Once off the lower rungs, do you agree that journalists live in an echo chamber with little diversity of point of view?
Absolutely, and you can look no further than the journos at the top of the pecking order. You won’t find Lester Holt, Scott Pelley or David Muir shopping at Wal-Mart. They live in the best neighborhoods, often behind some sort of fence or security barrier; their kids go to private schools and they hang out with their fellow grandees from politics, business and the entertainment industry.
You’ll find very few conservatives in the little club and the few that are fit the George Will model: establishment all the way, with no care for anyone outside the Beltway. In an unguarded moment, you’d find they use the same words as Dims to describe us: a bunch of dangerous, gun-loving Jesus freaks who just don’t understand how the system should work, and given to the occasional political tantrum.
To give you some idea of how “out-of-touch” they are, Matt Laurer’s latest contract with NBC not only pays him close to $20 million a year, it also stipulates that the network provide a helicopter to ferry him to and from his Long Island estate a specified number of days each week. Guess the limo ride is just too long; can’t have TV royalty waiting out a traffic jam with us commoners.
And even the journos on the lower rung inhabit the same echo chamber. Various surveys have shows that younger reporters are just as liberal as their older counterparts and they are less likely to be engaged in their communities than their peers in other professions. Most of them view their adopted communities as red neck towns, to be abandoned whenever a better job offer arises. Obviously, the lack of engagement makes their reporting even worse.