Posted by
Amicus on Saturday, September 23, 2006 6:28:39 PM
Thomas Edsal completed a 25 year carreer at the Washington Post, retiring this year as senior political correspondent. His new book
Building Red America is out, and he sat for refreshingly candid interview by Hugh Hewitt on September 22, 2006 (listen
here or read
transcript).
Briefly, Edsall confirmed what many centrists and conservatives have long suspected: The mainstream media is dominated by a paucity of intellectual/ideological diversity. He estimated that newsrooms' staffs are probably "15-25 to 1" liberal:conservative and that the strong majority of reporters vote Democrat.
Additionally, according to Thomas Edsall, MSM reporters are predominantly products of the Vietnam era and reflect the sentiments of that particular era of our national experience. They tend to be 1) suspicious of the military, and 2) hostile to faith - his words were that there is a hostility to faith "among a segment of the left, and not insubstantial".
The interview was a breath of fresh air as the truth that many see was confirmed by a member of big media.
Reflecting on this interview, it strikes me that while lip-service is paid to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a day when we will all be judged on our character, not skin-color, our left-leaning press is doing us a disservice.
The left has enshrined an ideal of diversity whose rule is: Pack the newsroom, work-place, and school-yard with a heterogeneous mix of blacks, whites, latinos, asians, gays, straights, etc...but let there be only one basic ideology, that of the Left.
Isn't Dr. King's
vision of diversity still the one worthy of striving for? If you answer yes, then stocking the workplace with a diversity of appearances, adherents of various faiths, or sexual orientations without regard to character isn't the way to go. Character counts, and a diversity of viewpoints is the kind that counts.
By Mr. Edsall's own account, the big newspapers & network news aren't giving us a diversity of character, of ideas, opinion, and vision. In this they have failed the nation they claim to care about.
Changing this will be challenging. It is as lopsided as it is because, by nature, pensive, ideological intellectuals prefer observing, writing, and fomenting social change through media. More conservative types tend toward action, getting in the game instead of sitting in the bleachers talking about it. The better pay for acting instead of talking also works as a disincentive to genuine diversity in the newsroom.
As a nation, judging by the reactions to Hurricane Katrina, we are becoming more a nation of watcher and less one of doers. There is a strong predeliction to take direction on the best candidate from a reporter who, it is assumed, is paying attention and is unbiased. Time to get off our collective duffs. The reporters, we learn again, are very biased. If we want the whole story, we're going to have to work for it. Isn't that true of anything worth having?