Journalists are People Too

MSNBC recently published an excellent article on professional journalists who give money to politicians. The article, The list: Journalists who wrote political checks, is a classic piece of investigative journalism by Bill Dedman.

Dedman identified 143 journalists who had given money to political causes. He found 125 journalists who had given to Democrats and liberal causes, 16 journalists who had given to Republican or conservative causes, and two journalists who had contributed money to both sides.

Why is this a big deal? Most news organizations have ethics rules which bar their reporters from participating in partisan politics. Many of these people could be fired for their actions.

Many “professional” journalists consider themselves “above” politics. They somehow believe that they are immune from bias and that everything they report is “objective.”

What a pile of horse manure! None of us are objective. The only path to objectivity starts with accepting and understanding our personal biases. These people are deluding themselves, and then they are attempting to delude their audiences.

From a purely political perspective, we can plainly see that almost eight times as many journalists contributed to left-wing causes than right-wing causes.  Media bias is real and it is strongly bent to the left.

I would be OK with this bias if these holier-than-thou liberals would just come out into the open and admit their biases.  Instead, they lie to us and claim an objectivity which does not — and can not — exist.

The Internet is slowly releasing the stranglehold mass-media has held on news reporting for the last several hundred years.  This change is being accelerated by the realization that the “professional” journalists employed in mass media have been lying to us for decades.  If mass media wants to continue to exist in the future, it is going to have to come clean with it’s audience.  The “professional” journalists are going to have to admit their personal biases and engage their audiences in an honest dialog about the issues.  If they can’t honestly and intelligently support their personal beliefs, they  should be replaced by a new generation of journalists who can.