PrintJuly 24, 2007
Just the facts, Ma'am
Perhaps I missed it, but I have yet to read if the Associated Press, the spigot from which virtually every news media outlet fills their vessel, posted a retraction after hastily -- and erroneously -- reporting that none of the benchmarks the Bush Administration and Congress set for the Iraqi government had been met. Coupled with the reluctance with which news of any progress in Iraq are proffered and the glaringly biased reports downplaying the recent thwarted terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, these seemingly habitual transgressions are sobering reminders of the Main Stream Media's apparent complacency with its devolving image as a cultural entity that has been irreparably tarnished by ideology.
Add to this the rather disappointing revelation that so many reporters are involved in contributing profusely to one or the other political parties and you have a media that has been highly compromised to say the least. It's not so much that the majority of reporters chose to contribute to one party instead of the other, but rather that they have contributed to any party at all.
Not surprisingly, when those in the MSM are leveled with the charge of bias they are quick to denounce their accusers as promoting censorship and to seek refuge behind the often legitimate excuse that the public has a "right to know". But the nature of the MSM's sin lies not in its failing to report events as they happen but on their exclusive devotion to bits and pieces of a larger story that surreptitiously validate their previously arrived-at conclusions.
Granted, in cases when the potentially deleterious effects of disclosure outweigh the presumed right of the public to know, information sources may have to decide whether or not some information should be withheld. As of late the MSM has seldom found itself in a moral quandary over when to apply this principle.
Perhaps reminding those in the field of Journalism of the very simple task they are required to perform is in order.
The job of a reporter is to be performed as an emotionally disinterested agent. It should be a very high calling indeed, and news organizations risk betraying an awesome trust when they fail to demand strict adherence to this simple rule from their employees.
News reporters will invariably have to confront the challenge of maintaining objectivity by virtue of the fact that they are human like everyone else, and as such they have to consciously jettison any temptation to allow their personal prejudices to fraternize with the information they are providing others with. Failing to do this will obviously affect not only how news is reported, but also what news is reported. This is how many reporters with an inflated sense of self-importance end up transforming the public's right to know into the public's privilege to know; this privilege is confined to only what the MSM chooses to report.
Nevertheless, reporters have a solemn responsibility to provide accurate information, and a free society is ill-served by false or inaccurate information, as it bases many of its most important decisions upon the information it receives from the sources that have been entrusted to perform this noble task.
When news outlets allow their ideology to taint the manner in which information in disseminated, they have in effect compromised their calling. When reporters lie to those who count on them for the information they need to make their daily decisions - many of which could have very serious repercussions - they betray a sacred trust; and when information sources are compromised, the potential for people in power to make the wrong decisions increases exponentially.
Those in the MSM are swift to express outrage when others question the premise that the war in which we are presently engaged owes its genesis to specious information the government relied on to mount a preemptive offensive; but they fail to glean from the same argument that their own broadcasting of incomplete, biased and often grossly inaccurate information has the same potential of misleading others into wrongful decision making.
Frankly, it is shocking to witness how today's MSM continues to compromise its integrity by persistently engaging in one-sided reporting. Why they continue to do so, in an age when the internet provides such an abundance of media watchdogs, is somewhat of a mystery.
From falsely reporting about the desecration of a sect's holy text prompting its adherents to engage in homicidal behavior to the deliberate distortion of information central to the accuracy of a story, yielding decisions upon which countless of lives hang in the balance, reporters need to understand that strict adherence to the clear and rather uncomplicated rules of their profession is vitally important to the functioning of a stable society.
This type of misinformation on the part of the MSM is also a form of tyranny, as they are the ones we count on to provide us with the unadulterated truth. Were it not for the plethora of alternative news sources with the same ability to gather and disseminate information which are - thankfully - available in a free society, we would be at the mercy of the MSM's skewed perspective. Given the perilous times we live in, that would not be a good thing.
