Comments on: Journalist Responds

By: Jim R

Jim R — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 09:27:52 +0000

Sue and Jim,
I think you have condensed the problem nicely. I hope more journalist are listing…uh, reading. I think they are.

I believe it was SCSIwuzzy that said on another La Shawn post: “Just report the facts, not the truth”.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 02:23:08 +0000

Whatever…it all sounds like doubletalk to me. The bottomline is the media now has a much needed check and balance and they’re having a hard time digesting this democratic sandwich.

By: SCSIwuzzy

SCSIwuzzy — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 17:19:48 +0000

Sue,
I can go for that. I could also deal with open bias. Make it clear you are partisan, one way or the other, so that we, the public know what filters we need to use when evaluating the report.
One good point Satullo made (though it is by no means new) is that many journalists make the logical error in thinking that they are by definition fair. Like one of the other posters mentioned last week, about his athiest reporter friend who thought that being an athiest made him unbiased regarding religion.
I think a truly unbiased person with regards to religion is even more rare than the politically unbiased (most people who truly have no bias in these areas can chalk it up to ignorance rather than enlightenment )

By: Sue

Sue — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 15:38:38 +0000

The public has been complaining about bias in the media for years. The last few years, journalists started telling us that no one can be objective since we all have our biases so they strive to be fair. Well, as far as I am concerned they lost the argument so they changed the terminology. I remember watching David Brinkley and I could never tell what his politics were (although I read he was a liberal) when he was talking. That’s what I want them to strive for, not “fairness” which they choose to define. When you read or listen to a journalist and can tell where he stands in politics, he has lost every argument whether is fairness or objectivity.

By: SCSIwuzzy

SCSIwuzzy — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 14:27:32 +0000

Hmmm. Maybe if Satullo was on the ed board, I’d start buying the Inky again…

By: RepJ

RepJ — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 14:09:27 +0000

I’m still mad at him for writing nasty things about “some” bloggers. What does he think of Daily Kos, who wrote of the American contractors that were burned alive in Iraq… “s**** them”. Orwellian or no? On a different note, I wonder how print journalists felt about pamphleteers back in the day.

By: lyle

lyle — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 13:10:17 +0000

I find Satullo’s defense of ‘the Paris Hilton crack’ annoying. As an editor, he should recognize – at least upon reflection – that it makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Dan Rather has been a prominent TV journalist for four decades. It is hard to think of anyone more de facto representative of MSM than Dan Rather, whether Mr Satullo wants to be ‘lumped in’ with him or not. And Paris Hilton has never been a farm girl.

The analogy irritates because it is, frankly, idiotic.

By: AWG

AWG — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 13:04:36 +0000

Chris Satullo, I salute you. Thank you for taking the time to clarify your points, and for doing so with dignity and class. That in and of itself shows that you’re walking the walk that you wrote about (here and originally).

And I salute you too, La Shawn, for sharing this with us. Props and what-whats to you!

By: William Meisheid

William Meisheid — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:27:55 +0000

Chris, thank you for coming on and having your say and La Shawn thank you for airing it in a post so it would not get buried.

I have always believed that what is key is being up front about your prejudices and biases to your readers. Then everyone knows the playing field. I have always considered that then what you write between the first and last words should be honest, well researched, and have a fair devil’s advocate component that explores the holes in your own thinking (when opinions are expressed).

It is so easy to slip things in though. Last night, while watching “Cold Case” there was a character who had been a junky but cleaned himself up and joined the National Guard. The policeman interviewing him said soemthing along the lines of, “You got yourself clean and are doing a stint in the Guard. With a start like that you could become President.” In print, that line could be neutral and left to the reader to interpret. In the mouth of the actor it was snide semi-putdown.

For me, too many journalists are like actors who interject that snideness into the neutral possibility so that the statement might be, “You got yourself clean and are doing a stint in the Guard. With a start like that even a lowlife junkie could become President.”

That is why I have such a big problem with a lot of TV news. Dan Rather, for example, literally drips sarcasm even when reading innocuous neutral material. If you were reading the transcript you would say there is nothing wrong with that, but watching the broadcast the additional component adds a profound level of bias.

By: Sissy Willis

Sissy Willis — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 10:28:58 +0000

Way, way cool. I like it, big time.

By: Right Journal

Right Journal — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

[...] nbsp; Filed under: Blogs — J. Thomas@ 8:22 am La Shawn Barber writes about a journalist who responded to her critique of him. La Shawn was on target in her [...]