Posted on 06/04/2010 5:56:01 AM PDT by Zakeet
Former USA Today editor Kenneth Paulson attacked what he called "The 'myth' of media bias" in an article on Thursday. He just described the claims of media bias as untrue, without offering any evidence or considering any criticism:
Despite the perception of news media bias, the truth is that most traditional news organizations — primarily newspapers, their Web sites and local TV and radio — adhere to in-house ethics codes and keep politicians at arm’s length.Yes, you read that right. Most traditional news media strive daily to report news about their communities without regard to political affiliation or special interests.
This sounds as if Paulson is writing for a naive sixth-grade social-studies class. How would he contend with questions about all the gooey news magazine covers of Obama, the network anchors going out on burger runs with Obama? But it gets sillier. Paulson claims that the reason that people say there's a media bias is because they're confused about who the media is. Certainly, they don't mean USA Today or the national TV news. The public must be badly mistaken, blurring the "traditional" news media with bloggers and talk-radio hosts and other "blustering pundits."
If today’s traditional news media are indeed more ethical than their predecessors, then why does the public have a perception that the press is biased? In part, the problem stems from the breadth of the word "media."When America’s news media began routinely referring to themselves as "the media" and not "the press" or "news media," they threw in the towel on public perception. Journalists now are lumped in with any and all forms of information, entertainment and advocacy.
When Americans take surveys about media bias, are they thinking about their local daily newscast or about cable channels that shamelessly favor one side or another? When they think of journalists, do they think about the young reporter carefully taking notes at city hall or a blustering pundit spewing outrage on air or online? There's a lot of junk journalism out there and it feeds the public's sense that "the media" are high on agenda and low on ethics.
The other factor driving public perception of bias is, of course, the relentless drumbeat of politicians who find that counterattacking is more convenient than actually explaining their actions or positions. There's been some of that throughout American history, but former Vice President Spiro Agnew raised it to an art form. Remember "nattering nabobs of negativism" and charges of the press being elite and out of touch? His strategy worked and the name-calling stuck.
Yes, America’s news media have plenty of warts, including understaffed newsrooms and errors made in haste. But the truth is that most traditional news organizations in this country still take their watchdog roles seriously. To the extent there is bias in America’s traditional newspaper newsrooms, it’s not liberal or conservative. It’s a bias against whoever’s in charge in the moment, maintaining a healthy skepticism about how the public’s business is done.
That’s not always comfortable for government officials, but it’s in the best interests of a democracy.
Attacking Agnew's critiques of media bias as "counterattacking is better than explaining their positions" betrays Paulson's liberalism and knee-jerk defensiveness. Paulson is the one who's counter-attacking rather than explaining what the media's done to earn a biased reputation.
Note to Mr Kenneth Pauson:
Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf ‘s son ?
With emphasis on the words, "any position or topic".
In a sense he is correct. The problem is more subtle and yet simpler than that and extends to academia as well.
It was expressed to me in Saigon in 1970 when I was berating a VP for CBS about the coverage of the war.
He said, and I think he was correct, that the problem was not intentional bias, but “intellectual incest”, the fact that all the newspeople talked to no one but those who see the world as they do and all their reporting reflected that.
The liberal (progressive??) mindset is that things will only get better when the greatly superior elite control everything and lead the masses (whether they want it or not, the elites know best) to a higher level and on to perfection on earth. Anything that promotes this is good, anything that doesn’t is not just wrong, it is evil. “Whatever it takes baby.”
This mindset is nothing new, from Plato’s Philosepher-king, to Rousseau, to Marx, to Obummer, it’s all the same.
Bwah hah ha hah ha ha!!
Now he has some Florida swampland (Pair-a-Dice acres) and the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you....
It is truly amazing that this "journalist" has to go back 40 years to find an example that makes his point. Out of new ideas, anyone?
Narcissists like to think they are in the center of everything. Nixon's Watergate scandal transformed news reporting from a blue collar vocation to one attracting narcissists looking for fame. If you look at newspapers from before Nixon, very few articles have the reporter's name listed and personal opinions stayed out of it. Now the reporter's name is listed right after the title and you can often tell where they stand politically.
He must be trying out a new stand-up routine for that show “Last Comic Standing.”
I suppose the Harvard and Pew studies to the contrary mean nothing.
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/files/bw04_0614.pdf
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/11/pew-research-center-confirms-media-bias.html
The problem is not their bias. Newpapers have been bias since their creation. The difference now is lack of competition.
Newspapers are so 18th Century. I do not think they will survive. However, that does not mean gathering news is no longer needed. What is needed is more neutral reporting.
News gatherers should remember it is not their job to choose sides, but to report. Who, What, When, Where and very little Why.
The above notwithstanding, laying out the facts used to be a good idea. Now we just have emotions and editorializing.
The -—> In
Yea!sure that’s why newspaper subscribers are dropping like flies fleeing the lies these papers have been feeding them for decades.
I read the column, and basically Paulson is saying there’s no leftist bias in the media because he said there wasn’t any. Well, that sure is great proof. (smirk) Probably people like Paulson sincerely believe there is no bias just as Dan Rather viewed the New York Times as mainstream and unbiased. I think I’ll believe Bernie Goldberg before I believe this clown.
The Onion is a more reliable news source than Paulson
The MSM hit that point years ago
True, more now then ever.
No doubt, Pauslson said that media bias is a myth as he reported that the Obama Administration is the most transparent in the history of our country (because...well, Obama and the DNC said that).
Obviously he doesn’t watch MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS or NBC or read the NY Times or even his own McPaper.
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