I disagree totally with this article, unsurprisingly. It’s from Salon.
Take this line:
========whose role in theory is to expose the secrets of the powerful=======
BZZZT, wrong answer. The media’s job is not to be activist, their job is to be wholly accurate.
If the media are busy “taking on the powerful” or “taking on the rich” or “taking on x”, then they aren’t doing their job. That is by definition activist media.
Let me put this another way. Let’s ask SCOTUS judge John Roberts:
=======“If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me, ... But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy’s going to win.”=====
Now, granted he was talking about judges, and court cases, and etc. But a journalist is(like it or not) very much like a judge. And there are times, very often actually, where the little guy is in the wrong.
The BBC talked about this when they admitted to their bias.
http://www.newsbusters.org/node/13530
It is an essential part of the BBC’s journalistic role to hold those with power and responsibility to account, and in politics that includes the opposing as well as the governing parties. But it should never arrogate to itself the role of ‘the Opposition’. There are those in the international media who regard themselves as the sole bastions of freedom and justice against (as they see it) the overweening follies of Washington. There is not a shred of impartiality in such a position, and the BBC has no place in such company.
I agree with you. The old saw, the media should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” is more of the same garbage. Who is more “comfortable” in America than the media, yet they NEVER are “afflicted” with investigations. Unless they investigate themselves, and “out” every gay, and expose every womanizer, and reveal every chronic disease, and publicize every racial slur among them, they have no business reporting on anyone else.
Very good post, thank you.
If media played it up the middle without fear or favor, they'd be doing their jobs. Of course, getting the goods on political and criminal actors (too often the same thing) is part of that, too -- but again, without an agenda other than exposure of that which the public ought by right to see.
Which doesn't include military secrets, a point lost on The New York Times long ago, when they decided to publish the Pentagon Papers, which included numerous quotes in extenso from military messages, the divulgence of which without heavy paraphrasing would inevitably help Soviet GRU cryptanalytical researchers attack U.S. cryptosystems. The compilers of the papers had relied on the expectation of their continued classification status when including these sensitive, often top-secret communications, which Dr. Daniel Ellsburg, reporter Neil Sheehan and the Times editors betrayed.