Is anybody else as worried as I am about the endangerment of fully objective reporting in our country? We used to feel confident that we had a free and unbiased press. Have we been so complacent that we have let those precious things slip away?
Politoco's Michael Calderone illuminated Jessica Yellin’s statement on CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night:
"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings,"
Salon's Glenn Greenwald wrote about the big three network anchors’ discussion on the Today Show yesterday morning:
While Katie Couric impressively argued that the media did fail to do its job -- pointing out that the White House threatened networks which were perceived to be too critical with cutting off access to the war and that anyone who questioned the war was deemed unpatriotic and all of that "affected the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media"
I’ve been reading blogs about Scott McClellan’s book and MSNBC’s Obama-centric bias, Fox news’s McCain-centric bias, CNN’s Clinton-centric bias. It seems that we focus on who these folks are supporting.
It’s not who supports who that concerns me---it’s that the press is supporting anybody at all! Isn’t the press supposed to be unbiased and objective? Aren’t WE the ones who are supposed to decide what to think about what’s going on in our world? Why have we abdicated that right? Why has the fourth estate abdicated their duty to report unbiased, unabridged truth? Why are they allowing themselves to be manipulated by the sitting Administration and corporate executives? Do television ratings truly rule our country?
I am very concerned that the information provided to me by the press is not unbiased and objective enough for me to make informed decisions. I’m at a loss. What can we do about this?