Are The Dominoes Starting To Fall?
By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD
I noticed something a couple of weeks ago that relighted my faith in common sense. Writing a weekly column and prepping for a weekly radio program, I’m always scouring the media for stories that might interest my readers and listeners. Thus I’ve spent a lot of time on social media, taking in the lay of the land.
One thing I’ve noticed about social media, especially Facebook since that is about all I use, is that there are a lot of folks on the platform with a lot to say. Many seem like nice and genuine people, some are morons, and a significant amount are just plain wrong in what they say and go off on political or religious tangents that expose their illusory view of the world.
I’ve always contented myself with just posting promos for my program and reposting a few news items that I think are of interest to the people for whom I write and broadcast. Thus I’ve usually stayed out of the political/religious fray, knowing that if I post a contrary view I would be deluged with replies accusing me of everything from flaunting my white privilege to the JFK assassination.
But I did something the other week that has produced the relighting I mentioned: I started to reply to some of the more baffling worldviews to which I was being exposed. And lo and behold, I didn’t get vilified for being an armed vigilante, a right-wing bigot, or even a cash-hungry lawyer. In fact the overwhelming majority of the replies I received were supportive of my position. And on one occasion the original poster conceded my position.
That made me wonder just how many folks out there that are capable of taking in all the blather, thinking otherwise, but keeping their heads down all the while thinking theirs was a minority view.
That came to mind when I read (on Facebook) that a well-known producer on MSNBC (the flagship of moronic broadcasting), Ariana Pekary, quit her job and wrote an open letter explaining why she left her employer, slamming it as a “cancer” and for “stoking national division” by promoting “fringe voices” which force reporters to make “bad decisions on a daily basis.”
Wow! That drew my attention back to former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss who only a few weeks ago resigned, telling Publisher Arthur Sulzberger that the Times was not playing straight with its readers “Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”
That, as you might recall, was followed within hours of the resignation of Andrew Sullivan from New York Magazine for much the same reasons. And in the background of all of this was Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling writing that “we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement.”
So I’m asking myself: Is my experience in micro breaking out in macro?
“July 24th was my last day at MSNBC,” Pekary wrote. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next exactly but I simply couldn’t stay there anymore. My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions. The problem is the job itself. It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis.
“You may not watch MSNBC but just know that this problem still affects you, too. All the commercial networks function the same — and no doubt that content seeps into your social media feed, one way or the other,” she said in a public letter explaining her decision.
“‘We are a cancer and there is no cure,’ a successful and insightful TV veteran said to me. ‘But if you could find a cure, it would change the world.’ As it is, this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others . . . all because it pumps up the ratings,” she charged.
“Now maybe we can’t really change the inherently broken structure of broadcast news, but I know for certain that it won’t change unless we actually face it, in public, and at least try to change it.”
Of course this continues an unheralded trend that has seen several high-profile broadcast news reporters leave their respective networks over biased coverage, such as, Sharyl Attkisson and Lara Logan, both formerly with CBS.
All this comes at a time when a Knight Foundation/Gallup Poll is reporting that 86 percent of Americans believe there is a “great deal [or] a fair amount” of bias in news coverage by the media.
“A majority of Americans currently see ‘a great deal’ (49 percent) or ‘a fair amount’ (37 percent) of political bias in news coverage — more so than in 2017. Although 56 percent of U.S. adults see at least a fair amount of bias in their go-to news source, they are much more concerned about bias in the news other people are getting (69 percent) than about their own news being biased (29 percent),” Gallup reported.
It also reported that while most Americans believe the media bear the blame for the political divisions in the country, most think the media could play a big part in healing those divisions. The poll findings were based on 20,000 interviews between November of last year and February of this year which was before the coronavirus outbreak and the civil unrest arising out of the George Floyd death in Minneapolis.
One surprising finding: Younger respondents are less trusting of the media than their parents and grandparents. Only 19 percent of those under 30 had a favorable opinion of the media.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue recently joined in the criticism, alleging that the profession of journalism has joined the social justice crusade. He criticized the new AP stylebook which calls for referring to white people in lowercase and black people in uppercase.
“It’s the reasoning that matters most. According to AP, ‘white people in general have much less shared history and culture.’ The New York Times agrees, saying, ‘White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does.’ The journalists should leave sociology to us sociologists,” he wrote.
Donohue concluded: “The media can do whatever they want, but they should not expect us to respect their reasoning. The games they are playing are rooted in politics, not linguistics.”
So is this going to become a new trend? Now that a few have spoken out, will others follow? Or will this become just an annoying dribble for the mega broadcast houses?
Don’t know, but what I do know is that so many of the nightly news crews were all educated by a left-wing cabal of teachers and schools who still bow to the gods of political correctness and liberal wokeness.
Time will tell, but my old profession does need a cleaning out. Let’s pray it gets it.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. (CDT) on Faith On Trial at IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
