In a column published today in the National Review Online, author Victor Davis Hanson asks if this election cycle has killed journalism as we know it and replaced it with advocacy media instead. We have all heard very general statements about the media being “in the tank” for Senator Obama, but Hanson digs deeper and identifies several instances where the mainstream media failed to report on newsworthy events which would have reflected poorly on Senator Obama and then predicts how they would have reported the stories had they been about Senator McCain instead.
It occurs to me that the death of so-called nuetral and impartial journalism happened ages ago; it is only now that people are willing to acknowledge what many of us have known for so long. And now that it is out there, let’s move on! How refreshing will it be to watch a news channel and not wonder what sort of spin has been given to a particular story? Imagine the amount of information we will have access to as media outlets attempt to appeal to either a conservative or liberal audience, we can finally hear the spin from each side and come to our own conclusions. And perhaps now people will look at these sources with a necessary amount of skepticism, rather than have blind faith in the media to provide truthful information that has not been edited so that it reflects favorably on the particular authors preferred candidate.