The MSM Doesn’t Need a Pole Star
There was an interesting op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post decrying the decline of the Associated Press and, by extension, other “hard news” wire services. The last line, especially, caught my eye.
But in a world, and a Web, full of analysis, opinion and “accountability journalism,” what’s missing is a neutral referee. Which is a bit like living in a world with a North Pole and a South Pole but no equator. If there’s no one to set the standard, how will we know when we’ve crossed the line?
Glenn Reynolds said, “Neutral hard-news reporting is the one thing the AP can do better than anyone else if it tries. So why isn’t it trying harder?”. That’s an interesting question, but I don’t think it’s the most important one.
The author of the op-ed seems helpless to know where “the line” is in news coverage unless there’s someone else there to set it for her. That strikes me as odd. Since when do we need someone else to tell us when a news report has strayed from actually reporting the news to injecting opinion and bias? Indeed, when did reporters lose the ability to read their own work critically?
Thought it would be a very good thing for organizations like the AP and Reuters to clearly walk the objective, neutral ground in their reporting, it’s not necessary for them to do so in order to provide a pole star for everyone else. Media outlets are more than capable of policing themselves without someone in the middle pulling them in that direction. They simply haven’t. Nothing has prevented the New York Times from hiring more conservative news reporters and editors (not to write right-slanted stories, but to provide another point of view in the news room itself). All the Times has ever had to do was to hire them. Refusing to do so has been a conscious decision on the part of the board of the newspaper, and nothing else.
Neutral news reporting isn’t magic. All that’s required is the will and work necessary to make it happen. The MSM has taken a conscious decision not to and blaming the lack of a neutral news service for that decision is just an excuse.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Ah, What’s a Little Crushing of Dissent?
- AP Reporter Videotapes a Double Murder.
- More Journalists Shot at By Russian Troops. Still No Word from the MSM
Category: Oh, THAT liberal media.
