A journalist shines light
With the sudden demise this past week of the Seattle Post - Intelligencer's print operation following closely behind that of the Rocky Mountain News, we are witnessing the beginning of the end for once-respected newspapers across the width and breadth of America.
This is the painful but predictable conclusion when media mavens willfully opt out of ethical responsibility and objective reporting.
Suicide by denial
The Fourth Estate is, after all, protected by the Constitution of the United States of America with the intent that it serve the people as a truthsayer, not as a servile slug to ideology or political party.
Democrat Party servility, to be precise. More examples? Established, extremely biased but now endangered print dinosaurs such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune are also nearing the tipping point, and not just because they're technologically challenged.
Editors, columnists, and allies of these Democrat Party organs bemoan a variety of reasons for their agonal gasps -- all of them remotely plausible, but all of them wide of the mark.
Such blind dart-throwing is nothing more than blatant denial, much like a drug addict desperately fighting intervention. There is but one primary reason for the terminal illness, and its name is bias.
When the press loses its ethical compass, its product is no longer reporting; It is propaganda, and it has turned off much of America.
Truth shall set you free
Which brings us to the meat of today's missive. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Bill Steigerwald is retiring after a 36-year career as an ink-stained wretch. Mr. Steigerwald's last column gives us a revealing glimpse into the bias-infected news rooms and editorial boards that today provide steerage for most of America's publications.
A segment of his column is highlighted below, but you must also read it in its entirety to truly sense the message behind his words. Mr. Steigerwald writes:
"Like many in my financially and technologically battered business, I went into journalism because I wanted to be a writer. But I also felt a duty to try to right the left-liberal imbalance of the news media, which were even more lopsided in the early 1970s without talk radio, cable TV, Fox News and the Internet.
As a reporter, I've tried my best to be accurate, fair and truthful. I've always been aware of the difference between news and opinion, between balance and bias, and between being a government watchdog and a government lapdog. And I have always known that every journalist and every editor I have ever worked with was helplessly subjective in their politics and in their definition of what news and bias were and were not.
Trust me, big-city daily newspapers don't go out of their way to achieve ideological diversity. About 90 percent of my work mates over the years were either avowed liberal Democrats or didn't know it. Reagan Republicans were virtually nonexistent. Until I got to the Trib, I was always the staff's lonely libertarian."
Corrupted ethics
Today in America, Drive-by Media bias is rampant. Mainstream print and broadcast outlets brazenly falsify stories, skew headlines, articles, and graphics to demonize their targets or those of their liberal masters, or simply choose not to report important events contrary to the Left's agenda.
The press (now construed to mean all forms of journalistic media) is the only private-sector entity specifically referenced in the Constitution, and whose freedom of expression is guaranteed.
As such, the journalistic ethics of objectivity and fairness must be strong influences on the profession, else the power derived from such mandated protection can be corrupted to do grave harm.
And media ethics are now as dead as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.