Media "objectivity" is horse manure

[southerngirlwriter]

http://www.donatacom.com/papers/pomo13.htm

The essay at the above link (full disclosure: written by a friend I do lunch with a couple of times a year) takes on the bullshit notion that the press is "objective."

I firmly believe that the day is coming when the media outlets will drop the facade of objectivity, state their point of view up front, and we'll pick and choose whose point of view we want.

Objectivity is a joke, and always has been. I would like the honesty of people stating their biases up front.

Anyway, I thought it was a great essay, and I think we have some astute media observers here on DU. What do y'all think?

[southerngirlwriter]

1. Was this too heavy for 11PM at night?

Should I repost it tomorrow? :-(

[dfitzsim]

2. This is a slow moving part of the forum

Posts linger for days before they get a response. :-)

News has always had a bias ("Remember the Maine!") – We all pretty well know that. In Europe the media is largely speaking from a stated point of view already. If you want liberal journalism, you read The Guardian. If you want conservative journalism, you read The Daily Telegraph. You filter your information accordingly. In the U.S. we have the Washington Times (conservative) and the Washington Post (liberal). The difference is that in the U.S., our more liberal media outlets still cling to the notion that they can be impartial, which lead them to make some astoundingly bad editorial decisions that confuse the hell out of their reader base.

And then there is the issue of “the facts”. I’ll look at one set of facts in a story and see conservative BS. My dad will read the same story and think its “fair and balanced”.

As we go further down this road, the danger I see is that we will see our already-shoddy press corp. become even more reliant on its bias and less upon the facts before them. Does anybody on DU believe ANYTHING that comes out of a FOX news person’s mouth without independent verification? Of course not. In the few short years of their existence, they have already set themselves up as an organization that goes with their conservative “instincts” first and the facts of the story second (or third or fouth). When Buckley was running the National Review, I didn’t agree with much of what he said, but I listened because I knew that he had thought about the facts, and thought about them in a way I did not (indeed, in a way that I could not). With their current editorial staff, I would only use an issue of National Review for kindling.

The same thing can (and has) happen with liberal news outlets. I love Salon.com, but occasionally their stories are longer on rhetoric than I’d like. Your friend sites the problem The Guardian had with Wolfowitz vis-à-vis the German interview translation. The Guardian wanted to believe that Wolfowitz said that the war in Iraq was for oil, so that was how they interpreted his comments. To their credit, The Guardian immediately retracted the story, but conservatives are about as likely to believe a Guardian story about as much as I’m likely to believe a FOX NEWS story.

[southerngirlwriter]

3. You make great points...

and I'm going to send my friend here to read your response. :-)

[SeveneightyWhoa]

4. Theres no such thing as an "objective" media, ever.

It's impossible.
If one day the media miraculously became totally objective, it would instantly be accused of being "biased towards the centrist, objective agenda".

The problem right now is that its clearly not on our side (ie. its totally biased toward Republicanism/conservatism).

[number6]

5. "Media "objectivity" is horse manure" ,,yep it is

:hi:

[Dommael]

6. Look at Ted Koppel

I didn't watch the last Democratic "hopefuls" debate, but I read the transcript online. It was clear that Ted Koppel was motivated to turn the debate into newsworthy entertainment than any serious attempt to inform the public of valid information. The basic fact is that the news in America is used for consumerism. Even news distributers (cable, magazines, newspapers) have money as their bottom line.

But that's wrong, frankly. Because it's being used as a tool to make profits for the cabal in the government and they have no scruples.

The media is part ally and part conspirator against us. Once the media giants realize that enough people will make it financially successful for them will they start to report on the issues that matter.

::smoke::

[dfitzsim]

7. I saw parts of the debate and read a behind the scenes

account of Koppel's debate prep. You are exactly right. Ted was only interested in making the debate a spectacle. Gore had just announced his support of Dean and he wanted to get the candindates into some kind of a name-calling cat fight. He had no interest in debating the issues or making it provactive in an intellectual way. Fortunately he was so transparent that all he ended up doing was making an ass of himself.