Op-Ed: ABC's Michael Malone Ashamed To Be Known as a Journalist

"The sheer bias in the print and TV coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. Worst of all, for the last couple weeks I’ve begun, for the first time in my adult life, to be embarrased to admit what I do for a living."

Finally, an MSM reporter telling it like it is instead of how he or she wishes or wills it to be: From PajamasMedia.com via LGF:

The traditional media is playing a very, very dangerous game. With its readers, with the Constitution, and with its own fate.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling.

And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living.

A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut. I am a fourth generation newspaperman. So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist”, you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

To this humble DJ, that shining American tradition of journalistic integrity, which includes such masters as Edward R. Murrow, William L. Shirer, Peter Maas, Robin Moore, Nick Pileggi and Woodward and Bernstein, is one of the cornerstones of America as we know her and one the Fourth Estate, and perhaps even the Republic itself, just might not survive without. It's what separates American journalism from the Soviet-era Cold War PRAVDA and Josef Goebbel's Reichministry of Information. Our media, though some were no doubt politically influenced to some degree from time to time, have ultimately remained independent. You can bet Leonid Brezhnev never had to worry about something bad being printed about him in the morning edition of PRAVDA. That honorable legacy has been battered of late for blatantly political motivations and objectives, which editors and newspaper owners like the New York Times' Pinchy Sulzburger have no pretense of hiding these days, which is perhaps a good reason why media dinosaurs like the Times are being outmaneuvered in the New Media Age by megabloggers like Pajamas Media and organizations like DJ here. It's not all about paper. The online edition of the New York Times is just as politically biased as the dead tree version. Who wants to read either paper or online content when you already know what's written there ahead of time? Boring. And boredom is a newspaper's worst enemy second only to the scrapping of objectivity for purely political motives. Anyway, Michael Malone's own rants and commiserations aren't far off the mark from mine. Mr. Malone also contends in his OpEd, and I believe correctly, that there always has been some degree of bias in any reporter's work. Everything we do is colored by our perceptions, and that includes journalists. We are all only human after all. Example: If any of us were writing about a man on death row, our journalistic effort would most likely be influenced by whether we believe the perp should be spared or fried, no matter how objective we tried to remain. But it is all in the trying. Try to give both sides a fair hearing and leave the opinions at home. As opposed to, say, writing an Ed Anger piece for the Weekly World News. Here's Mr. Malone's take on it:

Now, of course, there’s always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you ten different ways to color variations of the word “said” - muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. - to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote.

We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom. But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against their unconscious.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views, and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can’t achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty - especially in ourselves.

Couldn't have said it any better myself, Mr. Malone. For courage, fortitude and journalistic integrity in telling it like it is while his so-called brothers-in-arms are making it up as they go along (and covering up where necessary) to aid their Messiah I now award, for only the third time, my DJ Pulitzer to Michael Malone of ABC. Trust me, Michael, it's worth more than the original. The question now is this: can such honesty survive at ABC? Or will Michael Malone be forced to pay a price for words ABC would much rather have remained unsaid? In other words, could he be canned for journalistic integrity? Become a cautionary tale? Don't laugh. It happened to Dan Rather. Actually, you can laugh. I was just joking. Au Revoir, Les Dan. Anyway, it's early yet. Time and the Obama-contributing Big Boys at ABC will tell. Stay tuned. Last thought. You have to wonder, considering how bad political bias is in the media, just what exactly they're teaching at NYU and the Columbia School of Journalism these days. Are they teaching Edward R. Murrow's techniques of news reporting, or Castro's?