Many Americans have become increasingly disappointed in journalists in particular and journalism in general. We are not talking about the fine work done by local papers, local radio or regional TV that keeps us informed about education, crime, local politics, traffic, business, weather, etc. It is the national main-stream media that has become the subject of debate and criticism.
I want to get to a conclusion as to what is desperately wrong with the mass main-stream media, but first background.
Something very interesting happened on August 15th. Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, held a closed-door town hall meeting with his writers. It was to have been a close-hold session but someone recorded and released it.
Before we get back to the New York Times and Mr. Baquet, it is important to set the stage with some facts.
Fact, the collective media is a powerful institution. Fact, what people generally talk and think about is based on what they hear and/or read about on a daily basis. Survey results; 80% of journalists who are aligned with the democrat or republican parties are liberal.
Fact, in the summer of 2017 Harvard published the results of a media study. They found that Americans were getting a negative view of what was happening in the Trump administration; CNN 93% negative, NBC 93%, CBS 91%, New York Times 87%, Washington Post 83%, Wall Street Journal 70%, Fox News 52%. Since that time there has been polling that indicates this trend has continued unabated including MSNBC and ABC.
With 90% negativism day after day it is easy to think, well if they are all saying it, it must be true. Dangerous and upsetting, but true.
Back to Mr. Baquet and his meeting with all the New York Times journalists. I have read the transcript, all 9600 words. I do not recommend you read it; it is both disgusting and discouraging. There are two elements to Baquet’s presentation and answers to his writers’ questions. Baquet explained it this way:
“Chapter 1 of the story of Donald Trump ……..was: Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice? We set ourselves up to cover that story. I’m going to say it. We won two Pulitzer Prizes covering that story.” Note: what does that tell us about the credibility of the Pulitzer committee?
Baquet continues: “The day Bob Mueller walked off that witness stand, two things happened. Our readers (Baquet shifts accountability from himself to the readers) who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, “Holy s_ _ t, Bob Mueller is not going to do it. We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed. I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?”
Note: “looks a certain way” is Baquet’s explanation for why The Times wrote for two years as if Trump’s guilt was a foregone conclusion. Their stories looked that “certain way” because they wrote them to look that way and to convince America it was that way. Pathetic.
Here is Baquet’s intent going forward: “I think that we’ve got to change.” He goes into a long dissertation on how to write about race in a thoughtful way? Baquet continues, “That, to me, is the vision for coverage. You all are going to have to help us shape that vision. But I think that’s what we’re going to have to do for the rest of the next two years.” His writers have their marching orders.
Every profession, lawyers, doctors, military, educators, journalists, has an ethical basis. That value base, that code of conduct, that mission statement, whatever form it takes, when practiced gives that profession credibility.
Credibility is the centerpiece for journalism and credibility comes for impartiality. Journalism is about the pursuit of truth. Truth is not always apparent in the beginning. Basing a journalistic campaign on an assumed truth is a formula for failure. Russian collusion was an assumed truth which led them into an empty hole and complete loss of credibility.
If we can believe the marching orders Baquet gave his writers, The Times is headed down that same rat hole.
Now I want to get to the point of this article. One can make a case that while the majority of the Times employees are liberal leaning, they do not have a choice in their bias given the orders from their leader.
By extension, can we make the same observation about the other members of the negative ninety percenters; ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBE, CNN and the Washington Post?
Are there perhaps seven individuals, the leaders of those negative main-stream mass media giants, who have so corrupted the ethics of their organizations with bitterness and hostility that they are principally responsible for the greatest divide in modern America? Have they, with their misguided power created this alternative culture of hate? A culture of hate that is a powerful and pervasive force.
Where is the honesty? Where is the integrity? What happened to fair and objective? Where is the credibility? Ninety percent negative, think about it.
Marv Covault