Monday, June 25, 2007

Spot and the hoi poli do not mix

On Friday, Eric Black posted a story at Minnesota Monitor about the fact that most journalists are liberals. Or libruls, as the King and the Korb might say. Eric, on behalf of the MSM, seemed a little defensive about this. Perhaps it's just a leftover reflex. Spot was going to go over and leave a comment, but he sees that the post is up to FORTY-NINE comments as of this writing. Ol' Spotty is not used to sharing space for his thoughts with such a larger number of the hoi poli (kidding), so he'll pen his thoughts over here where he commands the spotlight a little better.

The whole idea of "balanced journalism" should be consigned to the scrap heap forthwith. Eric argues, unnecessarily in Spot's view, that most journalists are able to "rise above" their "selective perception" or biases. Boys and girls, we don't need balanced journalists, so much as we need journalists who tell the truth. Conservatives have been quite successful in convincing journalists that there are two sides to everything. But, there is not need, when discussing the rotation of the earth, to include the fact that some people maintain that the earth is flat. Just because some jughead believes it doesn't mean that it is entitled to equal time.

There is perhaps no issue where the flat earthers have had a more pernicious effect than global warming. See? Even Spot just did it! Global warming isn't an issue, it's a fact. The only deniers left are just biostitutes and their promoters: Katie, Powerline, Jason Lewis, et al. The real scientific community—those pesky reality-based folks—all say, yep, it's real and we had better starting doing something about it NOW. [Update] When Spot wrote this post, he should have included Brian Lambert's commentary on this subject in the Strib a few days ago. [/update]

The pre-war reporting about Iraq is another example of where the issue wasn't balance, but courage. And except for Knight-Ridder (RIP) and CBS's Bob Simon, courage was in short supply. Mostly, we got sucklings like Judy Miller.

Just give Spot a reporter who is skeptical, especially of people in power, who can ask a pointed question—without the bombast of Tim Russert or playing "gotcha" journalism—and maybe another reporter who is willing to ask a good follow-up question if the first one doesn't get a chance to, rather than preening in front of the cameras like a parakeet looking in a mirror and asking his or her "own" question, and Spot doesn't care what political party the reporter belongs to.

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