Trust you? Yeah, right.
That’s what I used to say to anti-abortion demonstrators when I was writing for mainstream media. I meant it at at the time, but they were wrong to trust me. Because the story that got printed ended up showing them in a somewhat skewed light. Not because I meant to do that or because I was aware of it, but because — even with my editors’ best efforts — they couldn’t take my bias out of the story.
That was back then, when I tried to hold on to the idea that I could be an objective reporter of news and events. The immense failure of this is a huge reason of why I’m now what I call “journalist 2.0” — I’m still reporting, but no longer do I pretend to control my filters — in fact, reveling in them has created exactly the opposite effect — more people seem to trust me now that I assure them I am untrustworthy. (Yes, by a prior post, that trust from them is based on their own self-orientation.)
This is why Howard Zinn is so amazing — He is perhaps best known for A People’s History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment.
And guess what — media is INSIDE the political and economic establishment. And, perhaps more importantly, the political and economic establishment is inside US.
So no, don’t trust me. But trust my bias, it’s always there.
Perhaps like financial disclosures you should be obliged to list your philosophical biases as best you can. Though to be fair, I say stuff like that all the time. Hah, hah – joke.