Veteran newsman Ted Koppel, during an interview with Dan Abrams for the News Nation, expressed concern about the state of the U.S. mainstream media.

Koppel said he is stunned at opinion pieces that run on the front page of newspapers that would have never received such positioning in decades past.

The following is an excerpt of what Koppel said:

I think opinion belongs on the opinion page; that's why they call it the Op-Ed section. And that's where the opinion pieces and the columns, that's where the editorials are, and that's where it belongs. I don't like seeing opinions being expressed on the front page of a great newspaper. It bothers me when I see them losing some of the criteria that always used to keep a wall between opinion and newspapers.

Back in 2019, Koppel excoriated the news media for its bias in a piece for the Washington Post:

I'm terribly concerned that when you talk about the New York Times these days when you talk about the Washington Post these days, we're not talking about the New York Times of 50 years ago. We're not talking about the Washington Post of 50 years ago. We're talking about organizations that, I believe, have, in fact, decided as organizations that Donald J. Trump is bad for the United States.

The news outlets in question such as The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and CNN fired back at Koppel, calling him naïve.

And therein lies the problem.

The overt bias is not a result of honest mistakes or oversight or a few journalists going rogue.  These propagandists are proud and remorseless.  They have an almost anarchist-like fervor for propaganda.

Over a period of time, they have convinced themselves and their associates that they are at war with anyone who doesn't share their liberal worldview.

They have also persuaded themselves that they are the sole custodians of virtues, morals, and ethics while their opponents are pitiless, bigoted, immoral, and corrupt.

With their opponents dehumanized and designated as enemies, they excuse themselves from adhering to any journalistic practices, standards, and objectivity.

For them, everything is fair since they are at war.  They can never go too far — they can invent stories out of thin air, they can use pejorative epithets, they can overstate and make outrageous comparisons with the darkest chapters in human history.

Over the decades, the problem has become systemic.

How could they resolve this if they intended to?

Firstly, total objectivity is impossible.

Every human being has a unique perspective, which causes subjectivity and eventually bias.  Irrespective of journalistic ethics and organizational policies, standards, and practices, the bias will always seep through.

The only solution to mitigate this bias is to have a diverse group of people in a newsroom.

If you ask the H.R. divisions of these Democrat propaganda outfits, they will boast about their commitment to diversity of race, sex, nationalities, LGBT, and religion.  However, the most crucial among the diversity — i.e., the variety of opinions, perspectives, ideologies, and political affiliations — is not welcomed or permitted.

The people working at the Washington Post or NYT or CNN or NBC news may have different skin colors, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds, religions, and sexes, but their opinions are identical. 

If you interview this "diverse" group, you will find that all worship Barack Obama and love Hillary Clinton.  They consider Hillary's loss their personal failure and Biden's "victory" their personal triumph.  They despise President Trump and his supporters with a psychopathic passion. 

They probably do not know any Republicans personally.  They have distanced themselves from family members and childhood friends who are Trump-supporters living in middle America, whom they regard as an inferior species.

The only slight diversity is that some are far-left Democrats while others are establishment Democrats.

They have given up the spirit of free inquiry.  They prefer the chimes of their Democrat echo chambers to the challenges of opposing views. 

There is no difference between Democrats in the media and Democrats in active politics.  At times, politicians lead and the media follow; on other occasions, the converse occurs.

Bari Weiss, a liberal, was compelled to resign from the NYT for daring to deviate from the groupthink.  In her resignation letter, Weiss described how the NYT had devolved into an intolerant self-righteous echo chamber where personnel with the "wrong" opinion are tormented by the woke mob while editors and management look the other way.

When an anti-Trump news story breaks, they are so overcome by a desire for it to be true that they abandon all skepticism and journalistic practice and get before a screen or feverishly begin writing their hit jobs.  The piece receives blandishments at every editorial stage and is published.

A Trump-supporting fact-checker or editor would have easily caught their lies and the bias, but they are no longer in the business of factual reportage and editorials.

There are seldom any apologies or retractions for blatant falsehoods.

They have also developed a subscriber base who tune in to have their biases confirmed.  The news outfit toils not to report facts, but to appease their subscriber base led the Democrat Washington Establishment.  These subscribers are almost like drug addicts looking to get high from their latest dose of propaganda.  With every passing day, these propagandists have to strive to be more outrageous and toxic.

If the NYT even dares to change course and cover the likes of President Trump fairly, the subscribers will rebel and cancel their subscriptions. 

A few years ago, the NYT was compelled to alter the headline of an already anti-Trump story after its subscriber base and media-based Trump haters were outraged that the headline wasn't distasteful enough.

What Koppel missed in his critique of the media was the poor quality, almost pedestrian quality of op-ed pieces.

If you want an unhinged rant, you can get it among the inebriated in your local pub.  Op-ed pieces are supposed to be intellectually compelling.  They are supposed to have unique perspectives and are thought-provoking.

In fact, it has reached a point where propagandists are not even attempting to conceal their motives.

When Biden was declared president-elect, CNN's Don Lemon was so overcome by emotion that he went on an unhinged rant, referring to the Democrats as "we."  CNN didn't even perfunctorily reprimand him for his behavior.

In a recent column, Maureen Dowd wrote, "We can't give up on the president [Biden] because he's all that stands between us and the apocalypse at the hands of Trump, DeSantis, etc."  Notice the usage of "us."  Yes, it is an op-ed column, but an editor at the NYT should have compelled her to change "us" to "Democrats" or "liberals." 

But they no longer care about appearances.

Dr. Ted Koppel may have diagnosed the chronic ailment and prescribed medication, but the patient refuses to acknowledge his affliction, hence the quest for a cure is out of the question.

The news consumer has no option but to presume every news story to be false until proven true.  We have to be skeptical about every word that emanates from propagandists.

Image: Screen shot from Dan Abrams Live, News Nation, via YouTube.