More on the NY Times

Ian Wood, who has been one of the foremost thinkers who has influenced and articulated the way I approach reading the media, wrote a long comment to my post commenting Marc Schulman's denouncement of the NY Times below. Here is the meat of Ian's comment:

To wit:

Those who argue for a reduction or elimination of media bias, to be somehow carried out by the media itself so as to maintain its illusory independence, are the equivalent of a 5th-century Athenian arguing that anyone who made a speech had a duty to present only the undisguised truth and make no attempt to sway his audience with any rhetorical tricks.

The only reason people want guaranteed objectivity from their information sources is because they're mental slobs. Lazy, passive absorbers of factoids who don't want to have to think very hard about what's going on in the world, who's telling them about what's going on in the world, and what relationship those two information streams have to each other and to reality. They would like it very much if their information came in easy - to - digest packets of strained goo.

But it doesn't, it never has, and if someone tells you otherwise they're either fooled or lying to you.

Today's media consumer is responsible for his own intellectual development and the fine-tuning of his own discernment. If someone is foolish enough to be affected by the NYT's photographic choices, it does not then become that newspaper's duty to change its ways in order to better accomodate the readily confused.

Maybe I'm misapplying or misunderstanding your argument, but I don't think what you said contradicts anything in Marc's or my post. Marc quoted a bunch of editorials and didn't chastise or critize them for writing biased news articles. The criticism regarded the content of the their editorials over Iraq during the Clinton era, and the implicit agreement that I had with Marc was that their shift in views conveniently coincided with the indivudual that sat in the Oval Office. In other words, the axiom which the NY Times bases its views on is driven by partisan politics, not a pragmatic or critical look at what is best for the United States and the world as a whole.

Now, for those of us news junkies that have been following this shift in the NY Times thinking over the years, this is kind of a "duh" moment. But, I do think it is extremely relevant to point out just how the NY Times, in their own words, seemed to advocate the positive benefits of the projection of power in a country that, now, they are claiming should have been left alone.

These are but a handful of examples pointing to the larger problem--the crux of the debate over Iraq has been mostly driven by partisan politics. Partisan politics doesn't seek to solve any problems other than retention or seizing of power. This is why the Democrats are absolutely mongoloid in articulating how to win the war in Iraq. In order to win, they would have to acknowledge that there is actually is a war that needs to be won, and this war is something that was brought to our shores on September 11th. Bush, who is their politcal enemy, has acknowledged this, and from a partisan poltical point it would be admitting defeat if they were to jump on board.

Are their legitimate arguments to be made against the war? Sure there are, even though I don't agree with them. But these arguments are not driving debate among the American people right now, so I find them academic and inconsequential at this point.

While I'm on this side note, personally, I don't really give a hoot which political party is leading the country as long as they understand that winning the war against those who want to destroy us (and children who take candy from American soldiers) is priority number one. The Democrats have not come close to demonstrating this, so until that happens, my lever is going to pull a lot of R's before this is over. That is pathetic, in that I voted for the Republican challenger to Barbara Boxer last year who was an empty suit. Without the aid of Google, I can't even remember his name.