JOURNALISM IS NOT DEAD
By Ari David

Mark Twain famously said rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated. I would say the same thing about the reputation of journalism in this day and age. Unfortunately for journalism, in recent opinion polls 67% of registered democrats believe the main stream media is biased towards liberal politicians and biased against conservative ones in their reporting. If you think that’s high, 90% of registered conservatives believe the media is unfairly slanted against public figures who share conservatives’ views.

I am tired of this reputational trashing of the hard working people who graduated from the Columbia School of Broadcasting. I believe many people who work in the news collection and dissemination business show nothing but professional objectivity towards those they are covering and are equally hard on all sides of an issue with tough, insightful questions and the endless curiosity needed to get to the underlying truth of the matters affecting Americans today. I would like to honor some of them with this piece.

First, I would like to give kudos to the hard working reporters at the New York Times for their coverage of the New York Mets baseball team’s catastrophic relief pitching staff. This is a problem that has plagued the Mets since last year when their season ending collapse cost them a playoff appearance. The reporters for the Old Grey Lady accurately placed the blame on the Mets manager and pitchers and by golly the public was fully informed to make an educated assessment of the Mets championship prospects or lack thereof. Bravo to journalistic standards at the Times.

Second, I want to honor ESPN with their in-depth and fair wall-to-wall coverage of the Brett-Favre-being-forced-to-retire-from-the-Green-Bay-Packers-football-team and the ensuing Aaron-Rodgers-at-quarterback-for-the Packers-while-Brett-Farve-is-traded-to-the-New-York-Jets fiasco. Without ESPN (owned by the Disney folks) the fine people of Green Bay, Wisconsin might have actually believed Brett Favre inaccurately thought he had no more seasons left to play winning football with his golden arm. If it wasn’t for the thoughtful, thorough insight of Chris Mortensen, there is a chance nobody would ever have known. High five Mort! Way to get the word out!

The Los Angeles Times did a bang up job letting us know every detail about Kobe Bryant’s pinky-finger injury. Laker fans like me might have been in the dark all season long wondering why Kobe wasn’t 100% healthy if the Times did not do a thorough and unbiased job. If it wasn’t for the Times I might have thought it was Kobe’s thumb that was the problem. Or even his toe. Thank goodness for clarity.

So there, I have cited three high profile examples of the media doing their job fairly and without bias.

Now the only lingering question about the media’s integrity is why they put their best reporters on the sports beat. Imagine if these bang up reporters covered the fraud that is man made global warming or Barak Obama’s relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers. Imagine if it was Bill Plaschke, esteemed no-nonsense sports writer of the LA Times instead of Wolf Blitzer from CNN’s news desk’s ‘situation room’ covering the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac meltdown. If it was, Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines would definitely not get away with being part of the Obama campaign. Instead they would probably be in front of a senate select committee answering questions about their role in the mortgage mess under oath. Jamie Gorilik would have to explain all of the bonuses and kickbacks she received working as an executive at these firms as well. Maybe the connection between Nancy Pelosi and radical groups like Code Pink, AKORN and Move-on Dot Org would be exposed as the controlling powers of the Democratic Party. Then perhaps Pelosi would be run out of her position as Speaker of the House after being exposed to the American people as the communist activist she is.

Maybe, just maybe, Americans would be able to make better informed decisions about relevant issues if the news media covered news the way the sports media covers sports. It is sickening to me that the sports media cares more about uncovering every detail about a football player’s drunk driving arrest or a baseball player’s steroid use more thoroughly than CNN, ABC, NBC, MS-NBC, CBS, Time Magazine, Newsweek magazine, The Associated Press and numerous major city newspaper’s reporters cover Barak Obama’s admitted illegal drug use and alleged homosexual trysts with male prostitutes, his known associations with radical extremists engaged in anti-American, criminal and violent activity or, god forbid his chronic cigarette smoking habit. At least the mainstream media has reported that Obama plays pick-up basketball on occasion. I guess since that’s sports related, it deserves scrutiny. What I really would like to know is how Obama’s teeth stay so white after all that nicotine and tobacco tar exposure. What brand does he puff? What tooth whitening system does he use? Laser? Gel? Maybe FOX News will find out one day unless ESPN can scoop them.

I know many Americans have their priorities a little whacky. Many Americans know more about this week’s Dancing with the Stars winning couple than they know about the true existence and quantities of nerve gas stockpiles that the U.S. military discovered in Iraq. That’s just the nature of life when we live in a safe and prosperous country such as ours with as many hedonistic, sybaritic and popular culture distractions as we have and can enjoy at our leisure.

The problem is that an informed electorate, well informed on the facts of the issues at hand in this day and age, is critical to preserving this country’s safety, prosperity and freedom. In an election year like this one, on which so much matters, it is a tragedy of immense proportion that so many well educated people just buy whole cloth the preposterous factoids the mainstream news media reports as rumor or truth and then these well informed people repeat it as gospel. "Bush lied, people died", "We can’t drill our way out of the problem", “The Oceans are rising because the world has a fever”, "Vast right wing conspiracy", “George Bush is not just stupid, he is evil”, and my favorite, "The book-burning evangelical-crusading anti-abortionist tax-cutting gun-toting meat-eating ignorant of the Bush doctrine stay at home barefoot pregnant retard-breeding rube, Sarah Palin, doesn’t have the experience to lead a nation because she never met a foreign head of state and she is a racist because she pokes fun at the highest virtues of community organizing." All of these factoids are preposterous, all of them are lies and all of them are easily refutable with a little bit of research motivated by intellectual curiosity but on and on the intellectual elite drone this mindless repetition of poppycock like sheep in a pasture. I only wish they were headed for the slaughterhouse.

Thank God at least the sports media has that innocent quality of curiosity. If they didn’t have it, I wouldn’t know that Tiger Woods likes to play video games and eat cheeseburgers from McDonalds while he cruises around in his gas guzzling Buick Sport-Ute. At least one half black celebrity Messiah gets in-depth coverage on his personal life and day to day habits that we Americans with enquiring minds need to know to make informed decisions that affect us. Thank you David Feherty, good job on your golf coverage for CBS Sports.

Not only is she releasing a book with that title, she has scheduled the release for inaguration day; therefore one could sumise that she stands to have a bigger financial gain by an Obama/Biden victory as the book would be released on teh day he is inagrurated.

And if that were not enough, she has also had the bias claim laid at her feet for her coverage of Palin's speech at the convention. The following complaint was filed with PBS'Ombudsman:

“I was appalled by Gwen Ifill’s commentary directly following Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech. Her attitude was dismissive and the look on her face was one of disgust. Clearly, she was agitated by what most critics view as a well-delivered speech. It is quite obvious that Ms. Ifill supports Obama as she struggled to say anything redemptive about Gov. Palin’s performance. I am disappointed in Ms. Ifill’s complete disregard for journalistic objectivity.”

But wait there is more, it turns out that Ms. Ifill never disclosed the book to the debate committee.

And let us not forget her line during the 2004 VP debate:

During a vice-presidential candidate debate she moderated in 2004 – when Democrat John Edwards attacked Republican Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton – the vice president said, “I can respond, Gwen, but it’s going to take more than 30 seconds.”

“Well, that’s all you’ve got,” she told Cheney.

Ifill told the Associated Press Democrats were delighted with her answer, because they “thought I was being snippy to Cheney.” She explained that wasn’t her intent.

Just more proof of the liberal bias in the old media and the reason more and more people are turning to blogs and alternative media sources.