[I]t has been a long time since I have had an occasion to say this but … Bravo, Washington Post. [It just] announced that not only would it not endorse a candidate this year, but it would not do so in the future. When I first came out against political endorsements [two decades ago], the media had not plunged into advocacy journalism, which is now strangling the life out of this industry. … The result has been plummeting trust in the media to an all-time low. Yet, reporters still refuse to reconsider the abandonment of neutrality and objectivity.
GWU Law Professor Constitutional Scholar, Jonathan Turley, 8/26/24
We must be accurate and … believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing the 2nd requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. … It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. … Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. … Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more [only] to ourselves.
Jeff Bezos, Owner of Washington Post, 8/28/24
[If] Bezos is serious about making the Post a better more balanced paper he’s going to have to fire a bunch of people who will do their best to stop that … I’ll believe it when I see it. … [It’s] a wretched hive of scum and villainy where nothing surprising ever makes it into print because newsroom and audience are in partisan lockstep.
John Sexon, “Jeff Bezos: No One Trusts Journalists and It’s Journalists Fault,” 8/28/24
USA Today joins Washington Post and L.A. Times not endorsing a presidential candidate [in 2024] … L.A. Times had endorsed a presidential candidate each cycle since 2004, while the Post’s presidential endorsements date back to 1988. USA Today, which endorsed Biden in 2020, has been making endorsements since 1982.
David Artiva, Yahoo News, 8/29/24
Over 200 Gannett outlets not ‘endorsing in presidential or national races’ [in 2024]
The Hill, 8/28/24
[J.D.] Vance responded [to ABC’s Martha Radditz], “Martha, do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Trump is the problem and not Kamala’s open border?” Yes, she heard herself. This isn’t a problem because it doesn’t happen in her neighbourhood. … Raddatz and her husband, NPR journalist Tom Gjelton, live in a section of Arlington with multi-million-dollar homes, manicured lawns, low crime. The illegals [there do] domestic chores and are to be seen, not heard. Glenn Greenwald spoke about her home, featured in a 2017 article that gushed how Raddatz and Gjelton just spent “$2.125 million for a vintage home on coveted block in Arlington, VA.
David Kraydon, Human Events, 8/18/24
The decisions by multiple newspaper owners not to endorse a presidential candidate this year sparked revolts at these newspapers by “journalists” who feel the peasants are not sufficiently bright to make up their own minds. As Turley puts it,
The Washington Post Guild immediately went ballistic at the thought of not openly supporting Kamala. [They] expressed alarm at the thought of leaving readers to reach their own conclusions “a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election.” According to [them], the Post needs “to help guide readers.” … Perish the thought that the Post would … [let readers] reach their own conclusions. Former executive editor Martin “Marty” Baron and others went into absolute vapours. Baron declared, “This is cowardice, with democracy its casualty.” Others retreated into anonymity to denounce their management, with some [ironically] making the case for not doing the endorsement, [saying] “[This decision] disingenuously draws false equivalencies. This is not Kamala vs. Romney. This is Kamala against someone who tried to disenfranchise the electorate last time.” It is ironic since, at the time, Romney was portrayed as a fascist, as were prior Republican nominees.
Similarly, the decision at the LA Times caused a “tempest” and sparked multiple resignations. As Turley points out, some of the disgruntled “journalists” arguments for their position are Orwellian. That is, it would appear that by “democracy” these journalists” do not mean a system in which the demos (the people) make up their own minds, but one in which a cabal of elitist journalists who only talk to each other must “guide” them how to think. What a surprise! By “democracy” these “journalists” mean control by their clique!
Further, these media elitists cannot even remember their own dishonest history. Having, after talking with either other, concluded that since Trump is a unique threat to democracy, another Hitler, they decided that they must “guide” (control) what the peasants think. They have forgotten that, for them, the Republican candidate is, in their drearily predictable bubble, always a unique threat to democracy. Democrats have called virtually every Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and even weak RINO’s like John McCain, Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley, Hitler. It appears that the Democrat criterion for being Hitler is that one stands in their way.
Who do these “journalists,” sitting in their little bubbles of like-minded colleagues, think they are? What are their brilliant qualifications? Comedian Martha Radditz, who hates Trump, is a University of Idaho dropout, but that did not prevent her, like Obama, from purchasing a luxury home in an elite wealthy Venezuelan-free neighbourhood. Many “journalists” have a degree in Adolescent Studies from Forgettable U, which does not prevent them from falsifying the crime statistics to help the latest Democrat. Some, like Jake Tapper, have a Bachelor’s degree from what used to be a great school (Dartmouth), but Claudine Gay has shown what an Ivy League degree in Indoctrination Studies means these days. Although todays activist “journalists” constantly lecture us about “misinformation”, they cannot seem to get anything about Trump right and certainly cannot see their own prejudices. Some cannot even read. For years they told us or implied that Trump had praised NAZI’s and White Supremacists at the Charlottesville protest until Snopes finally found someone who could read at the 7th grade level and clarified that Trump did explicitly criticize those evil groups.
What one needs to understand difficult social issues is a philosopher in the grand sense of that word that includes wise political theorists, psychologists, historians and the like, not one of today’s minute “logic choppers.” Roughly speaking, one needs a Socrates, not some puffed up Lilliputian who could not pass a community college critical reasoning course.
Unfortunately, one cannot always find a Socrates when one needs one. One about every 2500 years seems about right. Since that is an impossible ideal, we must do the best with what we have. However, the very minimum is that any genuine “journalist” must have the humility to acknowledge their own massive limitations (of which the current crop, like Socrates’ ancient clueless interlocutors, seem to be completely unaware).
Socrates (Plato’s Apology): [If I am the wisest man alive,] it is because I alone know that I know nothing.
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