Recently Governor Robert Ehrlich of Maryland sent out a mandate to all his staff banning them from talking to 2 different reporters from the Baltimore Sun Paper. Apparently they both have a tendency to twist words and only use half quotes to make it seem like the Governor, Lt. Governor Steele and staff are actually saying something different than what they had intended.
The Baltimore Sun's Public Editor Paul Moore writes that the governor's ban is designed to put the paper on the defensive and to plant seeds of doubt among readers about the veracity of The Sun's reporting.
Judging from some of the things the Governor’s office used as examples, there is something to doubt.
This has become quite the issue lately.
This whole thing got me to thinking. I think this is a pretty good idea for the Governor. The Sun is a notoriously liberal paper. The Governor is the enemy to them, his big mistake being a Republican. That can't be allowed in predominantly Democrat Maryland. It's not that he and Lt. Governor Steele are doing a bad job. They are doing a job that the Sun deems 'for Democrats only'. I find this whole idea annoying.
I think the News should be reported as news only. No Liberal slant, no Conservative slant. Just the facts. If you are going with a personal agenda, you should say so to begin with. The Sun should add "The Daily Liberal News" to its title. Then everyone would know ahead of time what to expect. To screw someone over by altering their words/thoughts is pretty stinking.
The problem for these types is that people are not relying on just the papers or television any more for news. More and more people are checking out Blogs and talk radio and becoming more educated as to the slants each 'big' paper or network has been feeding them. I believe this trend will continue and we will be hearing more stories like this one in Maryland. It's a good thing. Indoctrination of the masses is Fascist at best and isn't supposed to be the American way. We are supposed to use our brains and decide our opinions ourselves.
Personally I believe extreme anything is silly and dangerous. Whether you are left or right or middle of the road, not all ideas and beliefs of one side are good or bad. There will be some ideas from each point of view that make sense and some that don’t. With more people thinking their way through issues, we all will be better off.
Go get ‘em Governor. I like that someone is making some kind of statement at least. Screw you Baltimore Sun. I’ll stick to blogging.
4 comments:
Sadly, this goes on in more places than you think. And maybe not for the right reasons. In college, the entire swim team was ordered not to talk to anyone at our newspaper because we reported on this party of theirs that got busted by cops and they got in trouble for serving minors. It was newsworthy, but they acted as if we published it because we were out to get them. All we wrote were the facts, nothing opinionated or condemning, but they hated us anyway. A lot of coaches and athletes felt this way -- if you couldn't write something nice about them, you shouldn't say anything. Even if they do something wrong.
I'm with you on the conservative/liberal slant. That should be left for editorials and out of the straight up news reporting. But sometimes people don't want to own up to their mistakes, and it's not cool to blame the media for it.
Speaking of, Giambi's been outed now. It'll be interesting to see if he's a man about it and speaks or hides from it...
Sadly, the truth about human beings is that we can't help but see everything through our own glasses; whatever colour they may be. As long as humans are involved in writing the news, the news will be slanted towards the views of the ones doing the writing and editing. As much as I hate it; we're too emotional to remove our emotions from what we write.
I am more apt to believe a person than a corporation. Presenting news to the world is a business too. Money exchanges hands, and in news that is not what I'm looking for. I rarely believe anything that is told to me. I almost always research any issue myself. I am gald to see that other people in the world are doing the same thing.:)
I miss baseball. It's so fun to discuss. Here I thought November would end all the politician...:) Go gov.
J, it's sooo funny that you told the Governor he was a rat bastard & that you hoped that he would lose the upcoming election on television. That's like a dream come true for a lot of people. Why did you get grounded if your Dad agreed with you?
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