R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Meaning of Wiegel
I wasn't going to write about the David Weigel kerfuffle as (1) I never read/saw his work and (2) I don't live within the DC media fishbowl. But the Post's ombudsman said something that really set me off: Blogger Loses Job, Post Loses Standing Among Consrvatives
Post blogger Dave Weigel, who wrote about the conservative movement, resigned amid controversy today following disclosure of disparaging e-mails he’d written about some of the very people he was hired to cover.
Weigel bears responsibility for sarcastic and scornful comments he made in e-mails leaked from a supposedly private listserv called “Journolist,” started in 2007 by fellow Post blogger and friend Ezra Klein. Weigel’s e-mails showed strikingly poor judgment and revealed a bias that only underscored existing complaints from conservatives that he couldn’t impartially cover them. (emph. added-P)
Honestly, I could care less about media "impartiality." We all know that such impartiality does not exist. I would argue that the human psyche is constructed in such a manner as to make impartiality impossible, especially when politics is involved. (sure, you can "impartially" report the score of a ball game, or the final numbers on Wall Street. But start trying to describe how you got there and all impartiality bets are off). Claims to the contrary are simply part of a pose that allows left-liberals in the media to cover the news in a way that never fails to advantage one side (guess which one) over the other. And, spare me the "Post has lost conservatives" line. The Post is a great paper, but it has been a part of the liberal media establishment at least since the days when Ben Bradlee was buddying up to JFK. The Post lost conservatives decades ago.
Rather than impartiality, I would ask that the Post and virtually every other outlet in the MSM grant something to conservatives that has never been tried in the modern era: respect. That doesn't mean conservatives should be treated with kid gloves, or be given the sort of fawning "he's so scary-smart and sophisticated" coverage accorded to the likes of Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, John Edwards, The One, etc. But it would be nice to see conservatives treated with the same courtesy and respect which media outlets extend to, say, the Prime Minister of Canada. Instead, we have the "impartial" Dave Weigel saying he wants Matt Drudge to "set himself on fire;" calling GOP congressmen "ratf***ers;" making the usual droll jokes about Dick Cheney's health; and joining in a media-message coordination session to figure out how to blunt the impact of Scott Brown's victorious Senate race. That's disrespectful more than anything else*.
Democrats and the MSM hate to admit this, but there are tens of millions of people out there who are - to one degree or another - conservative. We can't all be uneducated Klansmen, but that is the tone of much of the media's coverage of conservative affairs. Rush Limbaugh has an estimated audience of 20 million a day, yet he is dismissed as a blow-hard with an audience full of idiots. Glenn Beck has used his radio program as a sort of Oprah's Book Club for conservative lit, as well as covering Obama Administration figures who were forced to resign in the wake of Beck's interest; yet the media only wants to write about his (cue scary music) "links" to the John Birch Society. What about Barack Obama's links to ACORN? I could go on all day, but you get the idea.
Impartiality is impossible. But, respect should be second nature for anyone wanting to report on the conservative movement - or anything else - in good faith. Typically for our times, we have too much of one and not enough of the other.
*and more than a little prissy. My gay-dar was going crazy while reading Wiegel's vituperations.
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