Assuming the bias is objective


Why you have to dig for the whole story
Helen at EU Referendum nails it.

Which brings me back to the point where this entire saga started just over a week ago. What we are dealing with is not one news agency having a rogue photographer and incompetent editors who then try to cover their backs but a canker that has eaten into almost the entire MSM or, at least, its English language parts.

There are various reasons here, I think. One is the bias that is no longer seen as bias. The MSM tends to lean to the left and takes up all left-wing causes with gusto. This goes even for the supposedly right-wing publications like the Daily Telegraph.

They have all reached a stage when they no longer even understand that they are biased but assume that their own bias is the objective point of view. It is those who depart from it who are weird. We have seen this on matters European, on the reporting of American politics and society and, above all, the Middle East. Here it is axiomatic in most of the MSM that Israel is a land-grabbing, arrogant, aggressive, imperialistic, racist ….. (fill in the blanks) entity, though few would admit that they think the country should not even exist.

Most journalists do not bother to find out much about Israel or, for that matter, the surrounding countries and will happily repeat any old rubbish about the treatment of Israeli Arabs, for instance. When did the BBC last mention the fact that there are Arab deputies in the Knesset?

Some of it is in-built bias and some of it is plain sloppiness. I have worked in journalism and know how often one goes for the easy option: asking the same “experts”, quoting the same sources, using the same copy or pictures. And when the balloon goes up, as it has done with Reuter’s this week-end, the immediate instinct is to try to wriggle out.

Given all that, it is easy enough for those who are determined to produce propaganda to do so and to exploit the bias and the laziness. We have seen this over and over again, not least with Pulitzer Prize winners in the United States and, in particular, the New York Times. A third reaction sets in: a reluctance to acknowledge that a young intern or a journalist or a photographer with his own agenda has played all those hard-nosed, experienced editors for suckers.

Finally, one cannot end this subject without mentioning the stupendous self-satisfaction of the media. Those of us old enough can remember where it started: Watergate and Vietnam – the media bringing down a President and ensuring American defeat. Those were the glory days and many, certainly in the States, still hark back to that. It annoys them that Iraq is not Vietnam and Bush is not Nixon (also greatly hated by the great and the good).

Journalists became the ultimate arbiters of opinion and political mores. They could question any one; undermine any one; destroy any reputation. There was no higher court of public opinion. Not until a few years ago when the bloggers appeared and started doing to the media what it had done to politicians and others. My guess is that many of the journalists in question are still in shock and cover it by their grand, condescending, self-approbation.

The whole article is great.

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— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - August 9, 2006 at 07:50 AM  Tag


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