No reasonable person should have been surprised or offended to hear someone opine that NPR has a strong liberal bias. All the evidence needed to support that point of view can be obtained by listening to NPR for about 15 minutes. The amazing part of this story is that someone who worked at NPR should dare to admit it.
The legacy media suffers from a debilitating case of “Cronkite Disease”—the unfortunate tendency among journalists to believe that they are and should be the arbiters of truth in a free society and that given that sacred mission they are somehow incapable of allowing their personal prejudices to influence how they communicate and the messages they send. Should they bother to look in the mirror, they see only perfection staring back.
If it takes “great strength” to conduct a self-assessment of your job performance, one might consider finding a new career or entering a 12-step program. Whatever one does for a living, taking an honest look inward is an integral part of doing it. It doesn’t require “great strength;” it requires honesty and common sense.
If Ms. Maher took “journalistic accountability” seriously, she would admit what has been true of journalism since the first caveman chipped out the initial edition of the New Rock Times: journalists are people, people have prejudices, and those prejudices influence what stories they tell and how they tell them. It has always been so.
Andrew Jackson is, arguably, the father of angry political division in the United States, a less than respectful tradition that has continued more or less uninterrupted until this day. Back then you had pro-Jackson Democrat newspapers that presented the news in a way that made Old Hickory look good, and pro-Whig journals that made the president sound like a raving lunatic. Any of this sound familiar?
During the Civil War, Democrat-leaning publications referred to President Abraham Lincoln with charming epitaphs such as “the Original Ape,” while those sympathetic to Republicans tended to be somewhat kinder to “Honest Abe.” It was the same with FDR. It was the same with Richard Nixon. It is and ever shall be a part of the way a truly free press operates. What’s disappointing is when journalists climb up on a towering marble pedestal and refuse to even admit the possibility that personal prejudices might influence what they talk about and how they say it.
Today, in an increasingly complex world, the excuse most often cited to justify personal prejudices is the argument from authority: that “experts” are the arbiters of truth and journalists are qualified to identify experts from posers. Let’s use me as an example. I can claim, with confidence, that I know much more about atmospheric chemistry, environmental issues, and air pollution than 99 percent of the people in the country. That’s not because they are ignorant, but because I’ve spent an almost 40-year career working in that space.
There are some outlets that are interested in my point of view on environmentally related issues in my wheelhouse. I’ve been on Fox, I’ve testified before Congress, and I’ve written for Examiner Publications for more than 20 years. However, when I’ve been mentioned in left-leaning outlets such as HuffPost or Media Matters, it’s inevitably to disqualify me using the argument from authority. I don’t have a PhD, so how can I claim to know more than those who do? I work for industry, so surely my integrity has been compromised, etcetera. MSNBC and others appear only to feature “experts” who agree with their narrative, because to disagree with the narrative automatically disqualifies you as an expert.
There is, in my humble opinion, no such thing as an unbiased journalist. There are rather journalists who have the wisdom and courage to own their bias and those who do not.
