Washington Post's Admission More Proof of Need for Media Behavior Changes
Posted: Monday, November 10, 2008
by Jean Purcell
OpineBooks.com
Post-2008 election cycle, fallout about media bias continues with The Washington Post newspaper's latest admission. The company's ombudsman has admitted what the public already knew---The Post's extreme bias during the Obama-McCain contest for President, against Sen. McCain.
The mea culpa is an attempt to move on, now that The Post says, in effect, "Oh, hello, we're awake now."
Check Newsweek's 2008 covers and articles. The same level of bias, or worse,is there to see.
This bad habit is these media outlets' own, intentional doing at a time when their finances are not good.
During the Democrat Party shake-out, Geraldine Ferraro, a former Democrat VP candidate, with Walter Mondale's presidential candidacy decades ago, called for a group to study gender bias in news reports about or ignoring Senator Hillary Clinton's primary-cycle performance and views. Will Mrs. Ferraro follow-through? If she does, will she do so in a way that will gain attention and, most important, reliable results?
Mrs. Ferrero et al. should expand the scope to include all female politicians, including Gov. Sarah Palin.
They should also address the overall failure of news journalism this year to provide reliable, opinion-less news reports. That failure of public trust demands the light of further exposure and remedy.
The biggest problem shows in the spike in news uses of "anonymous sources" with no back-up by identifiable ones.
The cure for the failed members of the media is to look to colleagues that have not broken faith with news consumers.
Those successful media outlets stuck with the basics of good news journalism. It's not "rocket science." Any media management can return to it if they set their minds on it.
Deserved kudos to journalists and media management that never left the main road of reliable news. They exist all over the country. They deserve to prosper.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I enjoyed your article and agree with everything that you wrote. It is very sad that they push their beliefs on their readers. A papers opinion belongs on the editorial page, not on the front page.
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