The following is a portion of a speech by Michael Goodwin ‘…delivered on April 20, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar.’
Michael Goodwin
‘I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale—that most of what you read, watch, and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.
It’s not exactly breaking news that most journalists lean left. I used to do that myself. I grew up at The New York Times, so I’m familiar with the species. For most of the media, bias grew out of the social revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Fueled by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the media jumped on the anti-authority bandwagon writ large. The deal was sealed with Watergate, when journalism was viewed as more trusted than government—and far more exciting and glamorous. Think Robert Redford in All the President’s Men. Ever since, young people became journalists because they wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, find a Deep Throat, and bring down a president. Of course, most of them only wanted to bring down a Republican president. That’s because liberalism is baked into the journalism cake.
During the years I spent teaching at the Columbia University School of Journalism, I often found myself telling my students that the job of the reporter was “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I’m not even sure where I first heard that line, but it still captures the way most journalists think about what they do. Translate the first part of that compassionate-sounding idea into the daily decisions about what makes news, and it is easy to fall into the habit of thinking that every person afflicted by something is entitled to help. Or, as liberals like to say, “Government is what we do together.” From there, it’s a short drive to the conclusion that every problem has a government solution.
The rest of that journalistic ethos—“afflict the comfortable”—leads to the knee-jerk support of endless taxation. Somebody has to pay for that government intervention the media loves to demand. In the same vein, and for the same reason, the average reporter will support every conceivable regulation as a way to equalize conditions for the poor. He will also give sympathetic coverage to groups like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
A New Dimension
I knew all of this about the media mindset going into the 2016 presidential campaign. But I was still shocked at what happened. This was not naïve liberalism run amok. This was a whole new approach to politics. No one in modern times had seen anything like it. As with grief, there were several stages. In the beginning, Donald Trump’s candidacy was treated as an outlandish publicity stunt, as though he wasn’t a serious candidate and should be treated as a circus act. But television executives quickly made a surprising discovery: the more they put Trump on the air, the higher their ratings climbed. Ratings are money. So news shows started devoting hours and hours simply to pointing the cameras at Trump and letting them run.’ https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/2016-election-demise-journalistic-standards/?appeal_code=MK617EM2&utm_source=housefile&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2016_election_demise_journalistic_standards&utm_campaign=imprimis&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8xC9qvSWV5-xz889Lo2pUynHpbDIeJNdI0N-j9LKB2mTI5Caki20vGUTsvAzQhXcBZKR0gt3XOpDvyC_vrvbTlKbiHlw&_hsmi=53242815
who stole their SUV and held them at gunpoint until the police arrived.
John, after spending more than 12 years in jail for preaching the Gospel, finally accepted a license to preach! While that was wrong in my opinion, it does not diminish Bunyan’s courageous stand against King Charles II and the king’s demand that John and other dissidents (those who disagree) not preach the Gospel. Preaching the Gospel was very costly to all except the Church of England preachers and even they did not have total freedom of conscience since they had to obey the King and Parliament regarding religious matters.
on ethnicity, nation, race or religion is prohibited”. Since then, it has been used to criminalize any criticism of Arab and African delinquency, any question on immigration from the Muslim world, any negative analysis of Islam. Many writers have been fined and most “politically incorrect” books on those topics have disappeared from bookshops.
one say that only white Americans have benefited? Haven’t blacks also benefited? After all, American Blacks, as a group, have more money than many of the nations of the world! According to David Horowitz, their income is up to fifty times more than that of Blacks “living in any of the African nations from which they were kidnapped.” So if present-day Whites have benefited from slavery, so have present-day Blacks.
power to label anyone a domestic terrorist.
were being forced into sexual slavery in Iraq and Syria at the hands of Islamic State (ISIS), and available for purchase at sex-slave markets.”
cartoonist. They poke and prod accepted wisdom and social conventions in ways that people can find uncomfortable.
disdain for 18C by lodging a complaint under the provision he wants to repeal.
. Therefore what characteristics does ISIS and Saudi Arabia have in common? They both claim to be Muslim. They both claim to believe the Koran. They both view women as inferior to a man. They both claim to follow Mohammad and his teachings. They both behead people. They both promote Sharia.
whatyareckon 