Monday, November 06, 2006
Why aren't reporters overtly patriotic?
From time to time we have asked why it should be moral or professional for journalists to deny their national identity in the practice of their trade. This idea that journalists owe their loyalty to their profession before the nation that protects them began in the public consciousness with Mike Wallace, but evokes the "Jessep principle," which has contempt for "a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it." As I wrote almost a year ago, journalists do that all day long.
The interesting question is, how was it that journalists learned to deny their own nationality? Read James Q. Wilson's answer -- which strikes me as largely correct -- and consider whether our national confusion over the significance of documented conflicts of interest might also have played a role.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
7 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Nov 06, 08:17:00 PM:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Nov 06, 08:21:00 PM:
One difference is that years ago many journalists came from working-class environments. The journalists often grew up on the mean streets of cities. These writers might have a year or two of college, but most gained their experiences in the world of hard knocks. The same was true of many other writers. Steinbeck never finished college. Hemingway never went to college.
Today most new journalists come from liberal colleges and universities.
By lilfeathers2000, at
Mon Nov 06, 10:34:00 PM:
*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*
Have A God Blessed Week!!!!
Blessings
*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.
By 
, at
Tue Nov 07, 12:26:00 AM:
TH- You may have seen this before. This is an excerpt of an article on Frontpagemagazine. Clearly, some journalists and media are a fifth-column working for America's defeat in Iraq.
[Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995.]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=13121
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us...Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
By , at
Tue Nov 07, 09:59:00 AM:
You're right to point out the inherent tension for journalists, in that they have both a duty to the truth as well as a duty to provide stories that will sell. So at best, we can expect a natural bias in reporting, where stories that the public will gobble up are reported more frequently; unfortunately, this also means that inevitably the stories that conform to an employer's viewpoint will also get reported more often. I think I one can relate it to the publication bias one sees in my own profession. If you are a junior researcher, you are much more likely to get funding if you apply for a grant in a popular area of research.
The publication bias doesn't make journalists or scientists any worse people (e.g. a fifth column) or inherently more biased than the rest of us. But it does seem that it is an inevitable consequence of having human beings overseeing the funding process. I really don't see any way in which this could be fixed; having journalists be funded by public money would seem to create way more problems than it would solve.
Also, I would reject in particular the claim that negative reporting about a war we are fighting is somehow treasonous. Who will document the real material and human costs of war, which the public needs to know about if they are to make informed decisions about whether to vote for war in the future, if not journalists?
By skipsailing, at
Tue Nov 07, 12:15:00 PM:
Simply amazing, phrizz. You never cease to amaze and amuse.
Let me start with this:
...they have both a duty to the truth as well as a duty to provide stories that will sell.
A few of questions: Are truth and commercial viability mutually exclusive? Is telling the truth a prescription for economic failure in the news business phrizz?
It certainly seems that lying on a regular basis isn't doing much for the bottom lines at America's newspapers right now. My local liberal rag, the Cleveland Plain Dealer will lay off reporters soon and the Akron Beacon Journal has also announced staff cuts. It seems that distortion in the name of an agenda results in economic losses. So Phrizz perhaps making an attempt to actually tell the truth might improve the fortunes of these enterprises.
Further, what exactly do you mean by "truth"? The truth some coddled communist in J school propounded? God's truth? The self evident truth that Americans cherish? What is this phrizz? And why have the employees of most MSM outlets lost sight of this?
I must admit that I agree with you. Shocking I know. The piss poor, highly distorted job of war reportage being foisted on an unsuspecting public by rabidly biased "reporters" is NOT treason. Sedition, yes, Treason, no.
And that blather about the nobility of the calling contained in this statement is hillarious:
Who will document the real material and human costs of war, which the public needs to know about if they are to make informed decisions about whether to vote for war in the future, if not journalists?
Two points on this one. First, the press is NOT documenting a damned thing. Michael Fumento, an embedded reporter with an excellent website, blasted the lazy, frightened, self important twits who call themselves reporters in the last National Review. Expecting us to believe reporting about a country the size of Iraq provided by some coward who's never left the Palestine Hotel is ludicrous. If all you ever heard about was the news from St Louis or Detroit, could you possibly reach a correct conclusion about America? yet that is what the reporters are asking us to do. Nonsense phrizz. They want it all. They want the accolades accorded to a "war correspondent" and the safety accorded to a washington bureaucrat. how admirable!
Next Phrizz, the war is being recorded by the guys fighting it. Most of these people have digital cameras, many have video recorders and they are taking millions of images. This is the biggest threat to the lefty mythology about the war. You think that only "reporters" are recording this when in fact there's a huge quantity of excellent footage floating about already. Go visit YouTube, look up "hanging out with the Boys". You'll see my contribution to getting this damned war portrayed correctly.
I have a decent little collection from my son and I'm going augment that with the stuff he's brought back from his second deployment. I have stills, unedited video and some quite well produced music videos.
This is the soldiers, recording themselves. Not some snot nosed J school graduate with a degree and an agenda and not much else.
Ever heard of Pat Dollard phrizz? He was a hollywood insider who gave it all up to become an embed with the marines in Fallujah. Wanna see the war? Wanna listen to what the grunts have to say? Don't bother with Slate or the WaPo, go visit Young Americans. Listen to the guys who are over there and learn something for a change.
We are walking away from traditional journalists just as quickly as we can, and with good reason. They suck.
By , at
Tue Nov 07, 02:49:00 PM:
Thats becuase the cheif editors of the birdcage linners they work for are liberal left-wing dirt-bags just look at the NYTs and FRANK RICH
