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Friday, January 14, 2005
Hewitt has quite a lengthy look at questions of media bias and the recent takes on it from Howard Fineman and Howard Kurtz. Says Hewitt of media bias:Look. This is old ground. It isn't as though anyone is fooled anymore. So why keep fighting?
The answer is that an honest admission of deep and significant bias in the news gathering and production operations of MSM would require a remedy. It would require a remedy because it contradicts the central claim of MSM to be objective. Nobody wants "objective" news that is really "partisan." The remedy would be the hiring of counter-partisans, which would really rebalance the very unbalanced MSM. But there are only so many jobs. Start hiring center-right journalists, and center-left journalists are going to go looking for work. He could have added that this is already happening. It's just that the viewing and reading public is doing the hiring and firing, not the editors. All you need to do is look at the cutbacks in newrooms and the shift in coverage from "hard news" to infotainment on the majors alongside the growth of Fox News and the blogger revolts and it's clear: now that people realize you don't have to take Dan Rather's word for it anymore, they're going elsewhere and the MSM is paying for it in lost eyeballs. Each time they lose eyeballs, they lose ad revenue. And then, somewhere down the line, another center-lefty gets the axe or never gets hired to start with. This way parity lies.
posted by gbarto at 11:08 PM
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