Read of the Day
Confessions of a BBC Liberal. An ex-BBC journalist explains the group think mindset that has infected the BBC. It’s pretty much par for the course in American media as well. A good primer on how this kind of ideology and rank ignorance spreads.
Group think is always a problem in society because humans have this amazing facility for mass delusion. People will buy into a big lie and cling to it fiercely because they’ve put so much hope that their side is the right side. And ivory tower elites are the worst when it comes to this kind of thinking. Media people tend to think they are more connected to reality, but the truth is, many of them rely in filtered sources of info like everyone else and base their conclusions on what they see. Combined with the culture of their workplace, you get this mendacious mass of mediocrity called “journalism”. The good reporters are the ones who go outside the easy answers and bother to personally get their hands dirty with the facts. Whether they like what they find out or not. Those reporters are few and far between in this age.
Many journalist leap to a conclusion or have it handed down by their editor, before they start typing the first sentence of their story. And then, all media outlets have “style guides” which tell the writers what terms are appropriate and what line they are supposed to take. This further limits the validity of the sources because it uses political correctness to get around the hard points.
This is a very complicated and compromised age we live in. The beauty of it is the blogs have provided a means to fact check and analyze the news like never before. The walls are coming down around these media institutions and I say its a good thing. But they will constantly try to corrupt things. Watch.
I remember a reporter at Newsweek telling me, with some glee, that the official line (at least at the Washington Bureau) was that “The NRA just always be demonized.” The best part was that this wasn’t a secret. It was written down in their official guidelines!
Posted by on 08/12 at 01:00 PM
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