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October 12, 2008
The Media: Death by Suicide?
Treacher is always worth reading, but this election season, he's been on fire. (H/t: Hot Air)
Mainiacjoe had a good question in the comments: "Is this any different, though, than the Hearst era around the turn of the 1900s?" The answer? No, but at least the Hearst papers were honest about their outright bias. One of the courses I had to endure in my pursuit of a BA in journalism was History of Mass Media.
Newspapers have always been an expensive product to produce. In the past, they were financed by political partisans and had an undeniable slant, but they were completely forthright about their political ideology - they existed to promote a particular candidate or party.
Eventually, the media moved toward a practice of objectivity - reporters were trained to seek both sides of an issue in their stories in an attempt to be fair. Journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite may have been flaming moonbats, but they - for the most part - subordinated their political beliefs to their professionalism.
Today's journalists do not have the same respect for their profession, and their actions in this election are dishonoring one of the few jobs protected in the Constitution. The MSM is no longer made up of reporters - they are now frankly cheerleading the candidacy of Barack Obama, and creating anti-McCain stories out of whole cloth.
If Obama does pull this off, he will be the least-media vetted candidate in American history and his ascendancy to the presidency would complete the media's abdication of their watchdog role. At that point, they would become nothing more than yappy little lapdogs who did the bidding of a man who has nothing but contempt for the spirit of the amendment that gives them the right to do their jobs.
Posted by slublog at October 12, 2008 09:22 PM
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» Krystallnacht ‘08? Not just yet. from Pursuing Holiness
Treacher notes that what he’s now calling the Deathbed Media is trying to whip people up into a new hysteria - those eeevil Rethuglicans are gonna get ya! Of course, all the thuggery seems to be coming from the other side, up to and including M... [Read More]
Tracked on October 13, 2008 12:31 PM
Comments
The Media: Death or Suicide?
I prefer a little low-level strafing. But that's just me.
Posted by: FishFearMe at October 12, 2008 11:47 PM
The MSM is already at the yappy little lapdog stage and have been there for a while now. I'm surrounded by followers of the Lamb of Chicago and I'm always annoyed that they keep claiming that Palin wasn't vetted properly. Oh, so when was Barak vetted?? We're screwed.
Posted by: nuthinhere at October 13, 2008 01:56 AM
So when are we going to pull off a massive boycott of the companies that advertise on these networks/newspapers??? Once we hurt them in the wallet, they might finally understand the rage in this country at this travesty of journalism. I know viewership/readership is down but obviously not enough to hurt them yet.
Posted by: CDR M at October 13, 2008 02:49 PM
The news media believes that a President Obama will put out such a strong Equal Time law that the convervatives on television and internet will be put out of business and that they will be the only source of news left. They are betting the farm on it, so to speak.
Posted by: TimothyJ at October 13, 2008 05:19 PM