Sunday, February 26, 2017

Musings on Media Bias

For most of my long life the press was divided into reporters and analysts. Reporters tried, and mostly succeeded, in keeping their own political views out of the story. This was called "journalism" and it was honored and admired.

By contrast, analysts had a viewpoint and wrote from it. There were conservative analysts and liberal ones. You could read both, or restrict your reading to those with a congenial viewpoint with which you mostly agreed.

Somewhere along the line the reporters became jealous of the analysts, tired of stifling their biases in pursuit of balanced journalism. Their supposed news stories became thinly disguised commentary. 

Since reporters have been mostly liberal for a long time, I believe the coming-out began during the second Bush presidency. It continued during the Obama presidency with a refusal to report on the administration's manifold failures and abuses of authority.

Trump - a hyperactive conservative - has driven them nuts. The resulting Trump Derangement Syndrome has caused many formerly respected news sources to "jump the shark," become so extreme as to lose credibility, readership and consequently advertising profits.