What has happened to Harold Evans?
Has anyone read this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/01/elections-obama-press-bias-mccain
Harold Evans's op ed in today's Guardian. I was genuinely shocked by it: not just the nastiness and the insane distortions, but the idea that a once great editor could have come to this. Catch these precious thoughts on the US media:
Forget the old notions of objectivity, fairness, thoroughness, and so on. The nastiest rumours on both sides haven't been published, but the coverage has been slavishly on the side of "the one".
Fox News has the vehement Sean Hannity paired with the mildly liberal Alan Colmes, not a fair match, but it has been more willing to investigate than CNN.
Let's hope the consequences of electing "the one" will be as wondrous as the press has led the voters to believe.
This man was editor of The Times and the Sunday Times for chrissake. He knows more about journalism than anyone alive.
I need your help here. What has happened to Harold Evans?
Didn't the McCain campaign earn the negative coverage it has received?
The job of the media is to report reality, isn't it?
The McCain campaign's mangling of the truth and outright lies have been so egregious that even the generally reticent reporters of the traditional media have apparently felt compelled to report them.
November 1, 2008 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. The notion that McCain has received unfair treatment at the hands of the press is the broader version of the "balance" argument. You must pretend both campaigns have acted in ways that warrant criticism or skepticism equally, even if that clearly isn't the case.
And, incidentally, the Obama campaign was criticized quite a bit earlier in the campaign for not "attacking" more. So they even tried to make a negative out of relatively clean campaigning.
Most polls have shown that people believe McCain has run the more negative campaign and that Obama has received less criticism from the press. I have yet to see a poll that asks folks if they believe the former fact justifies the latter.
November 1, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps it's because he has new friends. I rather doubt those new friends would welcome an Obama presidency.
November 1, 2008 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink