[Q] - 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. As family history tells it, my great-
grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kansas during the last
of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon
Journal (now the Oregonian). My hard-living - and when I knew her,
scary - grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los
Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a
long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word
processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer.
I’ve spent thirty years in every part of journalism, from beat
reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the
family business, so to speak, earned his first national by-line before
he earned his drivers license.
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. -
http://pajamasmedia.com/edgelings/2008/10/24/editing-their-way-to-oblivion-journalism-sacraficed-for-power-and-pensions/
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