In his column today, “media critic” Howard Kurtz laments the nasty reaction from his own readership to a recent Tweet of his.
A Fox News poll came out the other night, and I tweeted some of the findings about President Trump.
No analysis, no commentary. Just a few numbers. . .
Well, you’d have thought I had called for the president’s impeachment.
I practically got buried under an avalanche of angry tweets.
And here’s the saddest part:
Most of them didn’t seem to want to engage in an actual discussion. They just attacked me, Fox, and polling in general.
Wow, Fox consumers didn’t want to “engage in an actual discussion”? I’ll be darned. As for attacking polling, I can’t imagine what politicians or news outlets could have primed them to that attitude. Hmmm.
Kurtz’s lack of self-awareness here is particularly notable, given his niche in the journalism ecosystem. Before finding his natural habitat at Fox, he was CNN’s media correspondent/critic and anchor of the unwatchable Reliable Sources. One of his primary tasks was to perpetuate the “liberal bias” myth – and indeed, many episodes were dominated by segments like “were the media unfair to [Republican]?” or “did coverage favor the Democrats during [recent controversy]?”
(Note: Reliable Sources is now a great show under the tutelage of Brian Stelter.)
As scholars have documented thoroughly, the liberal-bias myth has done more to delegitimize the press than any other factor. Sure, many of the media’s wounds are self-inflicted – most at dKos are well aware of the litany of quirks and shortcomings that hamper the for-profit press’ ability to give citizens the information we need to participate in our self-governance. But, although most of us shrug it off as a conservative talking point, the liberal-bias myth is by far the most widely believed and most impactful criticism of the mainstream media, and Kurtz has spent more than 20 years propagating it.
This is a perilous time for the free press in America, as the Montana incident showcases. Journalism, despite its quirks, deserves a spirited defense from the anti-democratic forces that threaten it.
However, forgive me if I take pleasure in one “journalist’s” realization that the monster he helped create has turned against him.