Links gone wild!
Here’s an existential conundrum for you: How much liberal bias can the media have if the proof of that bias is rooted out by the media itself? While you’re puzzling over that Gordian knot of logic, go here for a report from MSNBC on political contributions made by journalists since 2004. The investigation identified 144 media people who gave money to political candidates, parties or PACs. Of that total, 125 of them donated to Democrats and liberal causes. I went over the list name by name, and discovered I’m a personal acquaintance with a grand total of one contributor: Los Angeles Times writer Dan Neil, who made himself famous in Raleigh by turning his car reviews for the News & Observer into a bizarre art form. The conclusion? The people I hang around with don’t have enough money to make such contributions. Or maybe they have both money and the good sense not to give it to politicians.
Haven’t had your fill of Mike Nifong yet? Well, I pity you, but I understand that some itches need a lot of scratching. So here are two more things to read about l’affair Nifong. The first is an explanation why his removal from office is a one-time, perfect-storm event, not an indication that prosecutorial misconduct is taken seriously by the justice system. (We in North Carolina don’t even have to look far to know that’s true. Prosecutors here put an innocent guy on death row by doing the same thing Nifong did — hiding exculpatory evidence — and their punishment a couple of years ago couldn’t even be called a slap on the wrist.) The other piece notes an interesting historic parallel between the Duke lacrosse case and the famous Jim Crow-era trials of the Scottsboro Boys. After you read it, you’ll surely have to acknowledge, as I did, that we’ve achieved a strange kind of social progress: White skin can get you convicted in the court of public opinion just as surely as black skin once did.
I can’t conclude on that ponderous note, however. Go here for some unadulterated fun. I suspect that no genre of music lends itself more readily to parody than rap. Throw in some Riverdance and random images of the bar from “Cheers,” and you’ve got yourself one strange, hilarious music video. Go ahead and dance. I do every time I watch it.
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:58 am
Thank you for making clear a mostly unmentioned meaning of the Nifong spectacle. I’m still too mad, and mulling over what how many others have to say about the lacrosse/Gell (as a glaring example, of course not the only instance) conundrum, to have written about it myself. Clearly, the impact of the prosecutorial misconduct is more severe in capital cases - but I believe that ardent supporters of the lacrosse players labor under the worldview wherein people of their class suffer equally, when they are inconvenienced or discomforted temporarily, as do lesser mortals when they are executed or incarcerated wrongfully for the bulk of their adulthood. There is a real belief that people of their station in life are of inherently higher value, and infinitely higher sensitivity. The same dichotomy is also visible to a more ridiculous extent in the discussions of the “persecution” of Paris Hilton.
I would quibble mildly with your assessment of the media political contributions. Don’t most media employers prohibit any political activity, certainly including participating in a campaign in any way, on the part of the journalists (if not all employees) in their employ? I find it conceivable that people with strong political views hindered from expressing them in that most visceral of ways, by giving their own money to a candidate who they believe will pursue their views, may be more likely to sublimate those views in their work - not necessarily intentionally, but perhaps with the same result.
While most journalists adhere to the credo of objectivity, and many try hard to remain apolitical, things do change from the beginning of a career through the later years of it. Living and observing and caring all lead to the formation of beliefs more basic to one’s being than mere opinion about current events - and while you have said you are a conservative and I definitely am not, I think we both, along with many others who use words to make a living, have no choice but to reflect our beliefs.
That said, I do tend to disagree that there is a liberal media bias - the values of the journalists being nicely balanced, and perhaps overbalanced, by the views of their corporate employers. And I don’t think an analysis of media member’s political contributions can prove it either way, because of the ban on contributions I mention above.