mercredi, novembre 18, 2009

Party like it's 1984

This morning my former colleague and present friend Mollie posted on a story (loosely) from Politico on the Catholic bishops and abortion. Now, Politico is generally pretty trustworthy when it comes to the wall between opinion and hard news. But read this for yourself and judge whether David Rogers has jumped the line, right into advocacy journalism.

What hot button words does he use? Does he give us clues as to what he thinks? Are the bishops and their ideological opponents fairly represented? Are we being led, as opposed to being given diverse opinions and figuring it out for ourselves?

If you have time do some thinking before you wander over to GetReligion and read Mollie's post. I'm going to make it a little harder by not linking to it so you can't get there right off.

But it's not only liberal journalists who do push their audience. A few days ago one of my good friends forwarded an email she got from someone else. It was a hatchet job on Michelle Obama -- coming out of the so-called "Canada Free Post." It took me seconds to find out that the Canada Free Post is a conservative mutant -- and to find the Snopes.com post debunking most of the Michelle Obama trash talk.

How come folks don't bother to do this before they push "send"? Is it because I'm a mirror-gazing journalist that I even care?

As I wrote my pal, people have good ideological reasons, and some pretty creepy (read "birther") reasons for not liking the Obamas. For Pete's sake, lets be honest about our motives. But my buttons get pushed, big-time, when I see the crap, frankly, that becomes "truth" simply because a friend or relative believes it and sends it on to you.

Should I have called her out on this? Hmmm....not sure. I haven't heard back from her.

With the decline of mainstream journalism, we are losing writers who even make a pretense or take a shot at objectivity. Liberal readers get to take in their drug of choice, while conservatives have plenty of places to go for theirs.

Sounds like George Orwell land to me. But maybe I'm the one who is deluded.

1 commentaire:

norman pease a dit…

yes, an ill reported piece, boarding on an op-ed. The views of the pro life folks were represented, but not thier arguments. One does get the "feeling" that his opinion is the church (congregations included) have no place in this issue as regards health reform. I'll skip the get religon post however.