Six Days

You know what? That last bit from Slate is just too good to write-off with a throw away line. Here's what Slate editor Jacob Weisberg has to say about disclosure.

Journalists, like people, have opinions that influence their behavior. Reporters and editors at most large news organizations in the United States are instructed to keep their opinions to themselves to avoid creating an impression of partisanship.... Slate, which is a journal of opinion, takes precisely the opposite approach. Rather than bury our views, we cultivate and exhibit them. A basic premise of our kind of journalism is that we can openly express what we think and still be fair.

Sounds good! Nobody is saying that reporters can't have opinions. But why are these particular opinions all the same? Why aren't these opinions at least somewhat representative of America at large? Doesn't that say something? Weisberg continues:

Fairness, in the kind of journalism Slate practices, does not mean equal time for both sides. It does not mean withholding judgment past a reasonable point. It means having basic intellectual honesty. When you advance a hypothesis, you must test it against reality. When you make a political argument, you must take seriously the significant arguments on the other side.... By disclosing our opinions about who should be president, we're giving readers a chance to judge how well we are living up to these ideals.

So far so good. No one said that news organizations had to be objective to the point of dopiness. But do news organizations withhold judgment unreasonably for the enemy? Recall how does CNN describe members of al Qaeda. Is Base10 to conclude that if the New York Times disclosed that all its reporters (except Safire, of course) were voting for Kerry or Nader it would excuse such blatantly biased reporting involved in the stolen Iraq explosive story?

But this is the heart of it:

What's more, greater transparency of opinion, if it became a trend, would make it harder for conservatives to use surreptitious liberal bias as a license for their own malignant imitation of what they understand to be that practice. CBS journalists, whatever their politics, are professionals who aspire to be fair and resist bias. Many of those at Fox News Channel, on the other hand, aspire only to advance the fortunes of the conservative movement, even as they parrot the laughable slogan, "fair and balanced." Fox is not biased because it is a conservative network. It is biased because of the intellectually dishonest way it proclaims its neutrality while loading the dice for the GOP and for George W. Bush.

There you have it. CBS isn't biased. If only its reporters had disclosed their opinions beforehand, the conservatives couldn't use this as a license for their own malignant imitation of journalism. It all goes back to Fox News! Priceless.

Can't Weisbergs argument be turned on its head? He claims that Fox is conservative but claims to be fair while other media have members that are liberal but are after all professional and fair. What if it's opposite? What if Fox has conservative reporters but they strive to be fair, while mainstream media is really left-leaning but always claims to be "fair."

Seems like a silly thought experiment. How could you test this hypothesis after all? Well they did at Yale. Conclusion:

Although we expected to find that most media lean left, we were astounded by the degree. A norm among journalists is to present “both sides of the issue.” ... This was not always the case. Most of the mainstream media outlets that we examined (ie all those besides Drudge Report and Fox News’ Special Report) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than they were to the median member of the House.

Base10's conclusion. Read the above link. It's very interesting.

Base10 is an avid James Lileks reader, but today's piece is just a cut above the rest. In what can only be described as a journalistic mutilation of Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan writes this in his support of Kerry:

The greatest weakness of the war effort so far has been the way it has become a partisan affair. This is the fault of both sides: the Rove-like opportunists on the right and the Moore-like haters on the left

Lileks responds thusly,

Laff? Cry? Coin-toss. Yes, it’s somehow become a partisan affair, thanks to a strange, unknowable alchemic reaction between the Rove-like and the Moore-like, some odd love-child with Eloi and Moorlock DNA. Because we all remember those vast demos in Europe, arranged by the Rovian right, to whip up anti-Taliban sentiment before the Afghan campaign. We all recall the Rove-like movies made by the Rove-like directors and the Rove-like newspaper editorials demanding that the dusky scum kneel before the bright Christian banners we bear aloft. Everyone’s equally guilty here. Six of one, four-hundred-thousand dozen of the other.

And let us shed a tear for those who believed it was necessary after 9/11 to knock off Saddam and establish a beachhead in the region ‘twixt Iran and Syria, but later ran away shrieking like freshly skinned rabbits because it had somehow, by some odd turn of events, turned into a partisan affair. What scared them off? Who knows? Just happened, I guess. Somewhere between the brutal Afghan winter, the interminable quagmire of the operational pause en route to Baghdad – all 72 hours of it - and the devastating supposition that the turkey Bush presented on Thanksgiving may not have been the actual fowl consumed by the troops, we realized that the war was all failure and lies and failed lies about lying failures, and we can’t do anything and the Plan was wrong and Mission Accomplished, yeah right. Oh, and We Support the Troops.

Who gets more media traction in this heated media-saturated climate? Rove-like Opportunists, or Moore-like Haters?

One blockquote just can't do this justice. Read the whole thing here. I hope we get more of this as the election gets closer.

On the lighter side, Football Fans for Truth are noting some discrepancies in the photos of Kerry's goose hunt. Note: no mud on the pants and a curiously missing goose.

Last but not least, check out this new ad critical of Kerry's Senate record from Americans for Peace Through Strength. (Via LGF).

Base10 will post a bit later if possible.

UPDATE: The above Yale study link is down. Click here for a reprint on FreeRepublic.
- posted by Base10 @ 9:14 AM