Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
What determines fairness is not the writer's bias --- it's his ethics
|
Semantics, I think. To produce a paper full of erstwhile "news", where the selection and spin of that news is biased, is unethical.
Quote:
|
The right's present complaint about the media is not that it is often or even occassionally wrong, it's that it's "biased" --- that its story selection and emphasis is always disfavorable to the sitting government. It sounds to me like the right is satisfied merely to point out bias in media, not solve it.
|
Meaning, at first point, that you accept the existence of that bias (or ethical transgression, however you want to put it), but we're just not doing enough to fix it? If I tell you that you are stealing, is the pressure on me to then fix it, else I lose my standing to complain?
Quote:
|
Ask not whether the media is biased; ask whether the story is wrong. Otherwise, it's the same "attack the messenger" problem you usually decry.
|
The "media" either ignores the Swifties story, or tells it in such a fashion as to communicate its disgust with those partisan liars. The AWOL story, of course, got huge, repeated, glowing, front-page treatment, even though each story had to end with "we don't know what this means, but we're bringin it to you, 'cuz it's NEWS!" Is that story factually wrong? No, those records existed. But each story seemed to be embued with a slant - a flavor - an emphasis - that sought to make the reader think "this reflects badly on Bush", but they do not draw that conclusion at all on the Kerry stories. They have applied their standards to one side, and ignored them for the other. They editorialize in favor of their biases in a dishonest way to make the reader accept those editorializations as part of the news.
And, Markets? Do I then get to apply commercial speech standards? If the NYT put "fighting for a liberal world" in its masthead, I think I would back off. NRO puts its own equivalent on its masthead, as does Rush. What the NYT does is dishonest. And, if the Hemmorhoid Times gives out a right-wing slant in the same way, while hiding behind "we just report", they're dishonest, too.
