THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 327, December 11, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
CHEERFUL REMARKS AT THE FUNERAL
By Alan Caruba
THE PRESENT & FUTURE STATE OF JOURNALISM: THE BIAS & UNRELIABILITY OF THE TRADITIONAL PRINT NEWS
MEDIA -- THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA WEDDED TO THE LIBERAL LEFTIST POLITICAL AGENDA -- FAILING DAILY
NEWSPAPERS OCCURRING DAILY -- REAL REPORTERS & REAL EDITORS BECOMING OBSOLESCENT -- THE INTERNET TO
BECOME THE MAIN SOURCE OF NEWS
FULL STORY:
I have been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists for more than twenty-five years. Not long ago they sent me
a label pin to commemorate my devotion to the organization, devotion which has, I must admit, mostly consisted of paying
my annual dues. I have long since lost my youthful enthusiasm for the profession, but not for writing.
Like Mark Twain, I drifted into journalism because I was seriously opposed to having to actually work for a living. One of
Twain’s classic quotes was “Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please.” A pretty fair
definition of journalism in his times and ours.
I began to have early doubts about the rigors of being a journalist when, three months after I joined the staff of a weekly
newspaper, the first I had ever worked for, the editor moved on to a daily and I was anointed the editor. That’s right. I went
from rookie to head honcho in about 90 days. I virtually wrote that entire newspaper for well over a year or so and, on the
job, probably learned as much about journalism as I would have going through any four-year curriculum at the Newhouse
or Columbia School of Journalism. Then I moved on to a daily newspaper.
In the December, 2008, issue of Quill, the SPJ magazine for its members, the new President, Dave Aeikens, used his
page for a commentary titled, “Our Profession Is Not Dying, It’s Just Changing.” My thought was that he was making some
cheerful remarks at a funeral. The name of the magazine tells you how outdated newspapers have become in a time when the
digital version of your favorite source of news can be accessed in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia
Indeed, Aeikens mentioned highly trafficked news websites such as CNN and The New York Times, but
managed to neglect mentioning that Fox News was in the top ten. And therein lies the problem. The new media is so
wedded to its Liberal agenda that it can’t even manage to mention that the newly indicted Governor of Illinois is a Democrat,
but, on the same day, they did not fail to include that Larry Craig, the Senator who got into trouble for unseemly behavior in
a men’s room, is a Republican.
The game is up for the mainstream press. The Internet constantly reveals how they distort the news and how they print news
that is too often unsubstantiated boldfaced lies, such as telling us that global warming is real or that the U.S.A. can be
“energy independent,” or that “biofuels” made from food sources can replace gasoline, or that Barack Hussein Obama is a
“Centrist.”
The problem is that too many people for whom CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and similar
Liberal news outlets represent an accurate presentation of the world remain blissfully ignorant, despite ample evidence that
Congress has absolutely no idea what it can or should do as the latest burst economic “bubble” creates fear and panic.
Thus, we are now hearing all the failed programs of the previous recessions and depressions being trotted out. Only the
Republicans are opposing the most blatant raid on the public treasury in the history of the nation.
While news of failing daily newspapers is now a daily occurrence, permit me to suggest that the problem goes beyond the
loss of classified advertising or slashed display advertising budgets. Certainly they play a major role, but the print
newspapers have run slap-dash into a generation that has been rendered so ignorant of history, civics, science and other
essential knowledge, and is so self-absorbed as to have entire web pages and blogs devoted to themselves and networks
of other nitwits, that reading the daily newspaper is just so ”yesterday.”
That is why newspaper circulation and network news viewers are sliding into a black hole where real reporters and real
editors are becoming obsolescent.
The question is who do you trust? And why should anyone but a nitwit trust a news media that almost universally bought
into and anointed Barack Hussein Obama as the “Messiah”? How can anyone trust news magazines that picture him on
their covers as the new Lincoln or the new FDR before he has even served a day in the Oval Office?
“The role journalists play in democracy is far too important to give up on it,” wrote Aeikens. He’s right, of course. Real
journalists retain their skepticism. Real journalists do not write news releases. They write the news — what they see and
record — and that includes those aspects of the news with which they may personally disagree, but which must be
reported anyway.
This is why commentators like myself are finding an audience searching, searching, searching for some facts on which we
hang our particular take of what is occurring. We’re the ones who, if we take ourselves seriously, actually document what
we write.
Unlike myself, who has a pedigree in journalism, most come to what they write based on expertise in many other areas of a
very complex world.
I will predict that weekly newspapers will weather the storm breaking over the daily newspapers. The best news is always
local news. Some smart fellow will set up a syndicate for news out of the state capital and feed the state’s weeklies.
The dailies will struggle for a while. Not all will die, but those that survive will not look like the present dailies, with their
endless cautionary tales of everything toxic that will kill you and every member of your family. Events in far-off places will
be reduced to a few paragraphs in a single section. There will be some gossip, the movie and television listings. And,
always, the obituaries.
The Internet will provide just about everything you need to know. It will do it faster. It will do it better. It will offer what
today’s daily newspapers do not, a choice of whom to believe, not a predictable flow of recycled news releases and
opinions.
In an era when the Nobel Prize is given to charlatans like Al Gore, people will still thirst for the truth, and they are not
finding much of it in today’s daily newspapers and news magazines.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The News & Entertainment Media: Political & Ideological Bias
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
Caruba has a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
Caruba’s most recent book, Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy, has been published by Merril Press. Books
previously authored by Caruba include A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam, The United Nations Versus the United States: The
UN's Plan to Control Planet Earth, and America: A Nation Without Borders -- A Pocket Guide to Immigration Issues.
© Alan Caruba 2008
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity