Oh, try Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Eason Jordan, Adnan Hajj, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, ... it is really not hard to find dishonest mainstream journalism, which is my point. I just did not have time when I first read to the post to elaborate. Duranty makes a good example, and btw he is a current example (elaborated on below).seamusTX wrote:Can you come up with something that happened less than 70 years ago?
- Jim
Yes the NYT's Judith Miller did eventually get flogged by the NYT and others...because her sins of not "independently assessing" reports were perceived to help the Bush Administration, being too close to the administration, etc making her a shill. Would that the NYT be so fastidious with their environmental reporter, Andy Rivkin, and his Climate Change pals. Don't hold your breath.
Duranty IS a current example, it just happens to have started close to 70 years ago, extending clear into this century. The NYT and the Pulitzer people, (and the MSM in general) have refused to acknowledge that he was a willing shill for the Soviets. The Pulitzer committee finally clucked its tongue a bit, harrumphed, and then ducked the issue by deciding that his articles could not be judged by today's standard. Sure.
Your reply about bad apples I take to mean that there are a "few." I do not believe this is the case for the traditional news business, it is largely shot through with people whose basic outlook is that not only should their writing and reporting support their political views, but that any other views should be suppressed -- hence Howard Raines' frothing at the mouth about Ailes and Fox News, and the "War on Fox". The coverage of any major issue, from the Iraq War to the Second Amendment, from Global Coldening/Warmening/Change/Whatever to Obama's actual record to Health Care "Reform," is not just unconscious bias but deliberate propaganda. My shot about the Duranty Pulitzer is not out of date -- it just shows that leftist propaganda as news has been trundling along for a long time. Last night we got one of the intended outcomes of that effort -- the Democratic Party finally succeeded in officially turning America into a socialist state.
Thank God for blogs and the internet -- it has helped counter the MSM stranglehold on the news, and with people catching on, the MSM is going bankrupt, a well deserved fate (unless, of course Obama's next "stimulus" is to prop them up a few more years).
The point of all this is that the news business is not basically OK with a few bad apples; it is thoroughly corrupt with few good apples, and those apples are unlikely to receive any prizes unless they toe the correct ideological line. Dumping on cops nearly always meets that criteria, unless of course it involves "Nifonging" some "privileged" boys.
As far as law enforcement goes, I think there are more than a few bad apples, and there are some serious systemic problems in the policing field, and they need to be exposed and dealt with. However, I also think the integrity quotient of law enforcement far exceeds that of the journalism business.
