The men with the muckrakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919), U.S. president; Referring to the exposing of political scandal. Muckrakes are rakes used to spread manure or compost.
The media has been getting a bad rap the last few years for various reasons from being too liberal to bending over for Republican propaganda. Normally, The Misanthrope would say the pendulum will swing this way and then that way and eventually settle in the middle, but we are no longer so sure. Major corporate conglomerates have gotten used to the tidy profit news organizations bring in without huge production costs. If you will allow, they were the first reality television shows.
But what the media has forgotten and the people may never have known is that the press should ideally be the watchdog of government. News is not reading what each political operative’s press release says and allowing the public to determine which is right. The media is not supposed to report it unless it is news, meaning that something unique has happened (remember Man Bites Dog), otherwise it is simply gossip, analysis, or commentary, but it is not news.
The Misanthrope has been following the mayoral election results in San Diego, and from the start of the vote counting, we have been appalled by the nonsense of disqualifying write-in ballots for mayoral candidate Donna Frye because the oval was not colored in. The intent was clear and the effort very noticeable not the least bit akin to a hanging or pregnant chad.
The San Diego race is so close that the San Diego media (San Diego Union, KPBS-TV, KGTV-TV, KNSD-TV and KPBS-FM) and the Los Angeles Times requested permission to review the ballots, but according to the Los Angeles Times, Deputy County Counsel Dennis I. Floyd the state Elections Code prohibited public scrutiny of the ballots "except under certain narrow circumstances, including a request for a recount.”
That sounds more like a policy instituted in Russia than in the United States. On top of that, the media’s recount requests had to be made in the name of a San Diego voter, who in turn had to ask for the recount in the name of one of the candidates.
The media serving as watchdog has turned up 5,547 ballots that had Frye’s name written in, which would have elected her mayor of San Diego. Now many people are claiming the press is biased. That is rubbish and the media should explain what the role of the press is in society.
We applaud the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union, KPBS-TV, KGTV-TV, KNSD-TV and KPBS-FM for going forward despite the asinine rules and restrictions the city has placed on reviewing the ballots.
3 comments:
"Normally, The Misanthrope would say the pendulum will swing this way and then that way and eventually settle in the middle"
Let's be serious, I read this site sometimes, and you guys don't come close to thinking in the middle.
If you don't believe in liberal bias in the media, then I am sorry-you are just an obtuse individual. I took my first college class in journalism this fall semester, and even my kerry-votin' professor admits that the election coverage was biased for Kerry. When 80% of newspapers in the country endorse one man, and when 34% of journalists are liberal compared to 7% (5 to 1???) of conservatives, you don't think there is something to that? The only reason it is not 93% liberal is because so many liberal journalists see themselves as moderate and mainstream and this is the problem. They don't think they are biased. Read Bernard Goldberg's books. Dick Morris has a great section on the New York Times in his book, Off With Their Heads.
Directions are directions, even Donna Frye said directly to the voting public to write her name in and fill in the bubble, so anything else is anyone's call. How do we know that Peter Q. Davis' people didn't do this to screw things up for the status quo? Besides 65% of the voters did not vote for Donna, so the majority intent was not for Frye.
The greater problem here was caused by the lack of parity between the city charter and the municipal code and how the various offices/officials handled that situation before the voting began. Frankly the whole goddamned thing should be voided and if Frye wants to run then she can wait until the next election (which will be too late as SD will be bankrupt and bought out by the chinese...), it's all her fault as I see it. 5 weeks before the election, what the hell was she thinking?
The Misanthrope makes no pretense of being absolutely objective. It appears objective to our way of thinking that we our objective (We (the misanthrope writes in the third person) speak only for the Misanthrope [B2 and On The Mark may have their own opinion], but we are grounded enough to know we are more liberal than what is taking place in today's political climate. However, the point of the piece "Government Watchdogs..." was that the mainstream media is not nearly as biased as they are portrayed, except for Fox News.
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