The
New York Slimes
All the news that bullshit
Right
wing media is filled with paranoia over how slanted the so-called mainstream
media has become – possibly because with outlets like The New York Times, The
Washington Post and CNN slanted their news coverage, Fox can no longer take
credit as the “bad boys” of Journalism, and by comparison, Fox even looks and
sounds reasonable. This is a remarkable accomplishment that should be
mainstream media some comfort since they have ranted and raved for years about
how slanted Fox was.
Perhaps
we ought to award the mainstream media a Pulitzer Prize for this, except in
accomplishing this feat, mainstream media has completed gutted journalistic
integrity and violated every possible principle of journalistic ethics.
News
reporters working for these organizations should go back to college and get
their money back. They obviously learned nothing while at school, except out to
use a thesaurus to help manipulate the general public into believing a skewed
point of view. Any weekend edition of The New York Times becomes a lesson in
how not to be an objective journalist.
You
can’t blame NPR or any of its affiliates since they never pretended to be
objective, and has also been something of a minor league of news where second
rate reporters go to earn a living or washed up mainstream reporters go to die.
NPR has been so unobjective over the years, some of its reporters even earned
citizenship medals from President Obama for slanting their news to the left –
such as the medal awarded to the host of Fresh Air, whose claim to fame was
bushwhacking Mrs. Reagan in the 1980s.
NPR
hasn’t improved; mainstream media, envious of NPR’s ability to slant stories,
has moved to the left as well, largely becoming the propaganda arm for the
Democratic Party.
Why
is this happening, you might ask?
There
are a number of theories, among which is that media has become full of itself,
believing its role is not to merely report the news (well or not) but to
influence public opinion, elevating itself as the Fourth Estate to a role that
historically required an election and oversight, and a balance of power among
those who govern.
Media
has no oversight. It operates on its own rules. Attack it, and it bands
together like a pack of rats, much the way the American Medical Association
does anytime anyone criticizes a bad doctor or the way members of a mob family
might when one of its own is threatened.
Editors
no longer demand objectivity. In fact, they seemed determine to interject
personal opinion into news pages, making frequent use of yellow prose that will
not-so-subtly force readers to accept as truth their opinions. Any accurate
study of a Sunday Times will show this abuse as the purple prose proliferates
every section from real estate to entertainment in a non-stop attack on the
current administration. Since The New York Times is considered the bible of
journalism by many, far lesser news organizations such as CNN and The
Washington Post become poster children of outrageous violations of journalistic
ethics – partly as a Harpers Magazine article recently noted – the reporters
and editors see themselves on social par with the people they are covering – a ludicrous
idea at best, and a dangerous one at worst.
Corrupt
reporters have always been a fact of life, reporters that are on the take from
one party or even the mob (as made clear in the movie The Godfather), but in
the past, there were internal checks and balances, responsible editors and
publishers, some who still remembered the ethical boundaries that keep the news
industry honest.
This
is the big change – partly due to the sometimes brilliant and yet clearly
flawed reporting that brought down President Nixon in the aftermath of
Watergate.
Now,
every news agency thinks it has the power to bring down a government it does
not like – and so leaps into each edition with both feet.
Even
that would not be horrible if it was done innocently and fairly, attacking all
leaders regardless of party affiliation.
Some
right wing radio hosts believe the real cause of this shift to the left comes
from how news organization recruits journalists. New journalists do not learn
their craft in the newsroom so much as in a class room, and so some people
feel, they get indoctrinated by a largely left corps of left wing professors
long before they actually put pen to paper (a lost concept) in a news room.
There
may be some truth to this since we see a similar left wing propaganda infecting
other graduates such as the proliferation of those with Masters of Fine Arts
that parade the world without any real vision of reality and no sense of social
purpose other than the one injected into their naïve heads while in the
classroom.
But
empty-headed artists are far less dangerous than a similar breed of journalist
who comes into the newsroom with preconceived notions and no notion of
objectivity. This would not be as serious even were the newsrooms occupied with
a better breed of editor, whose world experience might temper these misguided
newbies. The problem is that editors are of the same ethic-illiterate breed,
and publishers – seeking to supply fodder for a particular audience – allow news
to be distorted to fit the preconceived opinions of their target audience.
So
we get an invasion of gonzo journalists, combined with unethical editors and
unscrupulous publishers in a perfect storm of bad journalism – paving the way
for a kind of propaganda even Stalin might have envied, unchecked by any other
real power, attacking anybody who dares call their journalism unfair.
On
top of all this is the idea that media organizations believe it is their duty
to take political positions – outside the editorial pages – blurring the line
between fact and opinion in an effort to steer the public in a particular
direction – checked by nobody, not even journalism organizations such as the
Society of Professional Journalists who should be but won’t criticize their own
or hold them accountable for the gross misconduct that we now see as main
stream media news.
And
God help anyone who is not a journalist who dares to tell these news dilatants
that they are wrong.
Never
mess with anybody who buys ink by the barrel.