Disclaimers in Journalism, Part Two

       While Estase eschews the O.B. term "fake news," it remains clear that journalists seek an agenda other than the truth.  On last night's CBS Evening News, a segment entitled "Sexual Misconduct Alllegations" telescoped the cases of Bill O'Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, and a third man into one story.  The segment only actually discussed O'Reilly.  So the point of the segment was nothing other than an attempt to malign Fox News.
      So what about the fans of Peace & Love Inc., who claimed that Monica Lewinsky and suborning perjury was at bottom "just sex?"  So why is "just sex" a problem for Bill O'Reilly, but not Bill Clinton?
      What is even more outrageous is the fact that CBS presented the O'Reilly segment before their story on the Tampa serial killer!  Since when is sexual harassment a higher priority than an active serial killer?
       Another example is the difference in treatment between environmentalists and pro-lifers.  Unabomber Ted Kacynski was never described as an environmentalist.  Earth Liberation Force and its acts of eco-terrorism are never mentioned.  In contrast, journalists make sure to try to associate abortion clinic bombers with the millions of peaceful pro-lifers.
      These are prime examples of how settling scores with ideological enemies is the top priority for broadcast journalists.  Much overheated rhetoric has suggested Orange Blatherskite is an enemy of the free press.  O.B. may have a poor way of communicating it, but the problem of political advocacy in journalism is real, a problem journalists created themselves and refuse to address.

Disclaimers in Journalism

      Don't you ever wish journalism came with disclaimers?  Especially broadcast journalism, which is pretty much a parasitic craft depending mainly on original research done by newspapers.  Warning:  CNN spends most of the workday getting story ideas from the newspapers and reading public figures' Twitter postings.  This sort of thing would clear up the misconception that the TV news game is anything other than the blind leading the blind.
      Sometimes even history is warped by bad journalism.  The false narrative of a one-sided slaughter fest in Bosnia is repeated as gospel truth, by people who should know better.  The reality is that most of the press pool got no further than the swankiest hotels in Sarajevo, and the information they received came from media-savvy Bosnian Muslims.  The fact that UN peacekeepers under General MacKenzie contradicted the narrative sold by the media and Peace &Love Inc. was swept under the rug.  Historians are as gullible as anyone else;  tell a historian something was said on The Most Trusted Name in Cable News, and they will dutifully report it as an historical fact twenty-five years later.  Of course historians would go out of business if they were forced to use disclaimers.  Warning:  Ken Burns tells only the liberal side of history--one in which Woodrow Wilson is a god among men, and Richard Nixon was a psychopath.

Free to be Skewed

      Everyone who has right-of-center leanings knows that the media aren't their friends.  TV news, newspapers, and magazines typically advocate for bigger government, liberal social trends, and Democratic politicians.  These are just facts of life.  Orange Blatherskite, however has taken the step of banning five news organizations from White House press briefings.  One can easily tell reasonable people from Trump stooges by their response to this.  Reasonable people ( like those who remember any courses on civics or government) know that O.B. has gone too far;  that he is living down to the protofascist his enemies already believed him to be.  Trump stooges, in contrast, act as though this is somehow sticking it to the liberal media.  They forget that previous Republican presidents never assumed they had a right to exclude hostile journalists from the press pool.
       Fox News' Bret Baier has been right to defend CNN from this exclusion, pointing out that CNN cried foul when Oh Blah Blah tried to exclude Fox from the press pool.  The proper way to deal with liberal media bias is not to pretend they don't practice journalism.  Even dishonest journalists deserve to be treated as journalists.  The problem of liberal media bias is a problem that the consumer needs to deal with.  If you don't believe CNN or BuzzFeed is a reliable source, don't use them.  You don't deal with them by shutting them out from press conferences.  That is juvenile and counterproductive.  The last thing O.B. needs right now is to look like he doesn't respect a free press.