Reader responds

I should have posted this a couple of days ago, but I was busy publishing a newspaper. David Merriman responds to a post below:

I see I need to elaborate :-)

My original comment was (in part) " ... I wonder how much of the
contempt bloggers have toward journalists is because of the _unadmitted_
bias those journalists have, versus the open (even 'in-your-face')
partisanship of bloggers."

I don't propose that ALL journalists have the unadmitted biases I
referred to; but I would hope that you would concede that there are some
who do. Further, I would also hope that you would admit that even in the
most 'enlightened' news outlet (print or broadcast) there is
likely to be a corporate culture that would prefer to see any
given news item in a particular way (glass half full/empty); futher,
that any reporter working for such an organization is - in all
probablility - going to comply with those preferences.
My question, then, was how much of the output of the reporters that
wholeheartedly 'bias' their reports to meet their companies demands
(without understanding what it is they're doing to the profession and
SPIRIT of journalism) are the target of blogger disdain? Who is more
worthy of respect: the person that stands up and says what he thinks
whether you like it or not, or the one that suppresses their own opinion
for fear of 'offending' someone? Yes, I know that reporters have to keep
their jobs by only writing stories that meet their editorial staff's
expectations - and therein lies the problem. No, the blogger doesn't
have as much at stake as the reporter; but then, the blogger probably
doesn't have as much potential influence, either.
As for the rest of the chain from writing to delivery, I would submit
that it is primarily the author and editor that must bear the burden of
any biases - those 'higher up' daren't go TOO far for fear of losing
market, those lower down simply don't have the horsepower to have much
of an effect.
Finally, I'd suggest that the bloggers that kick up the most fuss about
journalists are a relatively small minority; I think that most of us
recognize and understand the constraints that the majority of maintsteam
journalists must work under, and respect their efforts. I, for one,
wouldn't be a reporter in Baghdad right now for ANY amount of money - no
matter what the organization was!

My response to his response: There's more going on here than I have time to deal with in detail. Let me just say this: I think many bloggers would be surprised to discover how little pressure there is on reporters to slant stories in any particular way. Everybody knows a horror story or two, but those stories are horrible precisely because they are rare.

What does happen in modern corporate journalism is that it rewards people who think and act in certain ways. Those ways aren't necessarily, or even usually, liberal. Corporate climbers tend to be cautious, circumspect, sensitive to business concerns, and never too far outside the mainstream. Again, this is all fairly subtle. Malcontents can survive for a pretty long time in corporate journalism; they just tend not to get promoted, which is fine with some reporters.