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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] ABC News -- Journalism dead ; press bias
  • Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:19:54 -0700 (PDT)

This is a short ( five page) editorial on ABC News site, from
multi-generational journalist:
---------------------------------------------------------------------

"The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election
campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. " ...

"But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first
time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a
living."....

"You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people
who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As
family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in
Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to
help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the
first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though
profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his
life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful
freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat
reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family
business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his
drivers license." ........

" Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers,
many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep
into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions
and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten
my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating
procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in
almost every small town paper in the U.S."...........


"No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the
lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively
serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama,
D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the
United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper
trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire
years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No,
it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative
media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has
systematically refused to do so. ".........




*****Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers.
He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning
with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech
reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as
The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was
a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's
largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com
boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the
best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public
television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS
miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the
ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.








  • [Homestead] ABC News -- Journalism dead ; press bias, bob ford, 10/27/2008

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