing those who do so.
That is why I find myself quoting Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech at the Sorbonne
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .
Journalists call journalists - and none other - "objective."
Journalists call those who are simpatico with journalists "progressive."
Journalists call those who are not simpatico with journalists "progressive."
Of course, assigning yourself and those who agree with you positive labels and assigning negative labels to those who disagree with you marks you not as objective but as highly subjective - and arrogant.
Journalists call journalists - and none other - "objective."
Journalists call those who are simpatico with journalists "progressive."
Journalists call those who are not simpatico with journalists "conservative."
John / Billybob
BTTT