I have reported for a newspaper that many HotAir readers would recognize. The time I spent in that newsroom and out on assignment was eye opening and formative.

I went in on the lookout for blatant bias and lax journalistic standards. But that’s not exactly what I found. I think that many of us, myself included, stereotype the press.

Certainly journalists are overwhelmingly Democrats, if not liberal. And yes, that previously unchallenged veneer of journalistic integrity has been proved to be quite porous. Everyday, there are examples of factual and contextual errors.

A newsroom has several departments wherein there is no cause to reveal one’s political leanings. Advertising, sports and obits really don’t get into politics. And oddly enough, sports and obits are the most consistently read sections of most papers. No matter the headlines, there are people scanning scores and deaths. Also business and community sections aren’t very politically charged.

So this image of one newsroom like Seattle or MSNBC coming together in a hail Caesar cheer is rare, per my experience. Rather, what seems to happen is that the hard news and features are covered by a very homogenous group of people. But they don’t see themselves that way.

I think just like most of us show up at work planning to work hard, so do journalists. And they do work hard. Fact gathering and checking along with skip tracing and ass kissing are part of the daily fare. Then there is the pressure of writing a decent lede and story. Most Americans take pride in their work and should, as should most journalists. Everyday, we get most of our news 99% from traditional journalists. Even with the advent and revolution of citizen journalism or crowd sourcing, we still get the facts from the fact gatherers, reporters.

Then how do things get so screwed up? Why is there a palpable liberal bias in political, environmental, fiscal, educational, civic and social news?

Until recently, journalists reported on everything except themselves. Though journalism has been the silent partner for every major political and social upheaval in our history, the press rarely covers itself. For instance, civil rights era news sharply affected the country’s attitudes. The same could be said of Vietnam era reporting. Yet for as large of a role as the press played, the number of stories on its own role were minimal.

So what?

That silent partnership between social advocacy and journalism attracts a particular person. Many reporters are not driven by a desire to write. Rather they have a need to effect change.

The other thing about journalism is it a very staid and old culture. While your life went from abacus to computerized, your local paper probably got stuck somewhere around lawn darts. The culture just won’t change…because there is was no critiquing. There was no outside force compelling change. There was only one set of eyes and they were looking out at the world, never introspectively.

Technological lethargy has beene even more damning than political bias. If newspapers were not so resistant to digital interactivity then their biases would have been revealed and corrected at a less-than-tragic pace. However now the press is dealing with the dual issues of rampant political posturing and incessant scrutinization of their work.

In the newsroom I worked at, I got into more than one argument about just how fast the decline would come. The paper was scrambling to do things like implement user message boards or multimedia presentations. Other reporters actually gave me dirty looks when I recorded an interview with my mp3 player. Their mouths dropped when I was able to transcribe key portions then offer them in mp3 format as a supplement to my article. The number of people who were actually new to email made me want to cry.

The Internets can be rascally. Web interactivity presents added scrutiny. But it also opens up untapped readers. It took most papers a decade to figure this out. The lagtime was mostly due to arrogance. That arrogance stemmed from that unspoken courtship of advocacy and reporting I referred to earlier.

A revolution is well under way and the mainstream press has taken a serious hit. But citizen journalism is not perfect. There are a lot of hacks out there.

It would be silly for us to write off traditional journalism. But we should continue to push for greater transparency, innovative business models and better journalism.

Blah-blah-yada-yada. I talk too much.

The Race Card on August 17, 2007 at 2:12 PM

RyanOH on August 17, 2007 at 3:11 PM

Jaibones on August 17, 2007 at 3:15 PM

Excellent points.

Can we please never mention Mitch Albom again? The lining in my stomach can only take so much.

The Race Card on August 17, 2007 at 6:06 PM