Mainstream news dissemination now is governed by all sorts of politically correct calculations. From Tim Harnett at lewrockwell.com:
People who don’t make sense are not always incompetent. Fuzzy ideas make good camouflage while sneaking up on the public with an ideological Louisville Slugger. Trying to squeeze out the point can be counterproductive. If you’re game for a lengthy splainin’ ask, ‘just what do you mean?’ It’ll learn you to say ‘uncle’ before delving further.
There is a lot of talk circulating about how to improve on the free flow of information enabled by the World Wide Web. It isn’t always authoritarian. Incredulous as it may seem, there are news industrialists who suggest altering their own behavior rather than restricting everyone else’s. What can any sound mind make out of the proposal below bloviating from Arizona State University? Will it improve news consumers’ understanding of what’s going on? Or, is it a plot to achieve escape velocity from reality’s gravitational pull?
ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, funded by the Stanton Foundation, generated a 54 page e-pamphlet titled: “Beyond Objectivity; Producing trustworthy news in today’s newsrooms.” The authors are former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie jr. and Andrew Heyward, a president emeritus of CBS News. The first sentence asks: “What does it mean today for a journalist or news coverage to be “objective?” As this question is never answered, what they are fighting against might as well be a Sasquatch. We are told:
“Objectivity” is defined by most leading dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice.” Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing, although accuracy, fairness and balance have been variously mentioned with it over the years.
In fact, the concept of journalistic objectivity has never been formally defined or codified in any enforceable professional standards, which do not exist for American journalism under the First Amendment.”
