While it’s quite true that the conceivably noble profession of journalism has been effectively ruined by an inbred ‘progressive’ activism there remains a tiny number of liberal newspersons who continue to live up to the classic liberal ideal of dialectical–as opposed to ’social’– justice.
Very near the top on my list of good liberal journalists truths the Progressive Broadcasting System’s Jim Lehrer. The man is a veritable paragon of decency and fairness. It is impossible that he could ever reduce himself to the sort of petty contrivances of the uberbiased Bill Moyers. And you know he has to be an extraordinarily grounded and sane individual because he has just published his seventeenth novel!
I am a staunch defender of the NewsHour–it’s simply the best audio-visual daily forum for discussion of current events. Lehrer & Co. balance the ‘debate’ marvelously. I only very occasionally spot a progressive framing issue.
But alas, in the end the bias comes through. I speak of the NewsHour essayists who frequently appear at the end of the broadcast to perform their tele-essays on matters socio-politcal-cultural and cultural-historical-pastoral.
They are to a person liberals: Anne Taylor Fleming. Roger Rosenblatt. Clarence Page. Richard Rodriguez. Responsible, moderate, likeable liberals, yes, but liberals for all that. I almost invariable quarrel with liberal assumptions embedded in their presentations.
So how could my ‘paragon of decency and fairness’ allow such a monopoly of opinion? The easy answer is that the essay is clearly set up to be non-partisan. And who better to deliver a non or bi-partisan essay than a card-carrying liberal? But I can’t believe that my esteemed Mr. Lehrer could really think or believe such a thing. Unless unconsciously.
It must be that the biases which so irritate me are not even noticeable to the liberals—including the essayists themselves and the great Mr. Lehrer—who edit and produce, etc. This single point was the cornerstone argument of Bernard Goldberg’s controversial tract .
I think I am going to have to write Mr. Lehrer a fan letter, slipping in my view of the essay matter.
Filed under: KulturKampf, Progessive Broadcasting System | Leave a Comment
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