As we watch the news media and pundits express confusion about the motive behind the latest attack on ICE, followed by weeks of pondering just what could have motivated the assassination of Charlie Kirk or the reasons behind the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, I can't help but remember this Simpsons Halloween spoof of Dracula:
Remember when that was supposed to be humor, not the actual news? That it was supposed to demonstrate the stupidity of the Springfield police, not the actual news station's SOP. But that's the world in which we now live. Somewhere along the line, I think people imagined that the only side effect of chucking God from our society would be that we can now party like it's 1999. It didn't dawn on us that there would be other side effects not quite so pleasant. In this case, the decline of honesty and truth as virtues worth demanding from our national institutions and leaders.
Heck, sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be outraged at them for being honest, when what we want is to be told what we want to hear. I recall way back in the day, early 2000s, and leftwing journalist Bernie Goldberg assessing the decline in journalistic integrity. He said something I've not forgotten. While talking about the growing bias and partisanship in reporting, he pondered if a growing number of Americans don't follow various news outlets despite the fact that they fear they could be biased, but precisely because they know they are biased. When I see the systemic mendacity in our modern press, and how many seem to take it at face value against all common sense, it does make me wonder.
From the BBC article on the ICE facility shooting: "While the shooter's motive remains unclear, the attack comes amid growing concerns in the US about political violence in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this month."
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8.44
Not even just that, but many are frustrated by the blatant double standard.
ReplyDeleteHave even the slimmest connection to anything right-leaning, and the media jumps all over the accusation of this being the fruit of the Right existing. A white Trump voter could catch a Jewish guy in bed with his wife and the media would spin the stories for day about conservative antisemitism.
Meanwhile whenever someone on the Left does something wrong, suddenly the media remembers all the rules of logic and evidence and become the strictest rule-abiders about "what we can know." A guy can jump out of a car covered in anti-Israel bumper stickers and start shooting at a synagogue while shouting "Free Palestine" and the media will spend weeks going "it's just a total mystery what this guy's motives were... can we ever, truly understand what was in another person's heart?"
Journalists really are the devil's favorite children.
I think journalists count on people with weak minds believing the trash they spew out hoping to sway these people into believing and acting in ways that is beneficial to the journalists causes and agendas. Watergate I believe, was when the major turn of journalism bias happened. Once they saw the power they had over politicians and what people saw and believed, (Nixon and Viet Nam war) it's been non stop bias and lying to the hilt. There are things that really disgust me in life and journalism is high on the list.
DeleteI often wonder if the decline in integrity that almost defines the modern press is the result of a societal rot, or if that moral rot we've seen in our country has been purposely orchestrated by various media industries. I think on that.
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ReplyDeleteDr. Johnson famously quoted an older skeptic in 1750 or so: "If a diplomat is a man of high character who goes abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country, a journalist may be called a man of low character who stays home to tell lies for his own profit". Freedom of the press, from the time of Milton's Areopagitica, was about the right to print stuff without state approval. Factual truth was beside the point, and there were plenty of lies and much incitement to violence in 17th and 18th century pamphleteering. Beginning in the mid-20th century, we began to expect and sometimes got "balance", because of competition among diverse national sources. The press is merely reverting to ancient type, perhaps.
The press has never been objective. As you say, back in the day it was anything but unbiased. I think a big change, however, was that increasingly multiple outlets, networks and channels began to share the same bias. If they still squabble sometimes, on the whole you can bet the NYT and CNN and NBC will all report the same things the same ways, or more to the point, ignore the same things or attack the same things the same ways.
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