Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Cocoon
As a friend remarked recently, time was when if you found it in the New York Times, that settled the bar bet and the other guy paid off. But if the Times and The Post or any other mainstream news outlet—including the major networks—come to be seen as the left-of-center counterparts of Fox News Channel, why would anyone accept them as authoritative sources of truth?
Jayson Blair, Mitch Albom, Barbara Stewart
What is at risk is not a reputation for infallibility; everyone knows that even the best newspapers and most careful broadcasters make mistakes. But it has been generally accepted that the mainstream media at least try to get it right—even when they too grudgingly acknowledge their errors after the fact.
Dan Rather, Mary Mapes
What worries me is that journalism could become a battlefield of warring biases: I’ll sock it to your guy, your party or your position on a public issue, and you’ll sock it to mine. And we’ll both believe we’ve done a good day’s work.
That’s funny, journalists like Sam Donaldson have described their job just this way.
Well, that was easy. But, forget all that. Is it possible that Raspberry just might be right. Has the conservative wing of the conservative party become so tightly wrapped in its cocoon that it can’t breathe anymore? Are Ann Coulter’s long (shapely) legs a devious plot to corrupt young liberal minds? I don’t know. What do you think?
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Friend Raspberry needs to study some journalism history. What he describes in the third excerpt is exactly what journalism was for most of its existence. Only during the 20th century—probably during my father’s lifetime—has it aspired to be better than that.
Trouble was, once it achieved the reputation for real objectivity, that rep became an attractive cover for a “new” breed of people looking to practice the old style of journalism.
The pantheon that includes Murrow and Cronkite was an anomaly—and not even much of a true one at that.
‘What worries me is that journalism could become a battlefield of warring biases’
That’s the way it is in most of the world. You read the paper that agrees with your opinion.
I’m not sure that the press in the US was ever very fair. Years ago, I just agreed with it a little more often.
Pick up a copy of “Citizen Hearst,” and read about the way newspapers were used in the presidential campaigns of the early 20th century. It’s good stuff.
Jayson Blair?
--screeeeeeh--