No matter who wins next Tuesday, the big loser is the American People. In the past we could always look toward the Press to be our advocate. Remember Watergate? Remember the Monica Scandal. It was the press who helped to weed out those and other stories.
But this year that the Press is PROTECTING one candidate from so many stories that America Should hear about as part of the "Vetting" process. This is the year that the Mainstream Media Died:
Election 2008: Objective journalism the loser
By Michael GrahamDid you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?
You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.
And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”
Alas, the obit for objective reporting has been buried - along with the stories about Obama’s 2001 support for court-imposed “redistribution of wealth” and Joe Biden’s latest gaffe.
For the record (that’s J-school talk for “I actually know what I’m talking about for a change”), I am not a journalist. I’m an opinion writer and talk show host. But I admire reporters tremendously. I married one. My oldest son is named for the great H. L. Mencken.
So it is particularly heartbreaking for me to see the death of objective journalism. And believe me - it is stone cold dead. Sacrificed on the altar of service to Barack Obama.
Former New York Times [NYT] columnist and veteran newspaperman Michael Malone knows it.
“I’ve begun - for the first time in my adult life - to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living,” he said.
Malone is disturbed by the “shameless support” journalists have been giving the Obama campaign. Where’s the hardball coverage for Obama they give McCain? Instead, journalists are “actively serving as attack dogs for the [Obama/Biden] ticket.”
“That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault,” Malone points out. He blames the media, whose job it is to give Obama a thorough vetting “and has systematically refused to do so.”
This is hardly news to regular readers of the Boston Globe-Democrat, or viewers of MS-We-Hate-Bush. But when the Associated Press starts adding Kool-Aid at the water cooler, we readers are in real trouble.
Jay Newton-Small, a longtime AP reporter, points out in a column in the Washington Post that her old employer has begun practicing “accountability journalism,” which is a media euphemism for “picking the good guys and the bad guys.”
“Some of the most eyebrow-raising stories this presidential-election cycle have come from a surprising source: the stodgy old AP,” Newton-Small wrote.
The AP, once the gold standard of unbiased “hard news,” is now just another voice in the Spin Room.
Newton-Small asks:
“When the news organization entrusted with calling elections sets off down the slippery slope of news analysis, it’s hard not to wonder: Is the journalism world losing its North Star, the one source that could be relied upon to provide ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ ?”
Facts? Who needs ’em, when we’ve got Obama’s magic tax plan to promote and an uppity Alaska governor to trash?
At the risk of violating union rules, allow me to do a bit of reporting: A new study by the Pew Research Center found that, while 71 percent of Obama’s recent media coverage has been “positive” or “neutral,” almost 60 percent of McCain’s coverage over the same period has been “decidedly negative.”
And how much positive coverage did the media give McCain? Fourteen percent.
The American people have figured this out.
“By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent,” another Pew study reported, “Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4.”
The percentage of Americans who rate reporters as objective and not favoring either candidate? Eight percent.
My friends in the Partisan Press, your reputation has now fallen lower than both President Bush (25 percent) and the Democratic Congress (18 percent). Journalistic integrity now ranks along side communicable diseases and nuclear mishaps.
Obama will likely be the next president. He will use that power to do things both good and bad. But when Americans look for tough, honest journalists to challenge him, where will we find them?
2 comments:
Interesting, but not a truly global look at the scene. Daily newspapers were spawned in huge numbers in early America specifically as party propaganda tools for political viewpoints. If you think we are being vitriolic now, you should read about our early political history, both colonial and post-revolutionary. Politics was the only sport in town and everyone played! The initial primary argument was Large Centralized Government vs. Small Central government.
We have not changed at all! God bless America.
Objective journalism didn't become the industry standard until the early 20th century. In fact, when Martin van Buren started the Democrat party in the 1860's, the first thing they did was to create a network of newspapers to promote that party, and that network swept it to power. The Democrat party's initial single platform was to prevent the slavery question from reaching the legislative floor, to protect it. Within a decade, failure to address the issue of slavery legislatively resulted in the Civil War. Think that thought through folks.
The party has never strayed far from its roots.
Take a broader look. This pending fiasco will help produce a win for McCain. The American people may not know all of the details, because they are being obfuscated, but they know when they are being deceived. And they know who is deceiving them. Falling ratings for both print and video media tell the story. Elsewhere on this blog is a posting about media elite criticizing themselves for their treatment of Governor Palin. Why? Because she garners the best ratings, bringing SNL a highest ever.
We will see some dramatic reform in our government and in our media. The American people are never the losers. Winning is what we do best. No one can change that. We are not for sale.
Best wishes to all,
Gail S
Dear JM
Your profile has no Email. That makes you anonymous. I do not post anonymous comments. I post all comments that have an Email. The rationale is simple, I dont want to be responsible for someones comment.
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