Deceit.
Clark Hoyt, NYT ombudsman, provides yet another example of the vast gulf between the public at large and the alternate universe in which the mainstream media live. He states, “But I think the news coverage over a long campaign has been better and fairer than critics would admit.”
He quotes various journos to support this curious view, and my personal favorite is Andrew Cline.
“Journalism is not brain surgery; it’s more difficult than that,” said Andrew Cline, an assistant professor of journalism at Missouri State University, who has written on the perception of bias in news coverage. He said it was impossible for a reporter, in a single article, “to cover a situation in a way that everyone involved sees themselves the way they understand themselves.”
Let me just repeat that so you can savor it:
“Journalism is not brain surgery; it’s more difficult than that.”
I have nothing to add to that remarkable statement.
Oddly enough, I always thought journalists were a sort of private investigator with good secretarial skills - that is to say, I thought they researched things, interviewed people and dug around to find things out, and wrote it down accurately so we could all know it. Silly me! Ah, I was young and naive once, and never gave these great Scholar-Heroes the respect they deserved. Their job training is evidently more grueling than four years of undergraduate school, four years of medical school, and six years of residency, followed up with another two years of advanced study… and that’s just to get to the point that you can take the test to become board certified! If I ever meet Katie Couric, I may humbly salaam. I never would have guessed Her Perkiness had it in her.
Hoyt blames foolish news consumers like me for the misunderstanding. We “have a hard time with information that does not fit his view of the world.”
Quite true. In my world, speculation on who Trig Palin’s mother is and the details of Joe the Plumbers divorce aren’t in the least newsworthy. I am, on the other hand, extremely interested in what Senator Obama’s former drug dealer has to say. I think the previous illegal drug habit of our next President, should he win, is at least as newsworthy of the previous illegal drug habit of our next First Lady, should McCain win. I’m rather curious about several aspects of Obama’s connections to illegal drug users, in fact. Did his roomate Siddiq deal drugs? That’s quite a bit beyond the question of whether one inhaled. If we’ve got time for one, shouldn’t we have time for the other? Wait, what am I saying? I’m over-reacting. These sort of questions are quite beyond my ken, aren’t they? After all, I’m certainly no brain surgeon!
“I wouldn’t want to be a journalist now,” said S. Robert Lichter, a professor of communication at George Mason University who is tracking network television coverage this year.
I certainly agree that now is an exceptionally bad time to be a journalist. It’s possible that some people’s secrets aren’t more equal than others anymore. May you live in interesting times, Mr. Hoyt.
ADDED: Dr. Happy, who is in a position to know, thinks that brain surgery sounds a lot harder to do than journalism.
h/t Hot Air
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