Of Palestinians rejoicing

[Doug Millison]

With all due respect, Paul, you don't seem to have
much insight into the process of journalism and
publishing, and how ideology is necessarily reflected
in that process. Having worked as a professional
journalist for nearly 20 years, and having taught
journalism, I have studied this issue in some detail. 
It's safe to say that the NYTimes and Washington Post
reflect the ideology of the established authority and
commercial interests in the U.S., and you don't have
to be located anyplace specific on the political
spectrum to make and support such a statement.   These
newspapers certainly don't come any where near
publishing anything that could be properly described
as "objective" i.e., untainted with political bias.

To get anything like an objective or complete picture
of what's going on, a reader needs to gather
information from a wide variety of sources, you need
to take into consideration the obvious political
biases of each, and put together a mosaic that comes
closer to an accurate portrayal of events than any
single publication can provide.  The classic example
is the one that taught it to me first -- waking up in
the morning in Paris and reading yesterday's news
through the lenses of the various daily French
newspapers, each reflecting a different perspective
related to the politics of the parties they each
represented, ranging from l'Humanite (voice of the
French Communist Party), through Liberation and Le
Monde (progressive left and Socialist), to Le Figaro
and others center right and right wing.  We don't have
so rich a spectrum of political discourse reflected in
major daily papers in the U.S., of course, but a
reader can pull together a pretty good view of things
if she's willing to invest some time in reading across
a spectrum of viewpoints.  That presupposes an
interest in getting a more complete picture, of
course, and way too many people in the U.S., in my
opinion, don't have that interest.

What is a "fact"?  You might find it fruitful to
explore the assumptions that are built into this
simple-sounding concept, and move on from there to see
how presenting "factual information" (your term) in a
newspaper is quite a bit more complicated, and fraught
with opportunities for bias, than you seem to imagine.

This is a good topic for discussion on Pynchon-L,
given the way that Pynchon plays with perspective,
narrative strategies, and so forth.  Given your
staunch defense of each PoMo concept that comes down
the pike, Paul, I'm surprised that you don't think to
apply some of that same kind of analysis to the
newspapers and magazines you read and the broadcast
news you watch.

Most of the stuff I've been excerpting and posting
from other Web sites have been opinion pieces
(buttressed by their authors with "factual
information") anyway, so your comments are off-target
in that respect in the first place.  

-Doug
www.Online-Journalist.com

--- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote: [...]
>  This is something one
> cannot do with the selective
> facts presented on the type of Internet site that
> (forgive me) you, Doug,
> all to often in my humble opinion,  promote on the
> p-list. It's of course
> your right.
> 
> But back to the Times and the Post and the many
> other good (or at least
> fair) daily papers in the U.S. and throughout the
> world. Hope this doesn't
> sound insulting to anyone but one needs to KNOW HOW
> to read The Times and
> The Post. A typical sequence of national news goes
> like this. Some momentous
> crisis occurs that the Administration in Washington
> is implicated in in some
> way and must react to and manage. The first attempt
> to spin things the
> Administration's way goes out in practically
> minutes. The next morning the
> front page stories in the two papers will pretty
> much tell things the way
> the Administration says they are. Nobody believes a
> word of it of course.
> Why do the papers bother? Well  in the first place
> THEY haven't had time yet
> to discover what might really be happening. Also I
> think they realize the
> power they truly have and feel obliged to give the
> government the benefit of
> the doubt at least for a decent interval. Next day
> however a few doubts are
> cautiously expressed. Some reliable but unnamable
> souce within the
> administration has revealed this or that. By the
> third day all stops are
> out. The big time reporters with inside sources are
> fevrrishing competing to
> pick holes in the official truth. By the fourth day
> even the official truth
> has changed. And this process goes on until the
> events creating the news are
> no longer relevant. Or something more momentous has
> come alone.
> 
> Anyway. And, Doug, I'm not trying to get you to
> change. Don't even want you
> to change. I love the p-list too much just the way
> it is.
>             P.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Millison" <nopynching at yahoo.com>
> To: "Phil Wise" <philwise at paradise.net.nz>; "Paul
> Mackin"
> <paul.mackin at verizon.net>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2001 2:20 PM
> Subject: Re: Of Palestinians rejoicing
> 
> 
> > Sorry, but you're dreaming if you think that
> manstream
> > newspapers like the NY Times and Washington Post
> (and
> > major broadcast news organizations) don't "advance
> > specific partisan views" as a result of the way
> they
> > select, edit, and present news stories and images.
>  It
> > is, in fact, impossible to put together a
> journalistic
> > narrative without imposing an ideological slant --
> > from the moment that a reporter chooses to ask
> this
> > question or that question, or to quote this person
> or
> > that person, or to include this "fact" or that
> "fact",
> > all the way through the editing process,
> reporters,
> > writers, and editors make judgements that reflect
> > ideologies.  That the NY Times and Washington Post
> and
> > major TV networks don't appear to do this can be
> > simply explained by noting that their ideological
> > perspective fits well with the ideological
> perspective
> > of a large number of people in the U.S.
> >
> > In the past I've taught journalism students and
> now
> > I'm teaching my son how to read a variety of
> > publications - -mainstream and niche -- in order
> to
> > put together the widest possible collection of
> facts
> > and interpretations, to better put together a
> balanced
> > picture of what's going on out there in the world.
> >
> >
> > > >
> > > > The point of the highly selected "facts"
> > > deseminated on this type site is
> > > > not to provide generally applicable
> information
> > > but to advance  specific
> > > > partisan views. Nothing wrong with that in
> itself
> > > but let the buyer
> > > beware.
> > > > The New York Times and Washington Post depite
> > > criticisms one might make
> > > have
> > > > of their inclusions and ommisions DO in any
> case
> > > provide generally useful
> > > > informaton with which to think about things
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Listen to your Yahoo! Mail messages from any
> phone.
> > http://phone.yahoo.com
> 


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