Get a grip
People have probably loved to bash the news media for suspected bias since the beginning of time, or at least since the invention of the printing press. Those who hold views that are so sacred as to not permit of further re-examinination when the facts shift often find it a faster route to reassurance to inveigh against the messenger – in this case the much-maligned news media.
There’s probably nothing really new in the widespread finger pointing that seems to have reached new highs in the past few months as the Presidential campaign enters its final few weeks (mercifully, at last). Democrats have accused the media of failing to critically examine and reveal some of the (to them) malicious distortions perpetrated by the Republicans against their candidate, Barack Obama. Republicans in turn went to a new level, or perhaps depth is a better word, by making the news media the issue during their nominating convention. It sure was red meat for Sarah Palin, their vice presidential nominee, when she said she wasn’t planning to go to Washington to be popular with the, horror of horrors, Eastern Media Elite.
It’s a free country, and anyone can say what they want (so long as you don’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater, as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said), and certainly the news media gets it wrong from time to time. Sometimes news stories go our without all facts being checked as carefully as they might. More so today than ever before, straight news and opinion pieces are getting blurred. Are blogs news? It’s hard to imagine Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow or any of the other titans of yesterday confusing a blog, or even some of the talking heads pontificating on some of the major TV networks, with being objective, to the best of their ability, sources of news.
In the recent case where Republican political operatives engaged in an outrageous distortion of Obama’s opinions on a sex education curriculum for elementary age schoolchildren, readers of responsible news agencies – the New York Times being one example – have consistently had the benefit of having such distortions and misinformation corrected with facts. And by and large, over the long run, the facts do catch up with the story. That’s a job not made easier by political campaigns which are willing to stoop to the low road in the first place. And just to be bi-partisan, Democrats have been just as guilty of manipulating facts to skew opinion and votes their way.
Gathering news and presenting both sides of a story has never been an easy task, and can be made more complicated by officials who are conveniently unavailable for comment in a timely manner. We’re happy to say that this phenomenon, while not unheard of in Vermont, certainly seems a good deal less prevalent than elsewhere. It’s part of the joys of working in a small state where if you don’t know someone yet, you probably will, and what goes around, comes around.
The upcoming Presidential election and the issues of economics and foreign affairs that are driving it is far too important for voters to allow themselves to be distracted by nonsense from hardcore partisans of either political extreme that it’s really the news media that’s to blame for everything, as we play the role of master puppeteer and distorting the facts. If only, many news executives must think, we really were that powerful. News flash – we’re not, nor do we suffer from the illusion we’re that wise, either.