Yet another mass shooting happens in the context of a growing epidemic of mass shootings. Meanwhile, incidents of this sort are rare anywhere else in the world. And in the midst of this carnage, it is the press coverage of the event that bothers you?
In answer to your question, allocating federal monies toward mental health programs at least holds the potential of addressing the biggest problem at hand, which is gun violence, not press bias. Will I ask Brandon (whomever that is) to do that? No, I won't.
Good morning Mr. Erickson. We are all aware of the double standard the press has for honest reporting. I remember the good ole days, 1970 or so, when it was a noble profession. Honesty above all else was the standard back then. Now, it seems the nobility has vacated the position and has left it in the hands of any hack with a keyboard. We could always depend on Walter Cronkite to deliver the facts, and just the facts. "Thats the way it was," back then. We, as a society, have fallen so very far......
Guess again, Bud. "A Brief History of Media Bias," published in 2013 by the Hoover Institution, points to media bias even in what you call "the good ole days" of 1970 or so:
"The distorted reporting on the 1968 Tet offensive––an utter failure for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, who lost 40,000 men in their doomed attempt to bring down the government in the South––was depicted in the American media as a successful exposure of the corrupt South’s weakness and the futility of American intervention . . . .
"Similarly, the media attention given to the New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 reinforced the narrative of American crimes and bungling in Vietnam, even though the Department of Defense study ended in 1967, and so had nothing to say about the success of General Creighton Abrams in turning the war around after Tet . . . ."
The same article accurately alludes to "rampant partisanship that characterized newspapers for most of their existence," starting with the bias of the colonial press that helped fuel this country's move toward independence from Great Britain. "In fact, the notion that reporters should possess Olympian objectivity is relatively recent. In the nineteenth century, most newspapers were explicitly linked to a particular political party." This was of course followed by the era of so called "yellow journalism," where the bias was not so much political as sensational; leading most notably to the Spanish-American War.
Now, let's just assume for the sake of argument that there actually were some "good ole days" when the press was free of bias. With the 1800's being dominated by papers that were EXPLICITLY aligned with one political party or the other, and liberal press bias having manifested itself by the time of the Vietnam War, that leaves only a period of about 60 years out of the nation's 230+ year history when - using Erick's reasoning - the press was truly "free." (That is almost as absurd as his utter leap in logic where if the press is "cloistered in a progressive bubble, captured by its loathing of the American right, evangelicals, and flyover country," it is therefore not "free." Freedom in fact entails the right to loath the American right, the American left or whomever the hell one chooses to loath.)
Even during the 60 or so years between the 1800's and the Vietnam War when the mainstream press may arguably have been at its most objective, vis-à-vis the two major parties; especially during the 1950's, it was nevertheless virulently anti-communist. I will leave for another day blatant examples of bias in today's right-wing media. My point here is that the "good ole days" of an objective press have, in fact, never existed. Although perhaps more balanced in the number of liberal vs. conservative outlets, the American press has basically been divided between those that lean left and outlets that lean right for most of its history, ever since Alexander Hamilton established the New York Evening Post in 1801 to counter the string of newspapers that Thomas Jefferson and allies had lined up against him.
Today, there is a mainstream press that leans left and a conservative press (e.g., Fox News, talk radio, this newsletter) that leans right. The only thing new under the sun is the degree to which conservatives whine about bias on the other side, thereby helping to perpetuate the sense of grievance that so permeates the modern conservative movement.
Daily, I look forward to your emails with a rundown of the day's news. I appreciate you "sifting" through it all so I don't have to. You do it so well. God bless you!
Your piece reminds me a bit of I Kings 22 - Ahab, king of Israel (northern kingdon) asks all his lick-spittle "prophets" whether he will be successful battling the Syrians. "Go for it!" is the consensus (including Zedekiah son of Chenaanah who makes a visual aid - early powerpoint ;-) ). Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, isn't so sure, so they call on the nay-saying prophet Ahab hates, Micaiah. Net-net, Micaiah explains the false prophets are intended to entice Ahab into battle where he will die, Ahab goes with Zedekiah and false prophets...and dies on the battlefield.
I once heard a story along this line. Burning building, crowd watching, young boy in a window crying for help. A man runs into the building. Having assumed a man was heroically going to rescue the boy, the crowd is ecstatic, applauding him, encouraging him for his courageous selflessness. The boy disappears from the window to cheers from the onlookers. When he emerges from the smoking doorway, he is cradling...a strong box, not the little boy. Moral of the story? "The crowd may be wrong".
MSM today is a poignant example of that story's moral. Whether one believes MSM is purposefully channeling their inner Pravda/Goebbels, playing the advertisement-sales game, or genuinely does not want to believe we see through this mess, "THE [MSM] CROWD IS WRONG".
Having spent my career in the media and advertising, I can tell you for a fact that they want to set the agenda, not just report on it. Gone are those days. Your voice is critical to continue shedding light on this situation. Make no mistake, it has made a difference. Thank you, Erick.
"The press is broken" makes it sound like something was dropped accidentally. "Oops! The press is broken."
It wasn't "broken."
It was actively subverted and taken over by ideologues (idiotlogues) from J-schools who wanted to "make a difference" and are partisan activists, NOT objective journalists who used to fairly report both sides of an issue.
If a Dem makes a claim against a Repub, instead of actually looking (or asking) for proof of the claim, they immediately rush to the Repub and ask, "Why did you....?" Trump (of whom I am no big fan) was on to something when he called them the "enemy of the people."
Not to make a big deal out of this, but surely by now, you realize this is your calling, this is the moment for which you were made. I mean, granted, not everyone has the talent and panache to make a sarcastic thought sound absolutely Nobel-worthy when they write it. (and let's not forget you say things that I as a pastor cannot but would love too!)
You do! I can imagine it does get tiring--but you're really really, good at this and you are desperately needed! Prayers always!
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels famously said that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. The editorial class in the American press community has fully adopted this approach and they are hopeful the American people won't recognize it for what it is... socialist propaganda. Keep up the good work, Erick. The country needs more voices like yours.
Here, the lie that is being repeated is that where, once upon a time, the American press was objective and unbiased. To the contrary, for much of this country's history, it would have been difficult to find a newspaper that was not EXPLICITLY aligned with one political party or the other.
My late mother told me when I was in the sixth or seventh grade believe half of what you see and nothing what you read in the papers I use that advice today
Any news article that includes the phraseology “who uses the pronouns ——/——-“ when describing someone should encounter a refusal from the editors to make it to print.
To your point of the press corps, the art itself has become such an abyss of laziness-double-speak, hum drum,predictable propaganda. Fox broke that for awhile. Now they’ve hired to their ranks many of the same slouchers. Thank you for pointing out what needs to be said.
Bothers me too. "The press is broken" sums it up--but, those within the Press are oblivious to that diagnosis. They think their Leftwing bias is mainstream truth.
Fox was supposed to be the alternative to subjective reporting until they also succumbed to Pulitxer’s ‘drama sells’ philosophy. Commerce over ethics. Sad but true.
Feelings have replaced facts. To influence the feelings of their audience, journos redefine objective terms like "illegal alien" to a more palatable and relatable "immigrant." The new term is then manipulated to further bolster the journalist's biased thesis and hopefully pull at the heartstrings of their audience. Thus, "domestic terrorists" become "activists." But you can't just blame journalism; it takes two to Tango, and those on both sides who willingly lap it up without critically thinking through the story are just as guilty.
Yet another mass shooting happens in the context of a growing epidemic of mass shootings. Meanwhile, incidents of this sort are rare anywhere else in the world. And in the midst of this carnage, it is the press coverage of the event that bothers you?
Seriously?
"Lining Zelensky's pockets in UkrAine?" No wait, let me guess.
Russia's invasion of his country is fake news, right?
In answer to your question, allocating federal monies toward mental health programs at least holds the potential of addressing the biggest problem at hand, which is gun violence, not press bias. Will I ask Brandon (whomever that is) to do that? No, I won't.
Clear enough for you?
What's worse? Not knowing the actual name of the President of the United States.
All of those things - even a ban on knives - make more sense than looking at yet another mass shooting and concluding that the problem is press bias.
Good morning Mr. Erickson. We are all aware of the double standard the press has for honest reporting. I remember the good ole days, 1970 or so, when it was a noble profession. Honesty above all else was the standard back then. Now, it seems the nobility has vacated the position and has left it in the hands of any hack with a keyboard. We could always depend on Walter Cronkite to deliver the facts, and just the facts. "Thats the way it was," back then. We, as a society, have fallen so very far......
Guess again, Bud. "A Brief History of Media Bias," published in 2013 by the Hoover Institution, points to media bias even in what you call "the good ole days" of 1970 or so:
"The distorted reporting on the 1968 Tet offensive––an utter failure for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, who lost 40,000 men in their doomed attempt to bring down the government in the South––was depicted in the American media as a successful exposure of the corrupt South’s weakness and the futility of American intervention . . . .
"Similarly, the media attention given to the New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 reinforced the narrative of American crimes and bungling in Vietnam, even though the Department of Defense study ended in 1967, and so had nothing to say about the success of General Creighton Abrams in turning the war around after Tet . . . ."
The same article accurately alludes to "rampant partisanship that characterized newspapers for most of their existence," starting with the bias of the colonial press that helped fuel this country's move toward independence from Great Britain. "In fact, the notion that reporters should possess Olympian objectivity is relatively recent. In the nineteenth century, most newspapers were explicitly linked to a particular political party." This was of course followed by the era of so called "yellow journalism," where the bias was not so much political as sensational; leading most notably to the Spanish-American War.
Now, let's just assume for the sake of argument that there actually were some "good ole days" when the press was free of bias. With the 1800's being dominated by papers that were EXPLICITLY aligned with one political party or the other, and liberal press bias having manifested itself by the time of the Vietnam War, that leaves only a period of about 60 years out of the nation's 230+ year history when - using Erick's reasoning - the press was truly "free." (That is almost as absurd as his utter leap in logic where if the press is "cloistered in a progressive bubble, captured by its loathing of the American right, evangelicals, and flyover country," it is therefore not "free." Freedom in fact entails the right to loath the American right, the American left or whomever the hell one chooses to loath.)
Even during the 60 or so years between the 1800's and the Vietnam War when the mainstream press may arguably have been at its most objective, vis-à-vis the two major parties; especially during the 1950's, it was nevertheless virulently anti-communist. I will leave for another day blatant examples of bias in today's right-wing media. My point here is that the "good ole days" of an objective press have, in fact, never existed. Although perhaps more balanced in the number of liberal vs. conservative outlets, the American press has basically been divided between those that lean left and outlets that lean right for most of its history, ever since Alexander Hamilton established the New York Evening Post in 1801 to counter the string of newspapers that Thomas Jefferson and allies had lined up against him.
Today, there is a mainstream press that leans left and a conservative press (e.g., Fox News, talk radio, this newsletter) that leans right. The only thing new under the sun is the degree to which conservatives whine about bias on the other side, thereby helping to perpetuate the sense of grievance that so permeates the modern conservative movement.
Daily, I look forward to your emails with a rundown of the day's news. I appreciate you "sifting" through it all so I don't have to. You do it so well. God bless you!
Your piece reminds me a bit of I Kings 22 - Ahab, king of Israel (northern kingdon) asks all his lick-spittle "prophets" whether he will be successful battling the Syrians. "Go for it!" is the consensus (including Zedekiah son of Chenaanah who makes a visual aid - early powerpoint ;-) ). Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, isn't so sure, so they call on the nay-saying prophet Ahab hates, Micaiah. Net-net, Micaiah explains the false prophets are intended to entice Ahab into battle where he will die, Ahab goes with Zedekiah and false prophets...and dies on the battlefield.
I once heard a story along this line. Burning building, crowd watching, young boy in a window crying for help. A man runs into the building. Having assumed a man was heroically going to rescue the boy, the crowd is ecstatic, applauding him, encouraging him for his courageous selflessness. The boy disappears from the window to cheers from the onlookers. When he emerges from the smoking doorway, he is cradling...a strong box, not the little boy. Moral of the story? "The crowd may be wrong".
MSM today is a poignant example of that story's moral. Whether one believes MSM is purposefully channeling their inner Pravda/Goebbels, playing the advertisement-sales game, or genuinely does not want to believe we see through this mess, "THE [MSM] CROWD IS WRONG".
Having spent my career in the media and advertising, I can tell you for a fact that they want to set the agenda, not just report on it. Gone are those days. Your voice is critical to continue shedding light on this situation. Make no mistake, it has made a difference. Thank you, Erick.
In my opinion, those days left the moment Walter Cronkite realized his reporting significantly impacted support for the Vietnam war.
"The press is broken" makes it sound like something was dropped accidentally. "Oops! The press is broken."
It wasn't "broken."
It was actively subverted and taken over by ideologues (idiotlogues) from J-schools who wanted to "make a difference" and are partisan activists, NOT objective journalists who used to fairly report both sides of an issue.
If a Dem makes a claim against a Repub, instead of actually looking (or asking) for proof of the claim, they immediately rush to the Repub and ask, "Why did you....?" Trump (of whom I am no big fan) was on to something when he called them the "enemy of the people."
Not to make a big deal out of this, but surely by now, you realize this is your calling, this is the moment for which you were made. I mean, granted, not everyone has the talent and panache to make a sarcastic thought sound absolutely Nobel-worthy when they write it. (and let's not forget you say things that I as a pastor cannot but would love too!)
You do! I can imagine it does get tiring--but you're really really, good at this and you are desperately needed! Prayers always!
The mass media is a rancid cesspool that will not be cleaned anytime soon.
Keep up your good work, Erick. We need your thoughts so that we can accurately talk about these problems we are facing everyday.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels famously said that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. The editorial class in the American press community has fully adopted this approach and they are hopeful the American people won't recognize it for what it is... socialist propaganda. Keep up the good work, Erick. The country needs more voices like yours.
Here, the lie that is being repeated is that where, once upon a time, the American press was objective and unbiased. To the contrary, for much of this country's history, it would have been difficult to find a newspaper that was not EXPLICITLY aligned with one political party or the other.
My late mother told me when I was in the sixth or seventh grade believe half of what you see and nothing what you read in the papers I use that advice today
Any news article that includes the phraseology “who uses the pronouns ——/——-“ when describing someone should encounter a refusal from the editors to make it to print.
This.... is funny! And true!
To your point of the press corps, the art itself has become such an abyss of laziness-double-speak, hum drum,predictable propaganda. Fox broke that for awhile. Now they’ve hired to their ranks many of the same slouchers. Thank you for pointing out what needs to be said.
Bothers me too. "The press is broken" sums it up--but, those within the Press are oblivious to that diagnosis. They think their Leftwing bias is mainstream truth.
Fox was supposed to be the alternative to subjective reporting until they also succumbed to Pulitxer’s ‘drama sells’ philosophy. Commerce over ethics. Sad but true.
Feelings have replaced facts. To influence the feelings of their audience, journos redefine objective terms like "illegal alien" to a more palatable and relatable "immigrant." The new term is then manipulated to further bolster the journalist's biased thesis and hopefully pull at the heartstrings of their audience. Thus, "domestic terrorists" become "activists." But you can't just blame journalism; it takes two to Tango, and those on both sides who willingly lap it up without critically thinking through the story are just as guilty.