Back in my dim and distant college days, first at Bergen Community College and then Montclair State pre-University funding, full of the hubris of youth and convinced that I was learning something that would actually impact my future, a future destined to change the world, I was fond of pulling quotes of the glut of stuff I read (for school or pleasure) and, obviously, had a penchant for run-on sentences, as I do now. I don’t pull quotes very much these days, although I read just as much and therefore have lots to quote from. But in reading Dave Barry’s latest The Memoirs Of A Professional Class Clown, I came across what might be the best view on our modern unbalanced reporting of the current political scene.
And this hits me, a true non-political person, enough to pepper in some quotes below.
In making the point about his colleagues who champion unbalanced, bias reporting when it comes to Trump specifically, Barry says that his fellow journos fear that Trump is so “uniquely corrupt and dangerous, an existential threat of Hilterian magnitude,” that the journalists he knows feel that they “must abandon our neutrality.” But Barry goes on to make the point, which I so heartedly agree with that “The problem with this argument is that when the public see us taking sides—and the public definitely sees it—we lose the only reason we had any influence with the public in the place: our credibility. We become just another partisan voice in a cacophonous chorus, one more basement blogger.”
(I just love the term “basement blogger,” in more ways than I can admit)
Barry continues about the current plight:
“As I write these words, public confidence in the news media has sunk to a dismally low level. Way too many people simply no longer trust us to be fair and truthful. And I hate to say this, but I don’t know if we can win them back.”
Barry goes on to say he has friends and colleagues who disagree with him on his assessment, adhering as they are to an ‘end justifies the means’ protocol. Which, to my way of thinking, is all so true about the 4th estate these days and so very very dangerous.
I so wish there wasn’t this separation between folks. That we could have reasoned discussion without outright dismissal of a differing point of view to ours. And I so do wish this was the era of a Cronkite (look him up if you don’t know who he is), even flawed as he was, and surely don’t blame anyone person (a Trump, a Biden a whomever) for the way things are.
It would be nice also, if we could have some reporting not seasoned by a right or left view, or such a blatant one that those reporters either will not admit to, or if they do, think they are justified for. I had dinner this week with a very nice couple, but one of whom just writes off friends and family, as she proudly admitted who are Trump fans. Like the above reporters, she finds this exclusion justified, and surely she can do what she wants with her life and time. But don’t we get along better in the world when we are not so intolerant?
But then again, like Barry’s brethren, most people don’t care to get along or just want to get along with those people they agree with.
Believe me, codling this attitude, it’s not so very far justifying an assassination of someone you think is a grave threat to things.
Yes, my droogs, as I have been saying all along…we are pretty much doomed.
