What’s so surprising to me about this week’s ‘outing’ by Uri Berliner of NPR’s bias, is that anyone is surprised! It’s about time we all admitted that there is only bias in modern-day reporting…pretty much as there has always been.
—Sorry, we don’t usually get political or even truly worked-up about anything of real news here at FU, but NPR is located in NYC, close enough so I figured I’d give this a go—
If Donald Trump did anything commendable in my book it’s that he called out the Fourth Estate (how he furthers that attack I am not knowledgeable enough to debate) which has been pretty much the proverbial den of vipers for decades, if not centuries. Despite where your leanings lay (or is it “lie,” and in this case, lie probably is more appropriate) we’d all have to admit, that things have been pretty much ‘one side or the other’ propaganda from our maybe-never-were-so-great news institutions.
Which is fine. Watch FOX, you know what you get. Watch CNBC you know what you get there. Listen to WABC in New York as opposed to NPR above, you’ll easily discern the difference. The trouble comes when one outlet or another tries to defend itself as presenting clear and honest news, non-bias reporting, or claims they don’t do as much as their opponent does in not reporting all the facts, in holding back one source over another, in not shilling for that or this party.
They all do.
In these instances, I like to pull a quote from Leonard Cohen’s brilliant “Everybody Knows” song.
“And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed”
-And, might I refer you to the brilliant cover of this song done by Concrete Blonde for the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack-
When folks talk about the good old days of journalism, they speak of Edward R. Morrow or Walter Cronkite, but those guys followed their prejudices as much as their hearts. It’s impossible not to…when you are human. The difference now though is that each side is so busy calling foul to the other they won’t admit, nay, they will go to their deathbed claiming that they have no agenda or prejudice, which we all know, is simply not true.
And of course, what we all like to ignore, depending on how much your view is reiterated or how much you simply enjoy one show over another, is how much our seemingly simple entertainments, from sitcoms to streaming series, to documentaries to music radio/satellite stations have not been bought, sold and financed by the political organizations that contribute to them or wholeheartedly have birthed these networks.
Again, I can’t actually be reporting on something you don’t know already, right?
So, go ahead and listen, read, and enjoy what you will. Most of us are not looking for any kind of truth or even a challenging point of view. We just want to be comforted by someone on our screen or coming out of our speaker spewing our beliefs, because, in the end…
“Everybody knows that the plague is coming.”
