Of Palestinians rejoicing

[Doug Millison]

That the Times and the Post repeat what's told to them
by the Administration and captains of industry -- too
often uncritically and without examining alternative
views -- needs no elaborate proof, simply read what
those papers write and note who they quote.

I agree that these papers did a better job a
generation ago of reflecting the debates that truly
did divide the U.S. then -- but that was a long time
ago and a lot has changed since then.  And even then,
these papers reflected mainstream ideology.   One of
the saddest changes has been to see how the mainstream
media in general have shut out voices of dissent, in
favor of a tawdry focus on celebrities and a shameless
genuflecting to the powers that be.


--- Don Corathers <crawdad at one.net> wrote:
[...]
> When journalism bends
> its shoulder to The Cause--whatever that cause
> is--it's not journalism any
> more. It's pamphleteering.

I couldn't agree more with the above.  It's too bad
you can't see the degree to which this is precisely
what the corporate media in the U.S. in fact do.

To get an "objective" view of what's happening out
there, you need to sample the "news" as presented
across a broad spectrum of newspapers, magazines, and
other sources. You're getting only one slice of the
pie with the NY Times and the Washington Post.

The Times and the Post are just as susceptible to
imposing an ideological bias in what they publish as
any other news organs -- it's not possible to put
together news stories without doing so.  The "news"
doesn't exist out there waiting for journalists to
discover and transmit it to the waiting public -- the
"news" is assembled bit by bit, element by element,
the same way that any other narrative is put together.


At one extreme you might situate the sort of thing
that Pynchon does as he weaves bits and pieces of
"fact" and "history" into his elaborate narratives; we
call the resuls "fiction".  At the other end of the
spectrum, situate a NY Times journalist, choosing this
quote instead of that one, interviewing this person
instead of that one, ordering her story elements this
way instead of that way, then the editor chooses this
picture instead of that one, & etc.  Even when the
best journalists use the most professional and ethical
methods (getting corroborating witnesses,
"fact"-checking, etc.), an ideological bias will
necessarily creep in, as a result of the kinds of
editorial choices that occur at every step along the
way of the process of reporting, writing, editing, and
publishing the "news".  
 

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