The nail in the coffin of media impartiality?
If NOTHING else makes me want to vote this election year it will be the willful, unadulterated, brazen, slanderous, and embarrassing behavior of the American press.
Whether you’re in the crowd who’ve been ranting about hate speech, tolerance, gay marriage, pro-choice, separation of church and state, and taxing the “rich” or the other crowd spouting free market, family values, marriage protection laws, tax cuts “for the middle class” then it’s likely you’ve also drunk your fill of kool-aid. Nowhere is the kool-aid being mixed in larger batches than in the press here in the United States. As of today, I am convinced that every major media outlet has demonstrated its unequivocal bias toward anyone or anything that resembles “Religious” or “Conservative”. NBC, ABC, CBS, NY Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Time, Newsweek – and now, finally, CNN. Yes, though CNN has teetered on the edge of the idealogical abyss for some time it still managed to maintain some semblance of decorum until yesterday. By and large the overall interview conducted by CNN’s Drew Griffin wasn’t bad but buried in the interview is a short exchange in which Mr. Griffin ambushes Ms. Palin in an ugly way. Mr. Griffin cites an article in the National Review Online and he says:
CNN: Yeah. Governor, you’ve been mocked in the press. The press has been pretty hard on you, the Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can’t tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.
Palin: Who wrote that one?
CNN: That was in the National Review, I don’t, have the author.
In the National Review Online, Byron York wrote in an article (full text available here)
Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it’s sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has faced more criticism than any vice-presidential candidate since 1988, when Democrats and the press tore into Dan Quayle. In fact, Palin may have it even worse than Quayle, since she’s taking flak not only from Democrats and the press but from some conservative opinion leaders as well.
Having read that and compared the two it’s obvious the man twisted the truth so completely that I was simply left breathless at his audaciousness. On top of that, did he lie too? Would any journalist with even a modicum of professionalism, speaking to someone on a professional basis, cite a source and then declare they didn’t know the author? Talk about incompetence.
(The entire interview may be seen and the transcript read on CNN’s website.)
Without an unbiased media establishment who will act as the Guardian of fact over fiction, truth over falsehood, serious discourse over slander? We need our journalists to put aside their ideologies and do their jobs. If you want to make commentary then become a commentator – don’t hide behind the facade of “Journalist” or “Reporter”.