Columbia University is the place where leftists give leftist journalists Pulitzer Prizes and then tell each other how prestigious leftist journalism is because—wow!—look at all the Pulitzers they’ve won.
This week, the president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, wrote a specious opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, crying that American journalism, dying in the free market, needs to be bailed out by government support.
Katie Couric Lip-Synching Foreground While Leftism Sings Behind.
Two memories come to mind from my years in England during the nineties:
In the first, recovering from an operation, I’m watching television and trying not to bust my stitches laughing at an hilarious sketch by young comedians Hugh Laurie (now TV’s House) and Stephen Frye. In a send-up of It’s A Wonderful Life, Frye’s angel is showing Laurie’s villainous Rupert Murdoch what the world would be like if he’d never been born: a virtual paradise!
And again, I’m watching TV. Innovative writer Dennis Potter, dying of pancreatic cancer, gives a final interview to presenter Melvyn Bragg. As Bragg chuckles amiably, Potter declares he has named his cancer after Murdoch and that he would use his last days on earth to “shoot the bugger if I could.”
Crikey! I knew little of Murdoch at the time. What atrocity had he committed, I wondered, to be treated as such a devil?
Well, it was this: the Australian-born media mogul had taken advantage of Margaret Thatcher’s loosening of broadcasting regulations to break the left’s government-funded stranglehold on information.
Now Murdoch is an American, the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, among other things. His approach to news, he has said, is not to answer left-wing bias with right-wing bias but simply to remove the left-wing bias entirely. Though Fox News and the Journal have many conservative commentators, their reportage—on Special Report with Bret Baier and the Journal’s news pages—is far more fair and balanced than that on the networks or in the New York Times. (Peter Robinson of Ricochet does a useful comparison here.)
The effect of Murdoch’s approach has been something like the last scene in the classic film musical Singin In The Rain. Remember how Gene Kelly and friends pull the curtain up to reveal that the famous actress’s singing voice belongs to another woman standing backstage? Simply by telling the news straight, Murdoch revealed that it was the voice of the left speaking when the mouths of mainstream news readers moved. When they told us the war in VietNam was at a stalemate or that a conservative election result amounted to a tantrum or that the tea party was racist or—as this past week in the Los Angeles Times—they downplayed the Islamic motive of terrorists, they weren’t attempting to do their job and convey information but were trying instead to guide us in right attitudes and thinking—attitudes and thinking to be determined by themselves.
Why would anyone but a slave pay for such a service? The fact is, we won’t. Newspapers and network news are dying. And it isn’t, as Bollinger would have us believe, because of the internet or any other new technology. If that were so, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t be thriving as they are. Mainstream news outlets are dying because they distort the news in the name of leftism—and there’s simply no reason to use a news source that lies.
To combat the Murdoch effect here, Bollinger wants to build the British system that Murdoch helped enfeeble. If the people won’t pay for left-wing distortions by choice, they must be forced to pay for them through taxation!
Thwarted in their dishonest purposes, the left does what it always does: they demonize the opposition and unleash the brute force of government. But the fact is, we, the people, do not want their high moral instruction. We simply want the bloody news.
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30 Comments
Leftists want everyone to have Equality – One Dear Leader, One Opinion, No Options – under the same soul-crushing Socialist/Fascist system of Lies and Brute Force as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jung-il, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez…….
Columbia is the educational wing of the socialist party. they should have been shut down thirty years ago. built on the fantacies of social psychology, a fiction unto itself, and Marxist economics, also a fiction, it pretends to be the heir apparent to the college of cardinals in Rome. Renamed Bumblef.k U, it may be re-opened as Goofy's Playland.
When I read him saying that government intervention was necessary to protect the integrity of the industry, I was reminded of the scene in "Lost Horizon" in which a terminally ill woman coughs, and a helpful man offers her a cigarette.
From the things I wish I wrote department: "Columbia University is the place where leftists give leftist journalists Pulitzer Prizes and then tell each other how prestigious leftist journalism is because—wow!—look at all the Pulitzers they’ve won."
To speak as a consumer of the written media, anytime I read some unnecessary quip I stop reading. Thus put the periodical away and hope maybe the next issue will be better. When it isn't I don't renew my subscriptions. I treat television in the same manor. Now I no longer have cable/satellite, and make it a point to avoid the local TV stations.
This is a note to those in the media, I'm not alone.
Remember it's all about, "Content, Content, Content!".
ROTFLMAO, I started reading before noticing who the author was. As I read, the voice in my head of the reading, was Andrew Klavan's! I guess I have watched too much "On the Culture"
The average liberal processes information with emotions rather than with logic. So, when he hears a FACT he doesn't LIKE, he calls it a lie or biased, because his emotions rule. I believe that this is why Liberals and Conservatives talk past each other. And, since emotions only exist from moment to moment, libs can express totally contradictory thoughts in one conversation without seeing any problem. If you point out the contradiction, they will not LIKE it, and call you wrong.
When truth is subjective, man is subjected to lies. The gratuitous and nauseating display of glad-handing and self- aggranddizement by the progressive media outlets, even in it's death-throes, is proof positive they're swallowing their own bullsh1t. Another helping, gentlemen?
Murdoch was first derided in the U.S. for his tabloid style journalism (starting, 36 years ago, in of all places, Texas Monthly in an article on his makeover of the San Antonio Express-News). The unsaid — or at least toned-down criticism at the time was not just the lurid headlines he'd bring to New York two years later, but the ideological change Rupert was bringing to the papers he was buying.
Fast forward to the present, and it's interesting that — for good or bad — mainstream journalism, especially on TV, has pretty much adapted the Murdoch style when it comes to the tabloid format of pushing the most shocking, sensational story line possible. But they have resolutely balked at the other half of the Murdoch style, and refused to move anywhere near the conservative ideology of (most, but not all) of his media news holdings. Why, you'd almost think they wanted ratings and readers enough to embrace a far more flashy style, while at the same time, they'd rather go bankrupt and lose their jobs (or in the case of Lee Bollinger, throw out 223 years of American constitutional law history and demand a government take-over) than try to imitate any part of the other aspect of Murdoch-style journalism that's made him so successful.
Andrew your right. Hughe Laurie is amazing at everything he does. That is all
/topic
When it was announced that Murdoch was taking over the Chicago Sun-Times (early 1980's), a couple of Sun-Times "shining stars" threw hissy-fits and left (Mike Royko, in a huff) and Effie (Ann Landers) Ledbetter, more graciously but with as much finality. Even without those features, the Sun-Times became a much better paper than I'd ever known it to be, and I became and remained a subscriber for as long as Murdoch was the owner.
When Murdoch launched Fox Cable News (in spite of Ted Turner's spittle-frothing efforts to block the licensing), I was delighted — and still am. Contrary to the leftist spin that "Fox is right wing" or "Fox has a conservative bias," it is the ABSENCE of ideological slant that differentiates Fox from just about all other television news operations. Yes, Fox has conservative commentators, hosts and guests, and Fox has liberal commentators, hosts and guests — but Fox seldom has a news program with only a left or right view expressed, and in those rare program instances, it is almost always the leftist view that is not counter-weighted.
The Pulitzer Prize isn't the only mutual admiration society where an in-group hands out prizes to each other for accomplishments invisible to the rest of the world. Notice how Hollyweird gives out Academy Awards mostly for lefty-themed movies, then claims the movies are good because "look at all those Academy Awards." Notice how the Nobel Committee gave Peace Prizes to Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama–and for what? Gore promotes a scientifically dubious theory of man-made global warming. Carter writes books attacking Israel. Obama's accomplishments for world peace consisted entirely of being the first half-black U.S. President. When the committees who give these awards discover that the larger society recognizes they they dispense them more for conformity to left wing politics than actual achievement, they will take that as evidence of their own wisdom and superior judgement.
I get calls from The Los Angeles Times asking me to come back. Recently I told the sales lady why I won't be subscribing to the Times anymore: because it prints lies, distortions, and left-wing rants. She started yelling at me, "How is that my fault? Why are you blaming me?" And then she hung up on me.
I wasn't blaming her and I wasn't being rude. I just stated the facts, but I guess she'd been getting a lot of responses just like mine.
And so right you are Andrew. Once I came of age I too sensed the left bias in the often irrational manner in which the news outlets decried Reagans actions in the 80's. One particular incident reinforced my growing perception of left wing bias in the media, that was when elections in El Salvador came as a result of the Savadorans. Not from the results of the Reagan Administration as Threlkeld and ABC were spouting at the time (1984 or '86). Richard even went down there to report on an expected low voter turn out. Well it turns out the turnout was much more than ABC was reporting and that there was no voter fraud reported. This was when I started to see the left wing bias in the MSM
Exactly, not counter-weighting the left wing view may be good sometimes. Expose it to the light of day ajust as Fox does.
Martin, I don't see anything wrong or snarky about your comment, and generally agree with it. Do you know why there's a red tag with a "-73p" in it? I usually see something similar to that next to a username above a "troll" type of comment, but I don't see anything like that in your remarks.
You know, you're right Jake49 – I was actually grousing (or whining) about the instances of leftist views with no counter-weight; but I see your point, and it's a good one. "(They) report, (we) decide."
OK, got it (duh!) It's the cumulative number of comments by that poster – the "minus" sign must mean you've previously said something that ticked a bunch of people off?
I assume you're right, MerryJ1, that something I said either annoyed a lot of visitors to this site or else one of them gave me quite a few bad reviews. I can't think of anything I said which would irritate many political conservatives. If Klavan is correct that Columbia Journo is a place where leftists give each other Pulitzer Prizes and then claim lefty journalism is good because it gets so many Pulitzers, and if I'm correct that the same principle applies elsewhere, then giving each other prizes is something conservatives should avoid. It leads to absurd mutual backscratching, as when the Rev. Jim Jones started handing out awards to reporters who gave him favorable press and then the LA Times declared Jim Jones, of all people, its "Humanitarian of the Year."
I have to admit that I do not want the left-wing media to clean up their act. With things being the way they are, we all know who the bad guys are and can clearly see what is their agenda. I would hate for these "journalists" to go underground and for us to have to try and expose them all over again.
Good point, that it's a good idea to avoid "mutual backscratching." I admit to guilt on that one now and then, especially if I like something that's humorous or cleverly phrased – but really, it would be just as easy to hit the reply and insert "kudos" or "ditto" or something.
On annoying readers or other visitors, I've had several instances of being misinterpreted (usually when I'm being sarcastic or snarky, and someone takes me literally), and instead of (them) asking, "what do you mean?" they take me to the figurative woodshed or compare my intelligence level to a moldy toadstool's. Oh well, most of us are nice people
Jim Jones was named "Humanitarian of the Year?" Not the same Jim Jones who handed out loaded Kool-Aide to his followers as they all awaited a space ship that was due to whisk them off to some better place? Now, that's funny, if it was the same guy! (Yeah, I know, I do have a warped sense of humor).
I've noticed that a "-p" rating simply attracts thumbs down because people assume troll.
Also, back in the days before all commenters had to be registered, trolls would just scroll down the threads and give every one a thumbs down. Some one noticed it and commented that they spent 20 minutes giving every one a thumbs up to compensate.
You may have gotten caught up in something like that.
Every couple of months Time magazine sends me snail mail begging me to come back. If I remember the last one they offered me 12 cents an issue.
I get such joy from throwing those in the recycle bin.
What? You say the Pulitzer Prize is meaningless? What are you going to try to tell me next, they pass out Nobel Peace Prizes like BFF tags?
MerryJ1, not only did the LA Times make Jones its Humanitarian of the Year, but in 1999 CFO Magazine gave its CFO of the Year award to Enron's CFO, Andrew Fastow, for his "outside the box" approach to corporate finance. Similarly, Sir Allen Stanford was knighted and admitted to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by the country of Antigua for his services in Caribbean economic development. I'm not saying that all awards are fake, merely that the bestowal of official honors often represents nothing more than the giver's desire to suck up to the recipient. Kind of like Douglas MacArthur's award of the Army Silver Star to Lyndon Johnson for serving as an observer on one aborted bombing mission. No one else aboard the plane was similarly honored, but Johnson was the only Congressman aboard.
Martin, I'd compare those high honors to the (ahem) Nobel awarded to our President (did you happen to see the Saturday Night Live skit, of the Obama character saying that, before being elected, he already had long experience "not being George Bush?"), except that the Nobel includes a few million in cash, making it probably worthwhile for recipients to sit through the ceremony.
Actually, the CFO of the Year award to Enron's CFO makes sense, unless there's something in the CFO Award Rule Book about 'upstanding citizenry' as a prerequisite for receiving the award. Sir Allen Stanford isn't ringing any bells, but I do have a vague recollection of talk about LBJ & a military award sans military service. Was that during WWII? Truman fired MacArthur shortly after the end of the war, no?
Now, that makes sense, EdSki. Thanks.
Wow, for guys who made their money stating their views, hugh laurie and that fry guy sure do not like the "little" people having any choice. The good old BBC, one channel with government sactioned news and television shows. Now those were the days.
Can't you just mail it back and say "No thanks" on it? Cost's them the mailing fee.
I used to do that, but then when time I was going to the post office anyway to buy stamps. And the guy behind the counter told me they just throw those away.
Why make them do what I enjoy anyway?
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