This is an e-mail posting I received from a liberal from St. Paul who calls himself Ruck, responding to me writing about corruption in the establishment media. In an earlier posting, I called NPR’s firing of Juan William and example of a corrupt NPR. I also point out several other examples in my main Media Corruption page. Here is Ruck’s comment:
I can understand your frustration with media in general, and the examples you give are indefensible. But the insinuation that only the liberal media is corrupt is disingenuous and dangerous. You call out the NY Times, NPR, CNN and others, but I noticed no critiques to what could be called conservative media, which has a bigger market share than “liberal” media. WSJ, Fox, and Rush are the biggest players in three media channels. Does this mean what the say is all true because of their size? By not calling out any of their mistakes/errors/lies, you suggest they are paragons of truth. That’s fine, this is your blog but I feel it makes your arguments (not opinions) less valid. When you don’t hold everyone to the same standard you are just producing propaganda for easy consumption. Maybe this is your intention.
– Ruck
Ruck,
Thanks for your comments. It is encouraging to see that you are willing to acknowledge at least the Liberal bias in the establishment media. But I have several points to make in response:
- My critique was referring to news media. I maybe should have made that more clear. My problem is with people who claim to be unbiased sources of news, and yet they perpetuate falsehoods, spike some stories and distort others in an effort to advance their ideology. Rush Limbaugh is an opinion commentator who is very upfront about his bias.
- You lump mistakes and errors with lies. Those are very different things. Mistakes and errors can be from sloppiness, but I wouldn’t call that corruption. Some of what we read and hear from the Establishment media is sloppiness. While that isn’t good, it isn’t corruption in my mind. The other examples I give on my main Media Corruption page aren’t just mistakes.
- I wouldn’t call the Wall Street Journal a conservative media outlet. I don’t read it very often, but I have been told that while its editorial page has a conservative slant, many of the reporters are liberal. It would be hard to argue with that. I know enough about journalism schools to know that by far their graduates are liberals. And while Fox News probably has more conservatives in key positions than liberals, they do have a healthy diversity. So I wouldn’t call them a conservative media outlet either. By comparison, NPR clearly purges people who don’t toe a certain party line. Other broadcast news media clearly will not give key positions to conservatives–their anchors are all solidly in the liberal column.
- I am not aware of any scandals involving news reporting from the Wall Street Journal or Fox News. Maybe you can help me out here.
