Recently Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley from 1996 to 2008 and prolific journalist/author, mourned “the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet’s most magnificent landforms,” the Himalayan glaciers.  In an LA Times opinion piece surveying what no longer works in the U.S., Schell cited areas like the environment, education, and transportation, and found American hopelessness, especially compared to contemporary China.

Schell’s “studying of melting glaciers” was likely related to a much-hyped warning from the World Wildlife Fund, which was revealed to be a sham, based on an anecdotal report.  But Schell’s warnings, along with his list of American failings, suggest a general ideological bias.

A recent challenge has been identifying the bias of the mainstream media.  Oddly enough, exposing ideological bias has long been a favored project in communication studies, usually practiced by leftists.  One method, much used by recent multicultural leftists, has held that consciousness and meaning are contingent social constructs.  Following such post-modernists as Lyotard, these folks regard discourse  as a composite of  linguistic, social, and cultural formulations.  One need only examine these to reveal the consciousness or mentality of an author or work. (more…)

Remember this book?

A white man darkened his skin and went undercover to report first-hand on the plight of the black community. The project was initially funded by Sepia Magazine.

What about this one?

A card-carrying member of the Washington punditocracy went undercover as a waitress, a maid, even a Wal-Mart saleswoman in order to report on the plight of the minimum-wage workers of America.

So where’s the First Amendment/speak truth to power/ journalist shield law/”fit the narrative” crowd now? Where are the voices hailing James O’Keefe and his three colleagues for dressing up as telephone men in order to get at the truth behind Sen. Mary Landrieu’s obvious lie that the phones in her office weren’t working properly, when in fact she was simply trying to dodge calls from constituents outraged over the “Louisiana Purchase” during the health-care debate? (more…)