Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
As a person who thinks journalistic ethics should have at least the same force and effect as the ethics governing attorneys --- which of course don't include impartiality, but do involve fair play and responsibility for consequences --- I'm worried these alternative media sources don't seem to have developed a replacement scheme.
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Your points seem predicated on the assumption that any "bias" that we can discern in the main media is attributable to the vaguaries of story selection rules that foster larger audiences. I don't buy that. I think that, for the NYT and the LAT especially, and for a lot of others, the story selection rules, and the writing rules, and the level-of-proof-needed rules, are different based on whether a story serves a liberal agenda. I forget his name, but
See the Newsweek guy, an avowed liberal, who, in a moment of candor, said "sure, most of us are very liberal, and will write to help Kerry, and we're probably worth fifteen points to him on that basis alone"?
See the LAT editor's memo to his collegues some time back about their bias. I could go on and on - but what we are seeing is a concerted effort to foster one agenda and defeat the other. It's nothing so innocent as "oh, well, Swiftboat stories just don't meet our level or proof" - something quite easily discernable after three years of the many-many-story episode of "AWOL".
