Should we abandon the tradition of journalism that calls for the nearest approach possible to balance and fairness?
That's the argument made by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, who found some areas on which he and conservative critics could agree. He argues that transparency is the new objectivity, and that mainstream journalists ought to stop pretending they have no biases and are simply holding a mirror up to reality.
It's journalistic arrogance that often upsets the right wing, he said, because "If you're dissatisfied with their portrait [journalists say] the likely reason is that you refuse to face reality as it is, because that's what news reports from mainstream journalists do: they depict reality, not the way you see it or I see it but simply "the way it is."
On that point I'd agree with him. There is no such thing as "objectivity," outside of the double-blind study.
But Rosen calls most mainline journalism The View from Nowhere, because all journalists don't list their biases up front. He'd prefer a European model where much of journalism comes from periodicals that are aligned with a party, a movement or an ideology, and present the news from a definite and observable stance. Of course we do that here as well, in such publications as the Nation or the National Review, and many others,
The problem is that today in journalism we have the opposite of The View from Nowhere. We have The View from Everywhere. Everyone who can get near a computer terminal is blathering on about whatever strikes his or her fancy and the din is overwhelming. It makes the tower of Babel look like a library reading room. The new din may be democratic, but its also incoherent, idiotic and often just plain looney.
I, for one, appreciate a story by a journalist who has done his or her legwork, who knows the turf and can explain what's happening n in a certain arena, and present a story that tries to be balanced and fair. Can it be done? Sure. Just like a skilled debater can argue both sides of a contentious issue with skill, an experienced journalist can weigh the evidence, introduce the players, and present a pretty fair assessment of what's true. Or what's not.
It will not be perfect or totally bias-free, since none of us can erase the totality of our being and observe events like a robotic camera eye. But I much prefer an intelligent human mind trying to sift through reality and come up with some answers.
In the midst of a media universe filled with screamers, spinners, ideologues and narcissists, the so-called "View from Nowhere " can be quite calming. And informative, especially if we stop claiming that we are automatons who have no biases, and that we make no judgments and draw no conclusions. But we don't have to put all our viewpoints on the back of our shirts, like numbers on major league ballplayers.
Is there bias in the media? Of course. Lately there's a bias towards sensation and scandal, which is why sexy stories like those about Herman Cain, Anthony Weiner, Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan will continue to take up so much media space. They are red meat for the gluttonous maw of a 24-hour media that is like an angry sacrificial God who keeps chanting Feed me! Feed me!
But the true bias of the mainstream media is centrist. Politics in the U.S. is usually played near the 50 yard line -- sometimes a bit to the right, sometimes a bit to the left. Indeed, born-again creationists don't get very good treatment by the mainstream media, but neither do vegan feminist socialists.
Barry Goldwater probably would not have caused a nuclear war, as the famous (and brilliant) democratic ad suggested. Remember the cute little girl who was pulling petals off a daisy, and at, the end, the H-bomb explodes? George McGovern would not have unleashed hordes of screaming, murderous Bolsheviks to run through the streets of Peoria, but that's how he was portrayed.
While mainstream journalists can be titillated by a Donald Trump, a Michele Bachmann or a Herman Cain, they are really much more comfortable with people who know who the president of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan" is, who can memorize fifty-seven points of a policy paper and who could analyze the Bush doctrine at a press club dinner.
One reason right-wingers see so much liberal bias is that so many on the right have moved closer to the twenty-yard line than to the fifty, and they have power. There's not much left of the left. Does anyone think that MoveOn.Org is an octopus about to envelope the Republic? The tea party, however, has enormous power in the GOP, shifting the party's center of gravity far to the right.
The more that Republican centrists disappear, the more critical of the party mainstream coverage will be. Remember Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Bob Dole, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Scranton, Bill Weld and a covey of other Republican moderates who were well-respected by the mainstream press? Remember Bill Buckley, who you'd viscerally disagree with if you were a liberal? But you had to grudgingly admire his vocabulary and his brainpower. If you are a serious journalist, it's tough to take seriously people who argue that Barack Obama is an alien shaped by the philosophy of the Mau Mau anti-colonialists of 1950s Africa, or a closet radical Muslim who hates white people and hopes to see The U.S. crumble into the sea to be replaced by a Caliphate. It is also hard for serious journalists to buy conspiracy theories from the left that George W. Bush so desperately wanted an excuse to invade Iraq that he planned the attacks on 911, and had the military and the CIA wire nearby buildings so they would collapse at the same time the towers fell.
I remember the days when I was a Washington correspondent, when you could find republicans all over the hill who could talk seriously and with knowledge about both foreign and domestic policy. Just listen to the debate between Kennedy and Nixon before the 1960 election. (Don't watch it, because Kennedy's tan and youthful appearance and Nixon's stubble and pallor will distract you.) Listen and you will hear two very smart guys talking about very complicated issues, using complex sentences and in no way assuming they were talking to a bunch of dummies who could be seduced with silly nonsense.
The morphing of politics into half-circus, half mental ward (see Glenn Beck) is not good for the Republic. Even Fox news Czar Roger Ailes appears to be tiring of the follies. He claims he is moving his network towards moderation.
Ross Douthat was on target when he recently wrote a New York Times column attacking the arrogance of the "best and the brightest" on the left, but warning that it will not help the GOP to canonize folks who seem to be vying for the title of the "worst and the dumbest."
"From Michele Bachmann to Herman Cain," he writes, "the outsiders haven't risen to the challenge. It will do America no good to replace the arrogant with the ignorant, the overconfident with the incompetent. In place of reckless meritocrats, we don't need feckless know-nothings. We need intelligent leaders with a sense of their own limits, experienced people whose lives have taught them caution. We still need the best and brightest, but we need them to have somehow learned humility along the way."
Conservatives like that would find a great deal of respect, even among the detested "liberal" media.
Boston University professor Caryl Rivers is the co-author, with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, senior scientist at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis, of The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children (Columbia University Press).
As a non journalist, I have to ask...........is this a rhetorical question?......... Or satire?
Fox News claims the "honors" of having most of the "top rated" news programs on Cable Television. Yet by their own admission, these programs aren't news, they're commentary.
When the majority of the American Public prefers news they agree with, over facts. Where is the future in "objective" journalism?
If America had laws on it's books that required "truth" in news, Fox would never even be allowed to broadcast.
Canada, and Great Britain have such laws. Maybe if one wants to pursue a career in "objective journalism" one should emigrate?
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/5123-fox-news-lies-keep-them-out-of-canada