1 Comments:

Alex said...

I don't really understand how a bad John Stossel report is indicative of a larger, Right-wing media conspiracy other than it is indicative of one man's anti-Rather/pro-Stossel hypocrisy.

It is worth pointing out, though, that Stossel is quite a few leagues lower than Rather on the ol' Journalist Heirarchy. It seems like Drum is really reaching to defend Rather on the charges of, "Well, Stossel's just as bad!"

But alas...

I wish I hadn't made that silent vow to not talk about the issue of media bias again following Election 2004. (It was sort of my olive branch to the Left. They had suffered enough, I figured. I'll spare them from my anti-MSM harangues. I even deleted ThatLiberalMedia.com and TimesWatch.org from Theo's Gift's links!)

But...

I will say this.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe it's *the Left* that's been lying to you all these years? That maybe just maybe, instead of calling conservative critiques of liberal bias "lies," that maybe the writers and editors who run the content of MSM outlets are really biased, and their defenses are desperate and politically motivated?

I mean, reporters are people. One of the more terrible things to come out of CBS' (and the Columbia School of Journalism) investigations into Rathergate was that they figured all the attacks on the Guard Story's shoddy reporting were politically motivated.

They never once stopped to think that maybe it was *their* own political motivations that led to the shoddy reporting in the first place!

The Left has us believe that every profession is prone to (even rife), with biases and corruption. Businessmen. Politicians. Scientists. Priests.

And they're right.

But for some, strange reason (well, it's never seemed all that strange to me), members of the media are always afforded this extreme respect.

"Oh, Reporter X could never lie! He could never let his political motivations shine through; even when he reports on anti-abortion activists from Montana. He's a paragon of balance, and even-handedness. He's from the finest schools and blablablabla."

I guess my thing on bias is really pretty simple:

They're just people. And I don't believe that any person can truly hide his biases. Particularly in print, where words and word choice carry monstrous weight.

And to use a bit of cheap Socratic reasoning...

If all men are incapable of hiding bias...

And members of artistic fields skew left...

Then reporters, writers, and editors are probably biased to the Left.

12:28 AM  

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