Breaking News: New York Times Alienates Neo-Cons October 11, 2005
I mean, I worked for the company for four years, and by PC policy had to refer to blacks as “African Americans” (much to the dismay of my co-lesson plan writer, whose Haitian girlfriend felt very alienated by the title, but I digress). But any headline that starts with “Liberal Hopes Ebb” is just not even trying to hide it. Not that this bias is bad. The article is still very informative and interesting, don’t get me wrong. I think it just highlights the silliness behind the concept that “The Media” is supposed to be “centrist” or “unbiased.” The media is the critical “Fourth Estate”, keeping tabs on the government. This means that it should be, in my view, inherently anti-government. That position should make the media extremely volatile, flipping left and right in opposition to the party in power.
Okay, so on the other hand, writers tend to be liberal by nature. I can’t imagine why. The imagination, being the place of new ideas, ones that challenge our present way of thinking, ones that explore the icky depths of the human psyche, should be embraced by people who are self-named as “conservative.”
On one more hand, how forward-thinking can newspapers be? I always think of journalists is the kids who were really organized in English class (”So should I color code my binder by chapter or by theme?”) and wrote exposes on the new soda machine in the Student Union. Maybe that’s why the current media panders to politicians and consumers.
Where was I?
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