“When editors at the Washington Post decline even to investigate whether the size of rallies on the Mall can be reliably estimated because they want to avoid charges of “leaning one way or the other,” as one of them recently put it, that is dumb.”

The Post article linked to does not mention anything about estimating crowd size. Maybe it was edited/changed?

Anyone who can repeat “Journalists are overwhelmingly liberal as many studies have documented” as if that explains the problems with contemporary media.

It is absurd for journalists to deny that they have leanings to the left or the right or the center, or conservative or liberal or libertarian, or mainstream or progressive or fringe.

But to say that journalists who admit they are liberal or conservative is the same as journalists who support the Democratic or Republican party is an insult to reporters who care about their objectivity.

Of course journalists have a right to donate money to politicians…but to pretend that those that do it aren’t choosing to give up at least some objectivity is wack. And when pundits don’t mention those donations when they go on TV or write editorials..they deserve criticism.

No one should have to assume so-and-so may have donated to such-and-such because he leans this way. Disclosure matters.

And if you provide coverage for someone in the media on TV or in print but don’t tell the audience that there is a financial connection…then you owe your audience and your editors or producers or bosses an apology at the least.

I don’t think the example Evelyn posits, Chuck Todd, is a good example of what Jay or I want to see, though. What Todd does is the equivalent of a sports anchor who tells you the scores. Every motive in Washington is reduced to how it affects the balance of power, and this attitude affects viewers by driving away their hope in or understanding of political progress. Todd never acknowledges whether the goals and practices of an individual or party are good or bad, hypocritical or courageous, constructive or harmful. The reporters who deserve our attention are the ones engaged in the analysis of policy and issues, not the ones who examine the scene as if it’s not worth examining whether liberal and conservative approaches are of equal value.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-12-2009/cnn-leaves-it-there

I vote for transparency & honesty as being the overriding principles that would best suit journalism going forward.

Journalists are overwhelmingly liberal as many studies have documented and your only hope of beginning the regeneration of your badly damaged profession seems to me to be transparency.

I don’t think journalists have any idea of the contempt that many (if not most) members of the general public have for your profession.

Reform or die…

Messinger then wonders why Ailes’ news channel does not count as a legitimate example of journalism with a View from Somewhere…

Her imaginary Ailes has answered the question for her:

1) Journalism with a View from Somewhere holds itself to a different standard than journalism with a View from Nowhere. If legitimately committed to the View from Somewhere, having an ideology-describing page would be a badge of honor — and the fact that the broadcast networks did not have such a page would be all the more reason for Ailes to post one, not an excuse not to.

2) Journalism with a View from Somewhere is a method of escaping false binary oppositions rather than embracing them. No journalist legitimately committed to the View from Somewhere would be interested in the pseudo-symmetry of “no more or less a ‘conservative take’ than those others are ‘liberal takes’.” The existence, or lack thereof, of a liberal View from Somewhere would be a matter of indifference to a journalist offering a conservative View from Somewhere.

3) If this imaginary Ailes were legitimately committed to journalism with a View from Somewhere he would never be “deeply offended” by Rosen’s assumption of bald-faced lying. On the contrary, he would agree that for such a journalist to claim to be producing non-ideological news would be, on its face, mendacious.

That said, is Bill O’Reilly’s Factor an example of the View from Somewhere? For my taste, it is not his paranoid style that disqualifies him (although I recognize Rosen’s characterization). My problem is with his too-frequent use of innuendo and insinuation. If you listen to his commentaries literally, his actual talking points often turn out to be mere suggestions or questions, not statements at all. He loves to hint to his viewers that he shares a sense of outrage that he invokes — but then he’ll modify it with a just askin’ shrug that makes his journalism less declarative and his view, strictly speaking, much closer to Nowhere than his tone would imply.

The View from Somewhere has a hard time speaking with a style that manufactures controversy, enjoys argument for argument’s sake, and hints at outrages without spelling them out.

I hope you will allow me to pick at this a bit, like an itchy scab. Please be assured that my aim is to request that the best thinker about mass media today – you – take a new look at today’s Fox News. Seven years is a long time!

I take away from your comments that TRANSPARENCY about its political leanings is what’s missing for Fox News to qualify as New From Somewhere. But by your response to Roy’s comment, you can’t mean to hold Bill O’Reilley up as an example to be emulated of News From Somewhere. In the post you linked to, you quoted Richard Hofstadter on the paranoid style in American politics, and said, “that is where O’Reilly comes from.” Surely you are not advocating that journalists become O’Reilley-style paranoids.

So we are back to why Fox is not an example of News from Somewhere. You say: “Ask the people who run Fox if it is a conservative take on the news and they will lie to your face and say no,” and “There’s no page we can be sent to find a description of the ideological somewhere from which Fox comes.”

First, let’s admit that we both know that Roger Ailes would tell us this: “Jay and Evelyn, you are both known Liberals, otherwise you would be demanding that ABC, CBS and NBC have a page describing their ideology, too. If you were Conservatives, you would, like millions of people, know that our news is no more or less a ‘conservative take’ than those others are ‘liberal takes’ on the news, and that we would be deeply offended by the assumption that we ‘lie to your face’ when we say our news is not ideological.”

There are only two possible answers: either your advice to move away from the News From Nowhere is addressed only to print journalism, because TV News is not capable of a true View From Somewhere; or something new is going on at Fox News that needs to be added to the equation.