Posted on 07/08/2002 5:26:53 PM PDT by gcruse
I'm disappointed.
FMCDH
Schools of journalism, stocked with professors like Al Gore, turn out biased reporters, ready, willing and anxious to be advocates for the Left.
_________________________________________________________
During the Elian Gonzalez affair in 1999 and 2000, for example, several Cuban journalists on the staff of the Miami Herald openly sided with the anti-Castro families trying to keep the boy in America, and one Herald columnist was photographed in a prayer circle with the Gonzalez family. Rather than simply taking her off the story, the paper had special meetings between the publisher and the paper's Cuban-American reporters to discuss their complaints about coverage of the story.
In the Cauldron (journalistic omphaloskepsis)****Santiago, who as a feature writer was not involved in the daily stories, adds that some of the media coverage seemed biased. "If you took some of the coverage and replaced the noun Cuban American with the noun African American, people would have been screaming about stereotyping," she says. In one instance, Santiago says, a writer blew out of proportion the importance of the cigar business in Little Havana. Santiago says the industry hasn't been vibrant in Miami for years. "It just left the impression the people in Little Havana were cigar-chomping Latins," she says.
Larry Olmstead, the Herald's managing editor, issued a memo responding to some of the concerns: "This is a sensitive, potentially volatile situation for the newspaper and the community. Our journalism should reflect that sensitivity."
Santiago says she's also concerned that the actions of Cuban American journalists were watched too closely. She pointed to the case of Liz Balmaseda, the Herald's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who was photographed participating in a prayer vigil outside Elián's house. The columnist told AJR that while she was there gathering material, a friend grabbed her hand for prayer. She says it would have been rude to refuse the friend's hand.
"I didn't set out to make a political statement," she told a Herald reporter.
Herald Executive Editor Martin Baron says Balmaseda's actions were inappropriate: "We should always keep our distance from news events."
Balmaseda says she thinks it was her heritage, not her ethics, that were in question. She says she has prayed other times on assignments, including with the Dalai Lama. "The only time anyone has had any questions about my prayer was when I prayed with exiles in Miami," Balmaseda says.
Baron says that this particular prayer vigil "appeared to be making a statement about this case" and thus was inappropriate for a Herald staffer to participate in.
It was the appearance of favoring Elián's return to Cuba that Bernadette Pardo, a Miami newscaster for Spanish-language WLTV and a radio commentator, says brought her criticism. She never declared her position on the air, in deference to journalistic standards of objectivity. As a result, she told Miami New Times, she received abusive and threatening mail. "To keep above the emotions sometimes is very hard when you are getting hate mail," she says.
That's milder than what Jim DeFede, a columnist for New Times, received. After he criticized Miami-Dade's Cuban American politicians for siding with exiles, anonymous callers phoned in death threats. Chuck Strouse, the alternative weekly's managing editor, says the paper took the threats seriously. But nothing happened to the columnist, and the threats didn't soften his bite. In a column for the April 20-26 issue, DeFede declared, "This boy has proved to be the single most destructive force in South Florida since Hurricane Andrew."****
Well, it's probably because this is no revelation at all to many here ( and elsewhere ) who have seen bias in the news- and the rest of the "media"- for decades.
I go back to Goldwater... remember the "Daisy" commercial?
The sudden shift that occurred in Vietnam form "the right war at the right time" to "America can't do anything right over there, time to get out!"
The great sea change from "Plucky Little Israel against a Sea of Hostile Arab Nations" to "Oppressor!"
And it's far more widespread, and worse, than merely the news departments-- the entertainment division of "media" tells everybody what they think is cool, what's worthy of scorn and ridicule, what can safely be ignored.
Now little by little, the 'spin' of news production is being noticed by non conservatives. There is hope.
Unfortunately, I see more and more recent j-school grads who not only cannot write (does no one teach grammar or spelling any more?), but truly believe their job is to shape the readers' beliefs and opinions, rather than report the who, what, when, where, why and how of a story. Maybe that's the way "journalists" are portrayed in movies, I don't know, but that certainly is what we're seeing in the examples cited in the article.
Good find indeed, RAT.
FGS
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.