Posted on 01/07/2005 5:56:14 AM PST by ajolympian2004
Once upon a time, way back in 1987, Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings took part in a seminar filmed for PBS entitled "Ethics in America" where they were placed in a hypothetical setting accompanying an enemy patrol during a Vietnam-like war. What would you do, they were asked, if American soldiers were about to be ambushed by these enemy troops?
Wallace declared emphatically, and Jennings with some trepidation, that as "journalists" they would not interfere to save American lives but would simply report the event as it occurred; that their first duty was not to their country or countrymen but to the objective canons of their trade.
If this is journalism's version of Star Fleet's Prime Directive - never to interfere with the development of alien life and culture - Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press must not have gotten the memo. He was the reporter who contrived to plant a question with an American GI about unarmored vehicles in Iraq. The question was designed to embarrass Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a recent town hall meeting with the troops.
If you read the transcript of Rummy's entire answer, it was at the same time sympathetic, concerned, frank, practical, constructive and well-received by the soldiers. The edited version, disseminated by most of the media, conveyed a distorted impression, reduced to a sound bite: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." We've come to expect this from the liberal media.
Fortunately, the public is growing increasingly wise to them. A recent Gallup poll places TV and newspaper reporters near the bottom of the list when it comes to credibility, slightly higher than car salesmen, congressmen, business executives and lawyers but considerably below nurses, doctors, military officers, cops and clergy. Barely one-fifth of respondents rated reporters "high" or "very high" on honesty and ethical standards.
No, not every reporter in the major media is liberal. But most are. No, they don't all consciously spin the news in a liberal direction. But some do, and many more spin it that way unconsciously.
(Note: The likes of Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly and Rosen aren't reporters; they're commentators. They are admittedly opinionated.)
Sanctimonious liberal reporters describe themselves merely as the messengers of news that's often discomfiting. But your letter carrier doesn't edit your mail. He doesn't decide what information you'll get, what you won't and how it will be presented. And, in his professional capacity, your letter carrier isn't a crusader for some causes and an opponent of others.
Carole Simpson is a former ABC News weekend anchor. You might remember her as the immoderator, shilling for Bill Clinton at the first presidential town hall debate in 1992. She's still on the network's payroll spreading the word - as interpreted by a black, liberal woman in the media - for ABC News at high schools across the country. At a Washington forum covered by C-SPAN earlier this year, she proudly exclaimed that she was "someone who got into journalism in the 1960s because we wanted to change America."
Aha! Her use of the word we suggests she wasn't alone in this goal. Now, Simpson and I would disagree about many of her visions for change. And that would be fine in politics or on the editorial page, but her admission to being an activist in the media should have disqualified her as a "reporter."
Ann McFeatters, a nationally syndicated liberal columnist, matter-of-factly asserted in a recent piece that the job of journalists (she didn't exempt reporters) is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
But liberal reporters are commonly selective in the targets of their affliction and comfort. They comfort tax users while afflicting taxpayers. They comfort the public education establishment while afflicting those who fight for choice, competition and excellence. They cover for the comfortable leftists who dominate higher education while afflicting conservative gadflies like David Horowitz. They selectively comfort favored regulators, bureaucrats, enviros, labor unions, nannyists and rich propagandists - like Michael Moore - with whom they sympathize.
Liberals in the media, held hostage by their bleeding hearts, just don't know any better. They can embrace all manner of populist causes that make little sense to conservatives who temper their compassion with reason and real-world economic constraints.
If there were more conservatives in newsrooms, and if liberals would listen, some of this might sink in.
I saw that documentary series as part of a graduate level class on media ethics. The six other students in the class with me totally disagreed with wallace and jennings on that point, and with most other points they made- most of which were along the same lines.
A telling line from the series was one by a then fairly young Newt Gingrich "It appears that the military has thought a lot more about the ethics of valuing human life than the press."
and if liberals would listen,
Never try to teach a pig to sing......it is a waste of your time and annoys the pig.(Mark Twain)
They've destroyed the franchise.
About the only loyal constituency the mainstream media has is those at Moveon.org. Likewise, the only people who take the Mover-oners seriously are the mainstream media people -- often as the only ones at the designated starting point for the announced protest rallies/march.
It's a pretty pathetic sight -- but what a wonderful and deserving couple they make -- each thinking that they are fooling and exploiting the other. Surely a match made in Heaven for the truly deserving.
The very pinnacle of his performance is when a liberal with lots of self esteem calls in. Mike will methodically draw and quarter them, then tear them limb from limb, leaving them screaming or hanging up. It's a beautiful sight.
OK, it's talk radio, and so I have to imagine the sight, but IT IS beautiful!
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