While it may seem like a lifetime ago today, only a few years ago I was a student at a prominent state university studying the field of Journalism.
This diary is a first-hand, opinionated account of why I believe today's press has ultimately given John McCain a free ride thus far during the 2008 Presidential election.
All of the opinions and first-hand accounts expressed belong to myself, the diarist.
I entered my school's Journalism program during my Sophomore year of school. Having already spent a year writing for the sports section of our school newspaper, I was really less interested in the mechanics of how a newspaper was run, but more on writing style and how to make myself a better scribbler. After all, our school newspaper was a daily publication that ran more content, consistently than most of the local newspapers in the state.
Being a sports writer, politics was always somewhat of an afterthought for me. Something I was interested and passionate about, but in my opinion would never be more than a hobby. So, while in class I paid lip service to the day-to-day operations of a newspaper, only glancing up for the meat and bones writing lessons.
None of the newspaper operations lessons and classes ever bothered me, or even caught my attention until I enrolled in a mandatory class called "Journalism Ethics."
Most of the class was a real no-brainer; don't take bribes, don't become part of the story, etc. etc. Until one day we were talking about bias in reporting.
I'll never forget that my professor that day said these words:
"Many people perceive the press as having a 'liberal bias,' as reporters and editors we cannot allow our own subjective views to be reflected in our work."
At this, I was somewhat shellshocked. For starters, using the term 'liberal bias' is a conservative talking point. Secondly, I am all for objectivity, but the moment reporters start doing their work with the intention of avoiding a liberal conclusion any real objectivity goes out the window!
Simply put, my fellow students and I were being trained to start writing on the right and, at best cause our stories to end up in the center. This is as opposed to writing from the center, and letting our research point us in the appropriate direction.
The right's badgering of the press for years was working. They were screaming over and over again about how 'liberal' the media was, that the media was finally believing it.
This is why you get headlines that read, "Bush says Iraq has WMD's" as opposed to "Bush wrong about Iraq WMD claim."
To be certain this lesson wasn't exclusive to my own class, I encountered first hand evidence of this during my writing for our school newspaper and then later during my first job our of school for a small, daily.
On numerous occasions, I was told at my school newspaper that my weekly sports column that more than once made progressive political and pop culture references could no longer contain political references.
During my first job, my managing editor was a right-wing hack who didn't believe in global warming and would rather let a political event go uncovered than allow someone from the copy desk to write about it.
But I digress, my point is that the right has bitched and moaned ("worked the refs" if you will) to the level that all of our future journalists are being trained to write from the right. And now, when we need the fourth estate the most, you get nothing more than 'he said,' 'she said,' reporting.