The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game. With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun - for the first time in my adult life - to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.
You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut. I am a fourth generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kansas during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian). My hard-living - and when I knew her, scary - grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I’ve spent thirty years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national by-line before he earned his drivers license.
So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist”, you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.
Now, of course, there’s always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you ten different ways to color variations of the word “said” - muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. - to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.
Via Ace of Spades
Comments (1)
I understand your pain because, quite frankly, I am one of those that has very little respect for Canadian journalists. I think the deterioration started when universities became the "training" grounds for the modern media. A single world view, honed and instilled in those hallowed halls of indocrination is the only view of many journalists today. Many bemoan the low voter turn out and blame politicians and their negativity - perhaps the media should turn the mirror on themselves and examine why fewer and fewer are reading newspapers or paying attention to coverage of events. Perhaps it is because of the media's willingness to be turned into a PR department instead of a defender of democracy.
Posted by Ron | October 27, 2008 6:14 AM
Posted on October 27, 2008 06:14