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May 29, 2006
Gray Lady's Influence at the Richmond Times-Dispatch
They say the corrosive propaganda spewed in the pages of the New York Times is so damaging to the well-being of our country not because many people outside of NYC read the paper, but because the rest of the media takes cues from it, giving the insufferable Pinch Sulzberger and his band of politically correct ideologues power to determine what is news and what is not on a national basis. As Times Watch puts it,
The New York Times is arguably the most influential media outlet in America. Not only is it the most influential newspaper in the media capital of the world, New York City, but it is also read nationwide and frequently sets the agenda for the television news programs from which most Americans get their news.
Further evidence of the Gray Lady's baleful influence has cropped up at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where reporter Paul Bradley has been fired for emulating a technique pioneered by Jayson Blair of the NY Times, whereby instead of wasting time and shoe leather gathering news, you simply make it up, or steal it from other sources without attribution.
Apparently inspired by a story in WaPo, Bradley invented an interview with some day laborers to give their fictitious response to a speech by Bush on immigration.
"What I did was wrong and an indefensible journalistic sin," said the now jobless Bradley. But he complains that "the punishment far exceeds the crime."
You almost have to agree that Bradley got a raw deal. Given that liberal ideology appears to dictate what most newspaper stories will say in advance, and reporters merely coax the "man in the street" to provide appropriate quotes while conveniently filtering out anything that doesn't fit the template, the actual interview is only a formality. Why bother?
Hat tip: Wiggins
Posted by Van Helsing at May 29, 2006 9:42 AM
Comments
The NYT has been a laughingstock and swamp of moonbat political correctness for years. I quit reading the Fish Wrapper and Puppy Trainer Times 30 years ago. These idiots make Pravda and Isvestia look objective. The consortium of fatuous arses who comprise the "elite" of American yellow press journalism remind me of a group of "challenged" junior high students pecking at another unfortunate enough not to wear the same fashions, like a flock of chickens.
Posted by: Mark McGilvray at May 29, 2006 11:05 AM
And yet the problem really isn't media bias. The problem is a combination of the majority of the media all being biased in one direction, and the convention that denies that bias exists.
Bias is inevitable, as least when dealing with fallible mortals. Is the reporter breathing? Then he has a bias. Period. The best newspaper writing in the history of the Republic was gloriously biased, and made few if any bones about it. But the readers expected the bias. Purely partisan readers bout the Paper than leaned to their party because they wanted their worldview reinforced. Thoughtful readers read two or more papers and figured the truth to be somewhere in the middle.
With the media largely biased in one direction reporters and editors have become unforgivably sloppy. H. L. Mencken admits that he and a fellow newsman MADE UP a thrilling account of the meeting of the Russian and Japanese fleets that ended the war between those nations, but he did so so carefully that when eyewitness accounts became available their account was actually reasonably accurate. Without rival papers with conflicting agendas modern reporters and editors don't work that hard on their fakes. Now, with the New Media rising up to challenge them, they are too lazy by habit to sit down and do the work.
Combine this with the weasel wording necessary to maintain the pretense of neutrality, and you have a body of truly awful writing. One hopes that eventually the Liberal media will get used to being challenged and learn to take part in the kind of lively and scurrilous debate that made for great newspaper writing in years past. The way things are going, however, that won't happen before the NY Times has reduced itself to the status of a minor provincial paper of no special literary merit.
Posted by: C. S. P. Schofield at May 29, 2006 11:56 AM
