Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 1:23:33 PM
Has anyone noticed all the extremely critical coverage about the fact that the Dow has dropped 1500 point (17%) since the beginning of the year? Or the criticism leveled at the stimulus package which since its announcement has caused gold futures to soar almost 40% since it was announced?
Oh, that's right, there has been none. At least not in the popular press.
I though during the entire Bush administration the press justified all their criticisms of the Bush administration as being demanded by our need for an "adversarial press", and explained reporting even the most dubious claims about Bush as being needed so that the public would be informed.
So, what happened? Is there nothing bad anyone can say about Obama? Or has the press change their perception of their role from "loyal opposition" to "sycophantic lapdog"?
I wrote about this long before the election, but it bears repeating. The press had little enough credibility already due to their blatant bias, but if they continue in their adoration of the "Beloved Leader", they will lose whatever they had left. At least in the past we knew they would not completely bury real scandals involving Democrats. They were biased, but they couldn't resist a juicy story. Given their current behavior, I am no longer convinced that is true.
And considering the low ratings of television new, along with the wave of newspaper failures, I think I am not alone in that belief.
POSTSCRIPT
Then again, perhaps this won't be a bad thing. As I described in "
The Death of Impartial Media" the myth of an "impartial media" is relatively recent. Throughout most of history, and currently in many nations, the media admits their bias, and people obtain news from competing partisan papers. It seems to me that admitting bias and allowing readers to compensate for that bias is much betetr than
smuggling in a bias, while denying it, and pretending to impartiality. (Another benefit may be the end of the idea that journalists are somehow a special category of individuals, as described in "
Why Are Journalists Special?".)