Congeries of cross connected concepts
It occurred to me that most of the behaviour that I find so objectionable in modern day journalism is journalists acting like lawyers. Consider the recent case where the NY Times demanded an apology from President Bush for something while the paper had in its posession vetted evidence in favor of Bush’s position. Like a trial lawyer, the NY Times felt no need to base its statements on the totality of facts, but only on those supporting its point of view. When Tom Brokaw interviewed Iraqi PM Allawi, didn’t he sound just like a trial attorney with the comment “Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq”, especially since Allawi had made no such connection? The Ryan / Kerry sealed divorce papers issue is the same way, with the Chicago Tribune conducting very selective actions.
It’s a matter of deciding what the story is and then framing the evidence and testimony to support that story, hiding or obsfucating contrary facts. The key difference is that we all know that lawyers do this because it’s their job - the client has the story and the lawyer tries to get it accepted by a court. It’s time the citizenry learned that modern western media does exactly the same thing, it just pretends not to.
