Follow the Money

Reporters constantly deny that they are biased in favor of left-wing politics, though somehow their reporting always seems to be more favorable towards Democrats and leftist than Republicans and conservatives. One certainly cannot remember any event similar to the attempt by Dan Rather and CBS News to use forged documents to bring down a sitting President performed by newspeople as regards Democrats. Even the $90,000 in cash found in Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson's freezer wasn't enough for reporters to bring some balance to their campaign to elect Democrats in the last elections.

However, there has rarely been more definitive proof of just how partisan reporters are than this report just released by MSNBC, which found that reporters donate to left-wing organizations over conservative organizations by a 9 to 1 margin. And many of these donors are in positions where they have enormous influence on what America sees or reads about in the news.

New Yorker magazine writer Mark Singer is fairly representative when he said,

"Probably there should be a rule against it," said New Yorker writer Mark Singer, who wrote the magazine's profile of Howard Dean during the 2004 campaign, then gave $250 to America Coming Together and its get-out-the-vote campaign to defeat President Bush. "But there's a rule against murder. If someone had murdered Hitler — a journalist interviewing him had murdered him — the world would be a better place. I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don't regret it."

Like most journalists, Singer is entitled to his opinion. However, leaving aside the propriety of comparing George Bush, an elected President with Adolf Hitler, an appointed leader who then seized power illegally, is the fact that if Singer holds views this strong, then how can he be trusted to present the news fairly? In talk radio, the opinions of the host are on full display- listeners know what they are getting. the same is true in the blogosphere, in the main.

The New Yorker seems to have special problems with bias by their staff. According to the MSNBC article,

The last bulwark against bias’s slipping into The New Yorker is the copy department, whose chief editor, Ann Goldstein, gave $500 in October to MoveOn.org, which campaigns for Democrats and against President Bush. "That's just me as a private citizen," she said. As for whether donations are allowed, Goldstein said she hadn't considered it. "I've never thought of myself as working for a news organization."

Really, Ms. Goldstein? then what exactly do you define the New Yorker as? An entertainment magazine? A sports magazine? It is fairly easy to identify it as a news source, yet the staff seems to have no problem using their power to push public opinion the way they want it to go.

It seems that for mainstream media, it is easy to suppress their biases in favor of objective reporting. Seeing as how the same reporters claim that they are able to rise above bias, yet are unable to credit conservatives with this ability, it seems only reasonable to doubt that they are able to do so either. Personally, I see people like Goldstein and Singer as less journalists than propagandists- more akin to Joseph Goebbels than to Ernie Pyle. And the only recourse is for America to continue to punish their employers in the pocketbook. If no one reads them, then their opinions do not matter.

As Michael Ledeen likes to say, "Faster, please".

06/22/2007 UPDATE: My apologies- I forgot to paste in the link to the actual MSNBC article. I have fixed it now.