The notion here is that because journalists, like other human beings, have thoughts and opinions about the world around them, those sentiments must ultimately contaminate their journalism. According to this argument, no amount of training, no adherence to principle, no form of self-discipline is sufficient to guarantee unbiased, dispassionate reporting.

Facts may be facts, in other words, but they still have been selected by a biased mind. The only remedy is to admit that everything we call journalism is the continuation of opinion by other means. What’s required is that our media stop the hypocrisy of pretending to inform and wade into the argument with all biases blazing.

Tim Rutten looks at private email from The Wall Street Journal’s Bagdhad correspondent, 31 year old Farnaz Fassihi.

“Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest,” she wrote. “Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

Her private emails are from a person who has had ideals clash with reality.
And her editors have ‘given’ her a vacation. The leave will extend past the November election. Rutten sums up:

Still, it’s impossible to come away from all this without thinking that, like so many American journalists and news organizations, the Journal and its staff are feeling around for what used to be familiar boundaries, wondering whether they’re still there and — if so — precisely where.

War with Big Media
It isn’t a war. Period. Shift, yes. But not a war like Hugh Hewitt or others are trying to make it out to be. Hewitt is coming from a ‘have not’ place. If or when they taste their perception of ‘have’ no one is served by joining in on the defensiveness. There are going to be individuals in media and in blogging who think the only way to be heard is to pit themselves against each other. It is the squeeky wheel getting the grease, but I don’t believe it is what is really occurring across the information network. Jay Rosen has a thoughtful discussion that ‘both sides’ would be well served to read.

I believe Satullo is drawing a distinction between those who are frustrated and angry with the traditional news media, and want answers, as well as changes, which is one group of critics–many of them pro-Bush or red staters, some of whom blog–and another group, posing as critics of bias, who see an oppportunity to discredit CBS News in the wider public sphere.

They want to achieve an historic victory in a very long war between conservatives and the likes of CBS, going back to 1969 and Spiro Agnew, or even further to 1964, when Barry Goldwater met the hostility of Northeastern journalists. (For this background go here.) They want to inflict as much damage as possible on an institution they treat as hostile to Republican Truth, and to the message of the cultural right.

Bias is their lever only because CBS and other mainstream news organizations claim to be un-biased. (And Newsday’s Marvin Kitman said Sunday that’s a fantasy in TV news.) If CBS identified itself as liberal news, made by progressives for all Americans, the war against Rather and crew would go on, but not on the grounds of bias. It would switch to the defeat of “CBS liberalism” itself. Bloggers, says Satullo, be wary of the Orwellians.

They’ve pressed their attack against journalism for 30 years now, frothing about Bias.

But this does not mean the press is innocent of bias, error, laziness and poor quality control.

I’ve read Hugh Hewitt once. I went over to his blog and read for about 10 minutes. He appears informed, he’s biased (it is his blog) and he struck me as an angry man. I should head back over and read some more. If he is a general leading the charge in ‘the media war’ and ‘the culture war’ and is a squeeky wheel, it would be smart to have an opinion before I dismiss him.
I’ve been chewing on how much of this debate really spills into Canada and how relevent it is north of the 49th.