Democracy Forum . Some really scary stuff:
Arianna confirmed this basic approach in her talk today at PDF,
and it is scary.
She began by railing against the "false objectivity" of the mainstream
media. She cites the tendency to match global warming believes [sic]
with skeptics on public debate shows, when in fact the media should
acknowledge one side as The Truth and be done with it.
She says the fact that Iraq is an unmitigated disaster is an objective
Truth and the media should never consider reporting on it as anything
but. And if they don't, the "newspaper of the Internet" will.
Townhall's Chuck DeFeo, on stage, rightly calls this out this out as a
return to the worst of old media's Voice of God. Except this time, more
overtly in service of a partisan agenda.
She's saying that the news media isn't obligated to give opposing view points when
she thinks the other side is wrong. Journalists have to be accurate, factual, and yes,
truthful. However, some issues are complicated and really need to be debated in
the public sphere. Aren't conservatives lambasted for their certitude? For example,
George Bush is often called stubborn. So, it's pretty audacious for Arianna to claim
global warming is not debatable, thus, there's no need to present the voices of
skeptics.
I would never give our media a stranglehold on truth. Truth is not for them to
decide. Some things are straight forward but other things are debatable. For
example, she talks about global warming. If there is a temperature increase, that
would be hard fact. It's provable by scientific method and measurements.
However, to say they we need a cap and trade policy to bring the temperature
down, that's debatable.
Also, I've heard the anti-war critics claim the media was complicit with the rush
to war and didn't give peace activists a place to counter the propaganda. Arianna
herself is against the Iraq war. So she's basically advocating doing the same thing
that was done to ant-war activists. Shouldn't she be advocating for the exact opposite?
Making sure more voices are heard, not silenced.
No comments:
Post a Comment