Blogs to Truth's Rescue: Liberal Mainstream Media on the Run?

 by Gary Larson  

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In free and open encounters, blogs are winning, winning big, among the informed classes.

Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?
– John Milton, in Areopagitica (1644)

When I was a young pup with a slim portfolio of editorials from my college newspaper and a suburban weekly, I approached a big local daily about a job. The opening was for "Editorial Writer." I polished up the resume, sent it in with the requested samples. Its editorial page cried out for my savvy, youthful perspective. My samples evidently struck paydirt. I was called for an interview. Oh, I should add, this was eons ago — in the late Sixties, if you must know. Still I remember it now as if yesterday. . . .

The editorial boss is a stern-looking, elderly (60-ish!) gent in a rumpled sports coat, tie loosened in the style of Adolphe Menjou in early filmdom's The Front Page. In my best J.C. Penney suit, a starched shirt with cautious tie (blue, probably), I’m invited into his corner-windowed office, surely the catbird’s seat.

He likes my samples. Mainly on arcane topics — zoning, levies, taxes, a few brave stabs at political commentary. A journalism degree, on the GI Bill after my service in an unpopular war, goes unmentioned. Fine. But "my" war elicits his curious questions. (Anti-war, I sense it. Darn! Same as my ivory towerish J-school profs. Is my dream job slip-slip-sliding away?)

Ten minutes in, he glances furtively at his watch — a BAD sign. All who lost their dream jobs know that sinking feeling. To him I am likely a mere curiosity, that rare bird — a relatively conservative journalist, from the longtime Democrats' hotbed, Minnesota's Iron Range. Pro-business, my upbeat views about prospects for the US of A, might be quaint, too patriotic (jingoistic?), for his darkly pessimistic pages. "Consumerism" then is all the rage. They're for it at this Minneapolis (MN) Star, not a fan of business big or small, either.

His "sorry…but" line comes as no surprise. Going easy now, he explains I am not "precisely [his word, seared into my memory] the person we had in mind." More "seasoning" is a prerequisite, he says, likely referring to my youth and inexperience." Check with us in a few years, Mr. Larson," he offers kindly.

Another few years of editing newspapers and I opt for greener pastures. Looking back, my shot at that dream editorial job was doomed. His staff already had its token conservative — a fellow named Chucker, whom I later came to count as a friend when I edited a business magazine. Prince of a guy, too.

Such nostalgia I recall, at an old-timer's length, because of an attack on fair play by an unseasoned, wet-behind-the-ears editorial writer at the paper's half-successor, Minneapolis Star Tribune. His juvenile remarks in defense of Senator Kerry's brief, heroic and disputed service on a Vietnam swift boat, does enormous injustice to a pair of astute bloggers at a local Web log (blog) named Power Line.

Deputy Editorial Editor Jim Boyd’s assault on Power Line [August 29] is flimsy on reason, heavy on ad hominem slurs. Boyd flashes that characteristic sarcasm at Non-Believers of left-liberals' articles of faith.  Power Line, he says, deliberately smears his hero Senator Kerry. It's "immoral," he writes, and an "illegitimate piece." 

McClatchy Co.'s Midwest flagship Star Tribune is depicted by The Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund as "one of the most left-wing newspapers in the nation." So it's not shocking that Boyd & Co. spit bullets at conservatives — as an article of faith? Twin Cities lawyers, part-time bloggers Scott W. Johnson and John H. Hinderaker of Power Line are the unlikely targets. Their widely-shared, credible doubts about Lt. Kerry’s "seared memory" of a Christmas in Cambodia are "smears" to Party Liner Boyd. He's typical of the vilifying Left, evidently the price to pay for truth searches.

Item: Power Line later spearheads the expose of the "Killian Forgeries," bogus memos retailed by CBS News on "60 Minutes." That earns Power Line more nasty licks and snickers from liberal Dan Rather. Reflexively, wrongly, he calls Johnson and Hinderacker "political operatives." Shame on him, for piling falsehood on falsehoods.

Conservative and libertarian blogs, and 260+ Vietnam swift boat vets — well, everyone challenging that Cambodian tale — are liars, we're told, engaging in right-wing "smear tactics." Whining liberals dismiss as smear everything, anything, that triggers a cognitive dissonance about their heroes. Does fear itself, maybe of the unknown, stir such ugly, strike-back-in-anger responses, peddled in mainstream media (MSM)? (Polarization, anyone?)

Boyd’s tyrannical urge to control, a trait he shares with jealous editorial legions, is in evidence: "It's all about how we [sic] allow [sic] this campaign to unfold, especially on our [sic] pages," he writes. As general policy, Josef Goebbels could not have stated it better.

Item: Boyd's trashing of Power Line is topped by this ironic headline: "Political smear is exposed even as it’s happening…" [August 29]. Sardonic self-parody never had it so good.

One feels almost sorry for the "liberal" gatekeepers. Fingers in dikes, they hold back floods of non-liberal, thus to them illegitimate opinion. Attacks such as Boyd's –now Dan Rather's — on Power Line and all liberals' detractors, recall little kids’ tantrums. Facts don't fit their realities? Cry foul. Stomp. Shout. Call 'em names, like "op-er-a-tives." (Oh-eee!) Evade debate. "It would take space I do not have," Boyd writes imperiously, to address Power Line's claims. Huh? He OWNS those editorial pages. Such is the tunnel vision from Mount Olympus. The late Professor Alan Bloom called this phenomenon The Closing of the American Mind in his book of that title. "Right on!," we used to say in the Sixties.

Item: Boyd is the same pygmy newsman who called President George W. Bush’s "political methods" the equal of Adolph Hitler’s [Star-Tribune, September 25, 2002]. Can’t get any lower, or more vile, than that. At gutter-level smear tactics, Boyd is a past master.

The Star Tribune’s main deficiency, as with most MSM and Party organs, is its unwillingness — inability? — to face certain facts it doesn't like. Editorialists are entitled to their opinions, goes the old saw, but not to their facts. Searches for truth, however painful, cannot be circumscribed by party line thinking — either Left, or Right. That should be self-evident.

Reflecting filial loyalty to liberal Dems, most media tend to ignore or refrain from argument when facts do not fit their "liberal" biases — er, articles of faith? Could the MSM stand more "seasoning?" Add to that, healthy dashes of civility, humility and a simple tolerance for others' views? I think so.

Boyd crows about his "vigilance" blocking viewpoints au contraire to his views. Instead he ought to apologize to the Power Line guys. This will NOT happen. (Rather apologize for CBS News' running with, then defending indefensible forgeries? No way.) Partisan editorial hubris is like that — self-serving, smug, full of self-righteous if ill-founded journalistic pride, unyielding even on indisputable facts. For the hard Left or hard Right, it's sad but oh-so true.

Thank God for e-zines, free blogs, alternative media. They bring a new order of fairness to published opinions, offering checks and balances abdicated by Big Media. Strangely, diversity of opinion seems an alien concept to Big Media. Like wannabe thought police in a brave new world, they'd pummel those who do not subscribe to their "liberal" standards — i.e., articles of faith? Unfortunately, this is their ultimate failure to all Americans and likely downfall.

Serving mainly Party faithfuls' political bias is one big reason for the MSM's shrinking pool of readers and viewers. Surveys show the public is not buying into their one-sidedness. In free and open encounters, blogs are winning, winning big, among the informed classes. This suits our Republic just fine; truth searches, not petty partisanship, are being well-served. Thomas Jefferson would be proud. And 17th Century poet John Milton would be positively ecstatic.

Culture: Media

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