Rose42

Good article.

Lara Logan, former correspondent for “60 Minutes,” caused a stir last week when, on a podcast called “Mike Drop,” she said that too many in the media have become “political activists.” Here, she explains to The Post how one-sided reporting has undermined the credibility of the press.

I was a working journalist before I could legally drink. On Saturday nights in Durban, South Africa, when most kids in high school were partying with friends, my last job was to hand deliver first-edition copies of the Sunday newspaper where I worked to the police station, the fire station, the hospital and the morgue.

It was a violent time in South Africa. The people had risen up against the injustice of Apartheid to fight for freedom and the region where I grew up was one of the bloodiest. So I persuaded the guys on night shift at the morgue to break the rules and tell me how many dead bodies they had received. I asked so many questions, they gave in and let me count the bodies myself. It mattered because no one knew how many people were dying every night in the political violence. The police had a habit of clearing the dead from the streets so the government could hide the t***h.

But on that one night, every week, in that one place, I knew the t***h. And no one could take it from me because I learned it first hand.

I do my job today, some 30 years later, the same way I did it then: with an open mind, an open heart and a million questions. There is nothing more human than opinions and bias. To say we have none is dishonest. But what we do have as professional journalists is a simple standard to get us past that: two first-hand sources — question everything and independently verify. I didn’t invent this — I inherited it from people like Edward R. Murrow and I will keep passing it on.

Journalists are not activists. We may share the passion for a particular cause, but our job is to follow the facts wherever they may lead. We can’t ignore something that reflects badly on a noble cause, as an activist might. We have to care about the means as much as the end because our duty is to search for the whole t***h.

Nor are we lawyers in a court of law, cherry-picking facts to prove our case. Fortunately, there is only one t***h. How we feel about it, how we perceive it, those things are subjective but the t***h itself is not.

Above all, we are not propagandists or political operatives. That is not our job.

I have profound respect for my colleagues and for what we as journalists are at our best. Today, as a whole, we are not at our best. Just ask people in towns and cities across this country, as I do. Everywhere I go, people tell me they have lost faith in journalism. It comes from all people, all walks of life and all political stripes.

Frankly, I don’t blame them. Responsibility for this begins with us.

It is a fact that the vast majority of journalists in this country are registered Democrats. The colleges we come from are similarly dominated by one political ideology. This matters today because the reporting has become so one-sided. As we try to figure out why people have lost faith in our profession, let’s start by being honest about who we are.

I would feel the same way if the media were tilted in the opposite direction. It is the one-sided nature of this fight that disturbs me. Is that what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the first amendment?

We dismiss conservative media outlets for their political bias, but we don’t hold liberal media outlets to the same standard. Many journalists who claim to be objective have publicly taken a political stand, saying the urgency of the time justifies a departure from journalistic standards. Yet they ask us to believe their reporting is still unbiased?

It is not hard to find examples of how far we have strayed from reporting standards in the Trump era. A simple example is Time Magazine falsely reporting on President Donald J. Trump’s first day in office, stating that he’d removed a statue of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office. The news went v***l. But the writer did not follow the most basic rule of journalism — pick up the phone and ask the White House if it was really gone, and why? The writer late wrote a correction on his Twitter account, stating “The MLK bust is still in the Oval Office. It was obscured by an agent and door.”

Did this feed a r****t narrative Time and the reporter wanted to advance and believe, so no fact check was needed? I don’t know — did it? We all make honest mistakes and I am no exception. I’ve made a few of my own in three decades of reporting. But consider this mistake alongside 70 other examples on a running list compiled by independent investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who is one of the bravest journalists I know. Is it a mistake when media outlets keep beating the same drum over and over? With our credibility as low as it is today, it’s a question worth asking.

I will be attacked for writing these words. But I welcome these attacks because it tells me my words matter. And I speak on behalf of all journalists who believe in standing up for the t***h and honest, independent reporting. Most do not feel free to speak publicly. We live in a free country yet as journalists we are not free.

They can’t attack the substance of our work, so propaganda machines like David Brock and his staff at Media Matters for America, smear, manipulate and invent false narratives driven by their well-funded political agenda. With armies of bots and a stable of journalists that parrot their talking points, they silence and intimidate. They use our criticism of unfairness and bias to falsely accuse us of being conservative. But all of us know, the louder the attack, the closer we are to the t***h.

No one owns me. No party, no organization, no corporation. We are free because freedom lives in us. No one gives it to you or takes it away.

And we are strongest when we stand together.

https://nypost.com/2019/02/26/political-bias-is-destroying-peoples-faith-in-journalism/

Seth

I read the op-ed in today's NY Post this morning and was glad to see at least one denizen, however reluctant, of the sewer the mainstream media has become actually speaking the t***h about today's information industry.

It should be received as a wake up call by most of the MSM, but of course it won't; those people have already sold their souls, so to speak, throwing every last iota of personal journalistic integrity and honor into the abyss of l*****t obfuscation, revisionism and fabrication.

They are no longer journalists, they are totally unrepentant left wing propagandists.

Good on Lara Logan for verbalizing the t***h about the lion's share of her colleagues and by extension, her entire once-noble profession.

Bad on the gullible "Americans" who allow their social and political worldviews to become and remain distorted by these scum in disguise as journalists.

rumitoid

Rose, you don't find this article to be politically biased? Only singling out Media Matters as an example? Yes, they are highly biased. Extreme Left. But, if to be fair and responsible, a journalist, where is her complementary Extreme Right organization? Is she looking to generally improve journalism in this highly d******e time on both sides, or making the "liberal media" the ultimate bad guys? They are "the enemy of the people," as the president has repeatedly said?

If she wants to make a case "of how far we have strayed from reporting standards in the Trump era," why only single out the Left as the culprit? No Media outlets on the Right have thus strayed? All pure as the driven snow?

For seven paragraphs into the article what she said thrilled me and I was already preparing to thank you for such a fair and open-minded piece on journalism, which I hastily assumed was to counter the attack we have seen from the WH on the Free Press. A great hope filled me: an honor to this vital institution. A Free Press is the pillar of a Republic and a Democracy. But then she assigns all blame for "straying from journalistic standards" on the Liberal Media. Have they strayed? There is no doubt there has been bad and questionable reporting with a Left wing bias. Yet, again, there is no mention of such a failure by the Conservative Media, in effect implying that is the only place you can find t***h. Or, backing Trump's rhetoric about the Media.

Sorry, but this is just another hit piece trying to pose as honest reporting.

Seth

That's what you want to believe, because one policy of the phony left wing propaganda movement upon which you base your worldview is to dismiss any attempts to tell the t***h and expose it for what it is as "partisan."

That's just everyday Bolshevik OpSec.

Rose42

Elsewhere she has said journalists tend to bias their reporting based on their political party.

If you think this is a hit piece then you've misread it. She pointed her finger at all journalists. She also said "They use our criticism of unfairness and bias to falsely accuse us of being conservative. ". That sounds like she's a liberal.

Seth

She is a rarity, a liberal journalist with journalistic integrity.

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

Rose42

Progressivism is k*****g this country. True liberalism is different.

Dinty

Thank you for being an honest journalist. We need more like you.

bahmer

Amen and Amen

rumitoid

All she said about Conservative Media is that it is "dismiss"ed and then dedicated the rest of the article criticizing the Liberal Media, naming a specific group as well as using a specific example on the Left bad reporting without doing the same for the Right. That is bias.

"They use our criticism of unfairness and bias to falsely accuse us of being conservative." What she is saying here is that their (the Conservatives) justified criticism is being "dismissed" (as she stated earlier in the article) by the Left as mere party politics and thus not legitimate. She is not a Liberal.

rumitoid

"They can’t attack the substance of our work, so propaganda machines like David Brock and his staff at Media Matters..." Who is "they" if she then references a liberal organization?

Rose42

I didn't take that to mean she was talking about liberals only. I don't know why she chose that one example but if she'd chosen a conservative propaganda site instead I would think no differently of the article.

bahmer

Amen and Amen

Seth

Rumitoid, I must admit it can be quite amusing the way you twist yourself into a real pretzel to try to justify your portside POVs.

Kind of reminds me of this one:

https://youtu.be/sCMpKS77qn8