Posted on 04/10/2020 6:22:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
The liberal Columbia Journalism Review has published a lengthy special report from the Town Center for Digital Journalism on the values and practices of online conservative news sites. Three professors, Anthony Nadler, A.J. Bauer and Magda Konieczna, interviewed 22 journalists at 14 websites, and their overall picture of the conservative media is straightforward. Among their findings about conservative journalists are the following:
-- They espouse journalistic ideals such as accuracy and fairness, if not objectivity.
-- They express an interest in engaging the broader public, not just conservatives.
-- They're dedicated to reporting stories they felt were "consistently underreported" by liberal darlings and institutions.
-- Many feel "conservative journalism as a whole is treated unfairly by the mainstream press."
Some feel conservative media is "marginalizing conservative perspectives critical of Trump's honesty and character." That's not surprising, given that the trio of professors interviewed "conservatives" at The Washington Post and at The Bulwark, a red-hot never-Trump outpost. They reported, "Asked what makes for an ideal conservative journalist, Bulwark senior editor Jim Swift joked ... 'the ideal conservative reporter or journalist usually just leaves conservative media as soon as they possibly can,'" since it's not lucrative.
Surely, one could be both a conservative journalist and a critic of Trump's "honesty and character." It's just that sites like The Bulwark are harshly critical of most conservatives and end up sounding much more like Vox than Fox. They sent freelancer Molly Jong-Fast to the Conservative Political Action Conference. The "highlight of the hellscape," she proclaimed, "was seeing Laura Ingraham attempt a comedy set. Laura said that Democrats want post-birth abortions and made a number of extremely unfunny jokes about Jim Acosta."
Feeling CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta's pain is not a "conservative media" norm.
This was the saddest finding of the study: "Many participants said they see few other conservative outlets as high-quality news sources. They described their own publication's commitment to accuracy, thoroughness, or fairly representing fact as an exception within the field of conservative news."
The point was demonstrated by Ethan Barton, managing editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation, who bragged, "Within conservative media, I would say our big thing is that we're far more in-depth and measured -- and I know this is obviously my biased opinion -- and reliable than other conservative outlets."
That's not going to win friends and influence people for the Daily Caller. This is not what you find in major media. You don't often see The Washington Post saying to interviewers, "The New York Times is far less reliable and deep-thinking than we are."
These professors should be welcomed for finding the conservative media to be worth academic attention. But they seem to be dismissing the overwhelming bias that provides so much energy and loyalty to conservative outlets. Nadler and Bauer have seriously argued, "there has been little social-scientific corroboration of liberal media bias." That's like arguing social science has failed since 1996 to establish that Fox News leans to the right.
Like many liberals, the three professors assume media outlets from "television networks such as NBC and CNN to prestige publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post and digital upstarts like Vox or BuzzFeed" can be identified as "mainstream," "nonpartisan" and "general interest." It doesn't matter how valiantly these "nonpartisan" outlets identify themselves as being the ones to vanquish Team Trump in the defense of grand concepts like endangered truth and dying democracy.
"Nonpartisan" journalism for the "general interest" sounds great, but that's not what any of these overtly partisan and liberal outlets provide. Our media are divided between conservative and liberal, right and left, not conservative and "nonpartisan general interest." That ship has sailed, and it sunk.
at one end you have Moderates
In the middle, you have extreme rightwing crazy people
At the other end, you have Hitler (and Trump).
Academics who try to discuss this stuff in terms of Mainstream vs Conservative just showcase their bias. They aren't even smart enough to see it.
bkmk
I have never yet spoken to a liberal who has any concept of what the political spectrum looks like to conservatives, nor where they are on it.
Remember, TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.
That’s a pretty funny segmentation.
But it’s not complete. Is Lenin a “moderate” in your scheme?
LOL
It doesn’t matter how far Left you go, you’re always a Moderate. It would be distasteful to ever classify any Leftwing idea as “extreme”. So, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, AOC — they are all “Moderates”. And anyone who is in any sense “less committed to the struggle” would have to be classified as a full-on “rightwing crazy extremist”.
Right-It’s my experience with Liberals that ‘objectivity’ is an alien concept for them. All decisions, all conclusions, all ‘perception’, all opinions, etc. begin and end with emotion... wholly apart from logic and demonstrated fact. They constantly cherry-pick what matters in THEIR mind
“There’s an enormous emotional and practical difference between accepting the world wholly and heartily or only grudgingly and in part.” William James
Liberals approach life and the world just as children do:
*What I want
*What I feel
That’s a phase Liberals never get past. For rational and mature adults, any decision, any opinion (their own or that of others) is effective, valid or workable ONLY to the extent that it is removed FROM emotion.
In other words, for anything left of what we call normal, they use the word “moderate.” As in, “Progressives are moderates.”
The more progressive, the more moderate.
Because, both “progressive” and “moderate” have become persuasion terms of merit rather than descriptive terms of belief or positioning.
The point was demonstrated by Ethan Barton, managing editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation, who bragged, "Within conservative media, I would say our big thing is that we're far more in-depth and measured -- and I know this is obviously my biased opinion -- and reliable than other conservative outlets.”
That's not going to win friends and influence people for the Daily Caller. This is not what you find in major media. You don't often see The Washington Post saying to interviewers, "The New York Times is far less reliable and deep-thinking than we are.”
Historically - up to the post-Civil War era - newspapers mostly were weeklies, whose printers didn’t have a striking ability to report far-flung news to which the layman could not, over the course of a week, learn from sources other than the newspaper. Consequently newspapers were largely about the opinions of their printers, and thus didn’t agree about much of anything. The thing that changed that, obviously, was the telegraph (demo’d in 1844). And the wire services, which disseminated the news nationwide while economizing on expensive telegraphy bandwidth.As late as the mid-1870s, the AP could defend itself from charges of propaganda potentiality by saying that it just disseminated stories that various newspapers printed - those stories were from all perspectives, so the AP itself was “objective.” It was possible to say that with a straight face that long ago. But the wire services constitute continual virtual meetings of all major journalists, and - as Adam Smith put it:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.Ultimately those continual meetings had to produce "a conspiracy against the public.” That conspiracy consists of the propaganda campaign to the effect that “all reporters are objective.”That claim is false because objectivity is not a state of being but a goal - laudable if diligently attempted, but not a state to be achieved or conferred by some authority. To attempt objectivity seriously it is necessary to analyze one’s own perspective from the POV that where you stand might depend on where you sit. This is the very opposite of claiming actually to be objective.
Consequently the claim of journalistic objectivity reduces down to a powerful incentive for journalists to go along and get along with each other - and call that “objectivity.”
Journalism is about bad news. Thus, journalism is knowingly negative - and a claim that “journalists are objective” is a claim that negativity is objectivity. As definitions of “cynicism” go, it’s hard to beat that. But it would be incoherent to be cynical about one thing, and also cynical about its opposite. Journalism is cynical about society and, concomitantly, naive about its opposite, which is government. And that combination is precisely, IMHO, what defines socialism.
Thus, “the media” as we know and (don’t) love it. And thus, “conservatives” do not claim to be objective but only, like the ancient Greek philosophers, to love truth.
TRUTH is held in contempt in the decadent phase of Western Civilisation.
In fact, TRUTH--TRUTH for its own sake--is the evil most fundamental to the decadence of Western Civilisation.
The quest for TRUTH is the foundation of Western Civilisation. Those who hate Western Civilisation and those who have allowed themselves to be suffused with decadence hate TRUTH and the quest for TRUTH. Some claim to embrace "a higher truth," which means untruth--mendacity.
Whether or not Western Civilisation will survive, whether the decadence can be reversed, remains to be seen. President Trump and his supporters believe that it can. That's what the Trump Revolution is all about.
To save Western Civilisation, attack contempt for TRUTH, and accept TRUTH for its own sake. The rest will fall into place.
Journalism since the late1960’s has been about issue advocacy.
Journalists since then have gotten into it (in their mid 20’s) to help “change the world” (per their progressive ideology), not to report the facts.
Today’s communication channels make coordinating their words and agendas with each other (colluding) so very easy.
You also have to remember that these journalists have gone through the academy when Post Modernism was all the rage in English departments and inter disciplinary studies. That means a basic disregard for truth and an acceptance of cultural relativism. But this disrespect for truth was actually a tactic used by social scientists (they are honest enough to write about it in their educational journals) to neutralize capitalist values and indoctrinate the student toward the left. Further, many students accepted their fate knowing that they would please their professors, get top marks and that they’d enter the lucrative field of journalism as a reporter for a major publication. But did they? Just the opposite — if they are lucky they’d write for Huffington Post and get paid dirt. But they’re still addicted to the activist cause, even if that means spending years in the trenches, thinking their time will come.
Money is the key word for them... not truth. Even older journalists like Juan Williams will bow to the paycheck of being a spokesperson for the left, which means that Trump can’t do anything right. The truth is there before their eyes and they are willfully blind, reciting their hateful narrative against Trump. Narrative (again from Post Modernism) and money are key... truth is not.
One of my best friends was this way. She was incredibly self-indulgent, and she knew she was. But she compensated by endorsing liberal ideas, criticizing conservatives, and voting accordingly. But never did she put herself out personally for her beliefs. She didn't even recycle. And she felt guilty! But she never changed anything. It was weird.
That is a pretty good response on your part, CIC.
Thank you for the ping...
Partly because it is easier to brainwash someone than to convince them that they have been brainwashed. Ego blocks that information. In college, they learn that it is only their superior intelligence that allows them to understand the value of Progressive values. They are stroked constantly this way. It's almost impossible for them to let go of this feeling of being a member of a sort of intellectual aristocracy. It's the link between their lip service to equality and their deep, hidden fascination with class.
bump
No decision I ever made or conclusion I ever reached proved correct or permanent if it was based on emotion or even if emotion was a small part of the process.
THAT’S how I know emotion has no place in political thinking.
For Liberals, emotion takes the place of intellectual rigor and is an acceptable surrogate for proved facts. It isn’t
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