For many years, most of their lives probably, New York Timesmen and women have worked under the prideful assumption they were employed by the world’s most important and prestigeous purveyor of news. They had some justification for that. The Times is and was often well written and it has amazing reach. It was indeed the newspaper of record. But history has moved on, as it has a habit of doing, this time driven by the seemingly inexorable forces of Internet technology. Those same forces are questioning whether one source – or even a group of sources – should have a monopoly on such power. No wonder these same Times people are now feeling wounded and harrassed. I would too were I in their place.
One of the early reflections of this pain is an article in today’s NYT – Web Offers Hefty Voice to Critics of Mainstream Journalists. It begins:
Practicing cheap and dirty politics, playing fast and loose with the facts and even lying: Accusations like these, and worse, have been slung nonstop this year.
The accused in this case are not the candidates, but the mainstream news media. And the accusers are an ever-growing army of Internet writers, many of them partisans, who reach hundreds of thousands of people a day.
“Many of them partisans”? I would better say all of them partisans, including me. Who isn’t partisan? Jim Ruttenberg, the author of this article? I sincerely doubt it. In fact, I’d bet my house Jim has a whole slew of opinions, known and unknown, assuming he’s a person and not a cyborg.
And that’s the crux of the problem. Journalists feel on the defensive because they depend as a profession on the pretense of impartiality, something we all suspect no one has or is. Jay Rosen, blogger and chairman of the NYU journalism department is correct when he tells Ruttenberg that’s what’s really going on is “… really an attack not just on the liberal media or press bias, it’s an attack on professionalism itself, on the idea that there could be disinterested reporters.”
Okay, guilty as charged. But how to resolve this without yelling at each other into perpetuity, something I don’t want to do, I can assure you? We can all (bloggers and journalists) attempt to be as an impartial as possible, but I don’t think that will work, certainly not without admitting our biases up front. The NYT, to its credit, was honest enough to do that, declaring itself a “liberal” newspaper through its ombudsman Daniel Okrent. Most bloggers I know are pretty up front. But the real guardian of honesty is diversity – the market itself. Despite its wounds, the NYT et al are going to have to live with a new reality. We’re here to stay and there will only be more of us.
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39 Comments
1. Tom Grey:Resolve it, over time, with a better product–blogs that are also hard copy papers.
Maybe “Balanced Times” — with left AND right blog like entries.
Printed on real paper, with real ads (that really pay?)
When are you and Jeff Jarvis/Jay Rosen (with whom you prolly disagree on this year’s vote) gonna start something up?
Many current reporters are likely to be hard to change — they honestly think they’re moderate, not radical Left.
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:10 pm 2. mcg:You know, those reporters can go perform impossible sexual acts on themselves. If they are truly confident that they are impartial, then they should just keep doing what they’re doing. Let the blogosphere
The only reasons I can think of that the Internet would make them waver is because 1) they know in their heart we’re right; or 2) they are worried that circulation would decrease. For #1, the answer is simple: SHAPE UP! For #2, the answer is also simple TOUGH! Do you truly care about your principles or not?
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:13 pm 3. Assistant Village Idiot:We all have had teachers and professors who had strong opinions but could recognize a good opposing argument, and writers whose bias you could not immediately discern. Mainstream journalists seem to believe that acknowledging that as an ideal is equivalent to achieving it.
It’s a great theory Mr. Rather. Howcome it isn’t working?
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:15 pm 4. PeterUK:Blogs have a corrective mechanism in that it is impossible to get away with anything,from facts to punctuation,someone out there has made a lifelong study of the subject and has a computer.
This corrective does not exist for the MSM,responses from readers are highly edited and selected.
I view all disinterested reporters in the same way as I view used car salesmen,the only difference being the salesman does not try to pretend he is not selling something.
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:22 pm 5. Ray:“MANY ARE PARTISAN?” Coming from the New York Times, who has been more partisan than any newspaper in the country (well maybe the Boston Globe), I find this statement incredible.
Here is partisan.
The New York Times, in cahoots with CBS has been constantly on the attack to find something wrong with Bush’s Air National Guard record.
The New York Times has ignored the dishonorable discharge that Kerry recieved, which was reviewed and changed after Truman became president. This is why his discharge is dated 1978 instead of 1972. His six year enlistment began in 1966 and he should have recieved his discharge in 1972. He refuses to release these records, yet continues to attack Bush who served honorably and recieved an HONORABLE DISCHARGE.
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:27 pm 6. PeterUK:I think the internet is probably the greatest step forward for democracy since universal suffrage.It is essentially the peoples medium and is a direct challenge to the hegemonic power of the MSM.That is why they are afraid>
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:31 pm 7. Michael B:“… many of them partisans …”?
Unbelievable. I latched onto that phrase in the quote provided, then laughed out loud when you immediately quoted it yourself.
“… criticism could eventually have a chilling effect …”?
Good lord, and in the immediate wake of the less than explosive Keller/Kerry explosives story. In some parts of that piece Ruttenberg sounds like a recently abused Don Quixote addressing Sancho Panza, declaiming upon and indignantly defending his code of chivalry, which he presumes to personify as no other. Yet it’s all straight-faced – though that too is reminiscent of our chivalrous, vainglorious knight.
Harrumph!
A reporter can do his/her best to be relatively neutral, though it requires some honest self-reflection along with some honest, up-front disclosure at appropriate times as well; no one can be truly objective and in fact no one should be, they’d be bloodless, anemic souls if they were.
Oct 28, 2004 - 3:34 pm 8. Michael B:“Blogs have a corrective mechanism in that it is impossible to get away with anything,from facts to punctuation,someone out there has made a lifelong study of the subject and has a computer.
“This corrective does not exist for the MSM,responses from readers are highly edited and selected.” PeterUK
Precisely. Again, the Fourth Estate is acting much more like the empowered and unchecked clerics and lords of the ancien regime – the First and Second Estates of that era. I don’t happen to believe that is hyperbole in the least as it pertains to specific reporters and methods of reporting, but even if it is regarded as hyperbole, there’s more than a mere grain of truth there nonetheless.
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:11 pm 9. jerry:Err Ray, Carter was President and Kerry’s obligation ended in 1978 not 1972.
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:19 pm 10. Rick Ballard:The problem that I have with this post is that it continues the pretense that journalism is a profession. My understanding of a profession includes activities for which a practioner is licensed and/or for which the practioner bears legal responsibilities. Physicians (and many other medical professionals), attorneys, engineers, architects and others are examined, licensed and held legally responible for practicing their profession in accordance with recognized standards. The penalties for misconduct within a true profession involve, at minimum, the potential for financial ruin as well as the loss of the license that allows one to legally practice.
Is Dan Rather going to lose his journalism “license”? Or Mary Mapes? Or the clowns at the Times who generated the Al Qa Qaa story on the flimsiest of partisan pretence? I would never suggest that journalists be licensed, any more than I will ever accept them as more than the practitioners of a trade. Their reputations as competent journeymen lie in the quality of the product that they produce. If they wish to be regarded as more than journeymen, then let them produce the masterpiece that will raise them from the ranks. Prof. Rosen might do his trade a better service by focusing his efforts on producing better journeymen than by worrying about an attack on a professionalism that has never existed, does not exist and will never exist unless a licensing and liability structure is accepted. The shabbiness of reality is showing through the pretence, professor.
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:36 pm 11. richard mcenroe:They’re hamstrung, my fellow hyenas! I can smell the blood! Pull them down! Pull them down!
Damn. Too much coffee at work today…
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:43 pm 12. Terrye:The Times is failing to note that they and for that matter CBS did not catch hell for saying something right wingers did not want to hear. They got hell for deliberatley using their influence to try and effect an election by knowingly going with news stories that were either based on fraud or were sloppily done. Or both.
They get paid the big bucks because they are professionals, well let them act like it. Nobody expects them to be like Data on the Starship Enterprise. We know they are human and have biases.
I saw a reporter from Vanity Fair on Fox today. I think his name was Wolf or something. Strange little man. Anyway, he said that the press was not doing its job because they did not go after Bush enough. Iraq sucks. Everything sucks and it is all Bush’s fault and the press should do what God put them here to do and destroy Republicans. The only difference between this reporter and most other reporters is that he is honest as to his intentions to use his job to achieve a political end.
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:43 pm 13. Lem:We are the Blogs. Journalism will be Assimilated. Resistance is futile.
(good thing I checked before rushing to post the same exact line) click Lem – I think
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:52 pm 14. Ray:Jerry:
Kerry entered the service in 1966. He had a six year obligation. His discharge, under normal circumstances would have been in 1972 (not 1978 as you have suggested). His dishonorable discharge is the only basis for his having had his medals removed (and restored at a hearing after Carter became President). Kerry has not released his records, and he refuses to meet any reporter that may ask the most embarassing question, “when did you get your dishonorable discharge changed to something other than a dishonorable discharge?” This explains why his medals have a “new” date (signed by a secretary of the Navy that was not in office when Kerry was in Viet Nam). This also explains why he threw the medals (either his own or someone else’s) over the White House fence.
If the New York Times were a non-partisan newspaper, they would have pursued this story until Kerry would have had to release his records. They have not and Kerry still has not released his records.
Oct 28, 2004 - 4:54 pm 15. jerry:Ray:
We have been through this before on other threads. At the time, and I really should check with some of mind friends about their OCS-type contracts today, your obligation was for 12 years. You had a four year obligation for active duty, followed by a two year obligation as a drilling reservist, and 6 years in the inactive reserve. The drilling requirement was waived if you had served in Vietnam proper. When I got out in the Summer of 1975 after 4.5 years, they were downsizing the Navy and I was placed, at my request, in the IRR pool with no drill requirement. In 1977, I was transferred to the inactive reserve pool and then in 1983 released from any obligation. That is 12 years same as Kerry. Entered the service in 1966 and his obligation terminated in 1978 right on schedule.
Oct 28, 2004 - 5:16 pm 16. blogaddict:I would imagine that the vast majority of NY Times reporters would subscribe to the idea that all is narrative, that there is a competition between alternate narratives, and that no narrative can be considered to be objectively “true.” Perhaps that’s why they no longer consider little things like “facts” to be of any significance.
But isn’t it interesting how they seem to abandon this notion when it concerns their own work? They seem to assume that only they are objective, and that only they have the corner on truth.
And, of course, nothing could be further from the truth!
Oct 28, 2004 - 5:18 pm 17. tdrew:Roger: first, thanks for a great blog; it just keeps getting better.
In the back and forth between MSM and bloggers, we hear a lot of these words: “partisan,” “bias,” “objectivity,” and “balance.” Roger, you spoke above of “the pretense of impartiality.” Allow me to call that praising with faint damnation; it’s too mild, it offers a foil for a great ill by discussing it under cover of a lesser one.
It is not that the NYT and the rest try for objectivity and fail–that would be a virtue, in which they would be no more culpable than the best of bloggers. Rather, they are trying to manipulate and succeeding. That is tyranny.
Discussions of “objectivity” are not pragmatic, but metaphysical. The use of the word requires us to believe in a higher realm of discourse, inhabited by demigods, which does not exist. We ought to understand such usage as cynical. The claimants do not themselves believe in the metaphysics they rely on the rest of us to swallow. Thus they maintain themselves in power. You can talk about “balance” until the well known place freezes over; all you have to do is keep the fulcrum in your own control, while letting the audience believe they know where it is. (If this seems like Derridean argument, it’s because it is. “Conservatives” ought to learn from old Jacques, or his spiritual ancestor Protagoras; they’d gain some very useful defenses.)
On a touristic visit to Washington a couple of years ago, I sat at breakfast next to a nice fellow from Vermont Public Radio. I told him I imagined the boards of NPR stations sitting around tables, discussing how they would present the news of the day. They would not ask, How can we flog a partisan agenda here? but rather, How can we edit this so it conduces to responsible citizenship, and a virtuous polity, as we know those things to be–thus hiding the manipulation even from themselves. He allowed as how that goes on. I told him I find this oppressive. End of discussion, except for the bland smile of superiority he bestowed on me, as chilling as any I’ve ever seen.
Make no mistake: we are engaged in a serious power struggle. There are those who hate this county the way a six year old deprived of a cookie hates his mother, with no awareness that the mother can really be hurt and die. There are others of us who have realized that one’s country is almost like one’s body; it is the medium through which we have learned what we know of the world, and which in a sense not as deep as religious faith, perhaps, but very profoundly makes us who we are.
I think it was Woody Allen said, “If you wear your body out, where’re you going to live?” It might be asked, If you let your country fall apart around your ears, where’re you going to live?
The fall of the Soviet Union should have taught us something. Great political combinations can dissolve, just by losing the will to defend themselves. That’s all it takes, and the next time somebody pushes (which will always be very soon) they will find it hollow. In that case, once the discovery was made it took only a few days, and no battle at all.
Some people have all the necessary protections in place; they have houses in France or wherever, to which to retreat. They already speak the language, and have the money to buy others to speak for them where they don’t know the ropes. They can afford a cavalier attitude. The mystery is why so many without such protections fawn on them so pathetically. Marx (another from whom there are things to learn) was right about false consciousness.
Our abjection before those whose claims of “professionalism” are founded in counterfeit “objectivity,” or in the pretense that such a thing is possible and desirable, is part of our danger. We should not listen to such talk calmly, let alone admiringly. Shame on us for doing so.
Thomas Drew
Oct 28, 2004 - 5:19 pm 18. nopundit:To me, here is the key (and absolutely funniest) graf:
Journalists covering the campaign believe the intent is often to bully them into caving to a particular point of view. They insist the efforts have not swayed them in any significant way, though others worry the criticism could eventually have a chilling effect.
A chilling effect? In a few short years, news reporting and opinion making have gone from a stolid oligopoly to a 900 horsepower Formula One meritocracy. The only chilling effect will be on keeping lies, distortions, and hack partisanship off of the news page! Ook. Maybe that’s what he meant.
Kenneth Greenlee
Oct 28, 2004 - 5:28 pm 19. max:The linked article is beyond parody imo. The media’s bias runs so deep that not only has it (the media) become at best functionally dishonest, but it has also lobotomized itself – it literally cannot even concieve of seeing itself as others see it. It, in its opinion has nothing to learn, and everything to ‘teach’.
Why doesn’t Mr. Ruttenberg open up a comments section under his article? Because he couldn’t handle the reality he’d be forced to confront.
Oct 28, 2004 - 6:15 pm 20. Katherine:ìThe fall of the Soviet Union should have taught us something. Great political combinations can dissolve, just by losing the will to defend themselves.î
ErrÖ Thomas, the second sentence is true, but the Soviet Union’s fall had nothing to do the loss of the will defend itself. They fell because they were totalitarian, oppressive dictatorship denying basic freedoms to its citizens, with centrally controlled economy that was incapable producing value and devoid of innovation.
Oct 28, 2004 - 6:18 pm 21. docweasel:So I want you to sit down now. I want all of you to sit down in your chairs. I want you to sit down right now and logon to your blog. Open it, and stick your fingers out, and type,
‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’
w/ apologies to Paddy Chayefsky
Oct 28, 2004 - 6:41 pm 22. Old Dad:Look it!!!
Lame attenion getter aside. The MSM needs money, and that’s fine. We’re capitalists right? The problem is the marketing. Most Americans don’t know squat about “pomo” anything, and if they did, they would “disagree.” Most Americans are offended when their intelligence is insulted. Take that to the bank.
That’s the problem. Much of the MSM has been foisting propaganda as fact for…forever, but we’ve blown their cover. We might be crazy, but we’re not stupid.
So what’s the Old Gray Lady to do? I could care less! Sure that’s harsh, simplistic and unnuanced (is that a word?), but as my sainted mother would say, “Goodness, let’s not make this harder than it needs to be.”
Pinch Hint: We’re on to you. Try a little Joe Friday. Humor us.
Oct 28, 2004 - 6:52 pm 23. Kevin P:Roger:
These arrogant frauds can’t handle being caught with their pants down.They presented as fact something that they had no proof for.They can’t defend their hit piece so now they are whinning about a “chilling effect”. So let me see, The Times trumpets a story that has massive holes in it in a blatant attempt to change the election, the story falls apart under the scrutiny of the blogosphere and they complain that they are getting picked on.
If the NYT doesn’t want to get picked on don’t put out stories that make incorrect points. The story was sloppy and filled with assumptions that they could not prove and had no perspective.Get your facts straight and eliminate the speculation masquerading as news.Keep the editorial page out of the front page and drop the agenda journalism and the blogs will have nothing to feast on. This was a seven course meal. Yum!
Oct 28, 2004 - 7:15 pm 24. Old Grouch:or howabout
I can’t improve on this reaction:
There are those in the “journalist” community who are trumpeting what’s going on as a “war on the media” driven by “propagandists of Orwellian agenda.” Jay Rosen, says it’s an “attack on professionalism.” Baloney.I’m upset because I trusted the press to keep watch on the world and inform me of what I need to know. For a long time, I’ve had suspicions that I wasn’t getting the whole story, and that what I was getting was driven by somebody else’s agenda. (Maybe that was when the goal of impartiality turned into a pretense.) Well, now I have others sources of information. I started checking things out, and guess what? I was right, and I feel betrayed. And if the “journalists” had really been professional, none of this would have ever happened!I don’t buy the argument that bias can’t be overcome. “I’m biased, you’re biased, everybody’s biased, nothing is true, nothing is real, it’s all in the viewpoint…” Sorry. It’s all too sophisticated for me. I can tell the difference between a reporter and an advocate, and I believe anyone with a modicum of intellegence should be able to recognize his own biases and set them aside. The result may not be perfect accuracy, but it would be one heckuva lot better thatn what I’m getting now. Sure, it’s not as much fun: “Delivering an accurate report” will never be as glamourous as “making a difference in the world,” but first of all I need the former.The latter can come later
—–The comments at Rosen’s blog illustrate how apart people can be on this issue. I’m afraid the “make a difference” people (who seem to be the majority of the journalism community) haven’t yet gotten it.Political Jihad and the American BlogBloggers and Journalists: Can’t We Just Get Along
Oct 28, 2004 - 7:37 pm 25. richard mcenroe:Well, the MSM better do something. Bush is up by 15 points in the early voting…
Oct 28, 2004 - 7:44 pm 26. Dymphna:Mr. Simon Says:
Journalists feel on the defensive because they depend as a profession on the pretense of impartiality…
The first tenet is mistaken, sir. Journalism is a profession in the same way the oldest profession is an honest day’s — or night’s — work. Journalism ’schools’ confer nothing except hubris and a refusal to be questioned. Before you can be accepted into the lodge, you have to surrender your sense of humor.
Professional journalists, indeed, sir! Oxymoronic, I say. Or maybe just moronic…
Oct 28, 2004 - 8:00 pm 27. rod:My name is Rod Boyd. I am a reporter for the NY Sun. I try very hard in my job, a job that is aided immeasurably by blogs, bloggers and commenters like you guys.
These people who look at blogs like this aren’t really worthy of scorn; think someone who owned a fantastic saddle making operation in 1906. Articles like this are their way of repeating to themselves…”I am not afraid of the dark….”
with blogs, i have a feedback group, editorial staff, research assistants and publicists rolled into one. Thank you
Oct 28, 2004 - 8:09 pm 28. 11A5S:Re Kerry’s discharge. You can only get a dishonorable discharge from legal action, i.e. a court martial. Unless the Navy was having courts martial in camera (a little sarcasm), a dishonorable discharge would be part of the public record. Other than honorable (OTH) and general discharges can awarded by an administrative board and would be harder to track down. I doubt if anyone marshalled the energy to convene such a board for a reserve officer, during the post-Vietnam drawdown.
Re Kerry’s medals. Even if he did throw them over that fence, it’d be trivial to get them back. He is a Senator few gosh sakes. All he had to do was send an aide over the the congressional liaison office and I suspect that they would have bent over backwards to get him a new set complete with citations. There were rules about commercial reproductions of medals in those days, but none against re-issuing lost ones.
Oct 28, 2004 - 9:09 pm 29. Lem:Hold it – ABC’S Ted Koppel just poured cold water on the explosive story. He was there with the 101st.
“I did not know it, but I was there”
“They (explosives) were probably moved before we arrived. Saddam knew we were probably going to bomb the place”.
Oct 28, 2004 - 9:12 pm 30. Michael B:tdrew,
Terrific post. There’s enough material there to help launch a volume or two and you’ve high-lighted some important areas. Very nice and nicely framed.
Oct 28, 2004 - 9:53 pm 31. tdrew:Katherine: Thanks for your response.
It’s interesting to me for the mixture of reasons you give. I think the causes of vast historical events are probably imponderables, but allow me to note that you have combined moral–read “metaphysical” themes (”totalitarian, oppressive dictatorship denying basic freedoms to its citizens”) with pragmatic ones (”centrally controlled economy, incapable of producing value”). I’m not sure which side “devoid of innovation should” go on.
The first set is a little Johanthan Edwards: Those miscreants deserved their fate, and there is a force of nature which will see to them. The second set does not partake of such a myth (if I may use the word). When discussing politics, I’d rather stick to the pragmatic. It keeps us more responsible, and more free.
Old Grouch:
Thanks for your response too, and the reference to the Jay Rosen article, which I’ll have to read more carefully.
I think you are too optimistic if you believe that intelligence will enable anyone to see his own biases and set them aside. I doubt that sheer IQ is much of a factor in this. It appears to me that the willingness to discount one’s own thought is as much a factor as the ability to do so. Powerful interests reduce that willingness, and hardly anyone–I’d say no one, not even a blogger–is immune.
Earlier in your comment I think you are conflating two questions: (1) can bias be overcome? and (2) whether it can or not, is nothing true or real? and another two: the difference between (1) scientific truth, essentially without meaning or moral content and (2) political truth, with moral and mythical meanings we invest in it, and disinvest, and reinvest every day.
Even if we do not see a thing (unvarnished truth, in either realm), it does not follow the thing is not there; our incapacity does not change the reality. But in politics there is a sense in which consensus is the only truth; we live with it for a while, and change it with the same authority, none but our own, with which we created it. (When the politics and science get confused, you get the Kyoto Agreement: a real monstrosity.)
Odd as it may seem, I think we can talk about truth in politics with more assurance than we can in science, because we–we in the aggregate, that is–have all the power, for better and worse. To do so, we have to maintain a sense of common cause with each other, in the sense of trying to get it right–which only means trying to make it workable, livable, not needing revision too radically or too often.
It is when some people arrogate to themselves the role of speaking from a higher plane than ordinary mortals that common cause breaks down and I get very queasy. If we allow that there is a truth for some preternaturally perspicacious folks to discuss–even if we count ourselves among them–then I think we are in real danger. The quaint medieval vice of hubris, not a failure of intelligence, is what I fear more, for then we begin to write others off, in the same way we rightly object to being written off by our “professional” superiors. We become the thing we very properly loathed.
This leaves quite clear the very important distinction between a reporter and an advocate, which I agree a reader can discern pretty readily. If reporters would stick to their brief, I agree, things would be a heckuva lot better. But don’t get me started on them.
I hope this isn’t too confused. I’ve just been enjoying caviar and lox on endive leaves, with a very nice Sauvignon Blanc from my neighborhood. Pity we can’t share it; it’d make us all glad and strong, fill us with that common cause we need so much.
Thomas Drew
Oct 28, 2004 - 9:58 pm 32. tdrew:Michael B:
Thanks for your kind words.
Thomas Drew
Oct 28, 2004 - 10:07 pm 33. Pixy Misa:Hi Rod!
Glad to see a reporter here. We like reporters, there should be more of them.
It’s the “journalists” that we have a problem with.
Oct 28, 2004 - 11:38 pm 34. Mikey:Perhaps someone should suggest (gently, though – we don’t want to give the poor dears a fit of the vapors) that they remember the opinion pieces go under the heading of “Opinions” and the fact based stories go under the heading “News.”
Just honestly tell us what’s happening. Tell us who’s who, don’t go shopping for “facts”, and above all, do not write the story on the way to the ballpark.
We aren’t stupid, stop treating us that way.
Oct 29, 2004 - 4:39 am 35. Margaret:It’s interesting that the MSM attacks bloggers as partisan jihadists implying a lack of objectivity they claim for themselves and a ferocity that they would never exhibit. As proof that their claims are false, notice that they are interviewing bloggers, John Hindraker of Powerline for instance, on their shows. Hindraker has even been asked to comment on the election aftermath.
If conservative bloggers were nutcases (like the left), they would be ignored.
Oct 29, 2004 - 7:26 am 36. Insufficiently Sensitive:“The accused in this case are not the candidates, but the mainstream news media.”
The last refuge of the scoundrels in the MSM is this retreat into their ‘victimhood’. There is nothing they begrudge worse than that the web DOES offer a hefty voice to critics of mainstream journalists. Lord, it’s been a long time coming. The monopolistic bullies at the NYT have had six decades or more of forcing their slanted accounts on the public without any significant means for the bullied to reply. To the MSM, it is better to give than receive – particularly when they exclusively own the megaphone.
Game’s up, Mr. Rutenberg, your golden throne has been usurped by the real world. Couldn’t have happened soon enough. How does it feel to take it once in a while, after a lifetime of corrosively biased dishing it out? Oh, pobrecito.
Oct 29, 2004 - 8:06 am 37. Old Grouch:Hi Thomas!
Agreed, and you raise an important point. My personal bias in tackling issues is right-brained, and I had taken the Mr. Spock approach: “If you’re smart enough to recognize and understand the problem, then, having done so, the only logical thing to do is to deal with it.” I had assumed the willingness, and you’re right, willingness can’t be assumed.Which may be the crux of the whole argument. In the Rosen discussions you’ll find posters who either don’t recognize the bias problem, or mischaracterize it. When we say, “You (the press) are not telling the whole story,” they hear, “You’re not telling the story the way we (the complainers) want you to.” Which leads to… My passage which you quote started out as a (lame) attempt at riffing on some of the arguments I’ve been reading at Rosen’s site and elsewhere. It obliquely addresses the (IMO) fallback position of the media mavens: “Alright, after arguing for years that we were being objective, and after being repeatedly caught out, now we’ll agree that we’re not objective, and in fact this is a good thing, so why try to do anything about it?” (Rosen himself dismisses the objective approach to reporting as “the view from nowhere,” and argues against it.) I see this as an attempt to confuse having a viewpoint (as Roger noted above, “Who isn’t partisan?”) with using viewpoint as an excuse for failing to tell the whole story.On scientific truths, I’ll have to think some more. I’ll agree that scientific truth is today far less accessible to the interested layman than it was 200 years ago. Hence we wind up relying on “experts,” and those “experts” may have axes to grind. (Which is nothing new, but our world experience gives us few tools for judging the validity of ideas of sub-atomic physics or long-term environmental modeling, for example.) Perhaps our increasing reliance on intermediaries is making “scientific” truths more “political” (like Kyoto?)?On political truth, I think you’ve nailed it. (I can feel the populist within stir when confronted with the “bland smile of superiority” of your VPR exec.) Fortunately, elections do a pretty good job of determining whether perceived reality corresponds with the real thing.
Oct 29, 2004 - 12:30 pm 38. Ray:OTHER THAN HONORABLE. That is what is now being reported by Hindrocket at Powerline, and Swiftboat Vets concerning John Kerry’s discharge from the Navy and affirmed by the former Secretary of the Navy. This also explains why Kerry’s medals were removed and not reinstated until after the Carter Administration’s amnesty program and complacent review boards for veterans guilty of misconduct or desertion during the Viet Nam war.
Oct 29, 2004 - 12:33 pm 39. patch:Twelve year commitment?
Baloney, before 1982 it was six years, in 1982 the commitment for officers was extended to eight years.
Senator Kerry signed up for the Navy as a Reservist in 1966. At that time the commitment was 6 years. He should have received his honorable discharge in 1972?
Please let me see a copy of it, or barring that please sign SF180 as President Bush did.
Oct 29, 2004 - 8:17 pm