Slashdot Mirror
Are Journalism and Politics Inextricably Joined?
An anonymous reader writes "Retiring figure Bill Moyers makes his case in a recent speech delivered at the Society of Professional Journalists 2004 national convention. 'But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined.' It is a deep argument, made poignant by the recently murdered Francisco Ortiz Franco of Mexico, Manik Saha of India, and Aiyathurai Nadesan of Sri Lanka, among others. It is a broad argument, touching on history from America's first best seller to yesterday's blog. Is it a convincing argument?"
We may have high quality journalism by one side's interpretation of it, but the massive obvious bias of the Liberal media shows that there are more important things to worry about.
What absolutely amazes me is how many of the lefties here on good ol' slashdot think the media is biased to the "right." What most of them are too ignorant to realize is that that very perception is the result of fact that they have been influenced by the leftist bias in the "mainstream" media (CBS, ABS, NBC, NYT, LAT, etc.).
I wonder how many of these people believe Dan Rather when he says, OK, the documents were phoney but the story behind them is true. What kind of baloney is that? The entire story of Bush's guard service is crap. Bush served for two or three years well above and beyond the minimum requirements. Then he took a leave of absence, which was very common, especially when they had a glut of pilots at the time and were trying to get rid of them. Oh, I guess Dan forgot to mention that, eh? What a joke.
Oh, and one more thing. If Dan Rather was fooled by the fraudulent docs, why is he not as eager as hell to nail the fraud who may have cost him his career if not his credibility? Think about it, folks. No, Dan is "protecting" his fraudulent sources. What exactly could be the thinking behing that?
If you don't get it yet, you are beyond hope.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
What you are saying is what a lot of people are saying, ie, that the media has to give more to coverage to what THEY think is important.
Almost always it's in the end a ploy to sway coverage towards the persons viewpoints.
You obviously think (But it's a much larger issue than his foreign policy blunders and blatant cronyism.) that the media needs to be more critical of Bush. Fine. Whatever you want. But be clear. You want them to take a hardline on Bush. You want them to pursue stories that highlight errors.
The complete lack of substance in the political debate is utterly fed by the media.
I disagree totally. It is fed by the fact that most Americans lives are completely isolated from the "big picture". This is a big concept, and deserves some elobration.
Our country is so large and so vibrant - even in recession - that the tone or policy of any single administration is largely irrelevant. To feel the effects of a policy directly is rare. To be personalyl affected in any significant way is not common. Compared with, say, a country like Venezula or Agentina or Russia or even France our government policy changes very, very, very little between administrations, congress, and whatnot. Things change at a snails pace. Bush or Kerry - whoever wins in November - it's is most likely not going to affect me in any material way.
And so, the issues don't matter. If healthcare is an important issue to me, does it matter who wins in November for me? Absolutely not. If I had a big notion of what I wanted to see done, is either one going to be able to get the momentum to enact it, create the beauraucy to get it done, and get the net effect down to me? Absolutely not. Not going to happen. In 10 years I guarantee you the health-system is going to look 90% similiar to what we have now. Why? Inertia. And gridlock.
Basically, the average American doesn't care much more than bragging rights who is in office. It's like picking a sports team. Except for the hardcore activists no one really cares.
An example. We'd love to talk about the last recession. Let's say for sake of argument that Bush really did cause the most recent recession. Let's imagine that. Let's say he caused a 10-trillion dollar a year economy to go sour. What really happened? What was the effect? Did most Americans suffer fininancally? No. A half to one percent of the country lost a jobs. Even if you could trace that directly back to a set of actions by the President - which I dont think you ever could - it's not a big deal.
We are a stable country. Our government is stable. 99.9% of the workings of the country do not atler in any way when one guy or the next comes into office.
This means basically the few issues Kerry and Bush differ on are irrelevant. Whatever they think or say isn't going to happen. The country is going to continue on it's present course pretty much unabated regardless of what happens.
So whats the media to do? Pick a side when possible and flog-away. Big deal. They want ratings.
Summary: Politics is mostly like picking a sports team. Media is like hometown newspaper covering their hometown team. Media consumers pick their hometown newspaper to read. Nothing, however, is wrong with this. This is good.
> Having MORE articles regarding the Swift Boat Vets for Truth
> doesn't mean the press looked into their records. Having LESS
> articles that match your keywords doesn't mean the Bush
> didn't go after Bush any less.
The original point was the poster claimed that the press covered Bush's desertion story more than the SBVT's lies. I showed that the claim was not true. I showed that during previous campaigns, the press did not publish as many articles looking into Bush's service as they have given space to the SBVT, who have been discredited by all major news sources.
As for your later post searching on Google News, while I applaud your attempt, I remind you Lexis-Nexis is the standard for doing research; Google News is hardly a substitute.
Google News does not prevent re-indexing news stories, and it will index stories that aren't directly about a topic, but just tangentially mention it (that's why Google bombing works on the web). For example, your second search term would probably count stories talking about Bush's elective war in Iraq and how he sent the National Guard in to fight there. You have to be judicious in your search to make sure you don't count those stories. Third, you have to set up the search according to dates to show if the press covered Bush's desertion before the 2004 election, which was the point of the original post.
Finally, you did a search for "Swift Boat Vets Truth". However their actual name is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". I suspect that if you did your search for their actual name, and not an abbreviation, you'd get thousands of more hits, even on Google News.
So you don't win the home version, but thanks for playing.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.