Chris Matthews talking about the history of America’s media with Anne Marie Cox (the original Wonkette) courtesy of Newsbusters:
Ana Marie Cox, Time.com: “I also want to say that this idea about voice being very important to the current viewer and, and Eugene’s right that it’s true, that this idea that we should be aiming for objective truth in, in journalism is a relatively new thing for us.”
Chris Matthews: “I agree.”
Cox: “And I think what’s important is that people trust, they could trust an unbiased [sic], they could trust a biased source.”
Matthews: “Okay, this country was built on biased reporting.”
Cox: “Yeah.”
Matthews: “Common Sense by Thomas Paine built this country and it was a point of view—better independence than British rule. There’s a point of view!”
I actually agree with Matthews. This country was built on biased reporting. At the founding of this nation, pretty much every newspaper had a declared ideology. There were Federalist newspapers and Anti-Federalist newspapers and each waded into their political enemies on a daily basis. There’s never been a time in this country when reporting has been truly objective. And not even that’s a problem. The problem with today’s media is twofold:
- Reporters and news sources claim to be objective all the time even though they aren’t.
- There is an ideological imbalance in today’s media, what with some 85% of journalists being declared liberals and registered Democrats.
Rather than just wearing their political opinions and allegiances on their sleeves, as the journalists of the past did, today’s reporters hide behind a smokescreen of objectivity they vainly pump into the air. And then from behind that veil they actively seek to silence voices in the media that disagree with them. Britain’s Daily Telegraph is reporting on a study done on the BBC which shows that the inherent liberal culture at the media outlet has led to a lack of ideological diversity in their reporting and a failure to adequately cover both sides of political issues.
And if you think that same thing isn’t going on at places like CNN and the New York Times here in America you’re fooling yourself.
Frankly, I think we’d all be better served if we went back to an adversarial media. Let’s have Fox News square off against CNN (sort of happening already). Let’s have the Wall Street Journal take on The New York Times. The resulting conflict would probably do more to ensure that Americans are informed of both sides of a given issue than anything the media is doing now.