The Louisville Courier-Journal had has dispensed even with the pretense of fairness in the story of the UofL hospital merger, running an article completely devoted to opponents and not mentioning a single voice critical of the governor's decision to pull the plug on the deal.
Not one.
Ironically, one of the panoply of left-wing groups whose comments were featured in the article which was anything but fair was the "Fairness" Campaign.
Maybe, as the paper continues to shrink and staff continue to be let go, the ombudsman office is just empty now. Not that it ever seemed to matter before.
Monday, January 02, 2012
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Jonah Goldberg once observed that it isn't the fact of liberal bias in the news media that galls conservative, but the infuriating, straight-faced denials.
ReplyDeleteA few years back, I remember one of CBS' more famous broadcast news personalities -- I think it was either Dan Rather or Mike Wallace -- whose response to accusations of liberal bias was, that it wasn't true, that at CBS, they always tried to be accurate.
And with the talking heads, you never know when they're just exhibiting ignorance or being disingenuous -- because, of course, you can slant the news all you want and still maintain accuracy. If you present only stories that show one side in a bad light and the other side in a favorable light, you can still slant the news and not tell a single untruth.
One technique used by the media to slant the news is to make sure you label conservative groups, experts, and spokesmen as "conservative", but use no such labels for their liberal counterparts. Thus, the Brookings Institute is always the "Brookings Institute", but the Hoover Institute is always the "conservative Hoover Institute."
One of my favorite exchanges of all time was when Aaron Brown (CNN) was interviewing Shelby Steele, who was introduced as "one of those conservatives, Shelby Steele," while Richard Cohen was introduced simply as "Richard Cohen of the Washington Post."
Steele interrupted Brown: "Is Mr. Cohen a liberal?"
Brown responded, "Okay. Everyone is now branded, I guess."
Steele responded: "If I'm going to be, everybody is going to be."
Recently I returned home Tues find an astonishing display of shredded paper Scattered across my living room floor.
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