Word: biased
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Perhaps the most wounding discovery is how much people dislike the very professionalism that newspapermen pride themselves on most-the ability to transmit facts without bias or feeling, in the best deadpan Dragnet manner of "only the facts, ma'am." People who are used to having Cronkite or Chancellor escort the news into their homes feel no connection with reporters, even those with recognized bylines, who impersonally fill their front pages. That contrast asserts Arnold Rosenfeld, editor of the Dayton Daily News, often favors TV personalities "who we print journalists think do a pretty lame job of news gathering...
...newspaperman, the touchiest of all charges is bias, since he labors constantly to scrub his story free of it. He must be doing well at this, for people who think newspapers are unfair to labor, business, consumerists or environmentalists amount to less than 15% in each category. That statistic speaks better for impersonal journalism than its critics give it credit...
...readers, it turns out, mean something else by the bias they criticize: they mean the tendency of newspapers to "emphasize bad news over the good." They are convinced that this is done just to sell papers; they admit to liking to read crime news but feel a little ashamed in doing so. They think their home town is better than the newspaper paints it. Talking to his own readers in Dayton, Editor Rosenfeld found them questioning the editor's self-righteous conviction that he only reports a world he never made: "Readers see us as moral vigilantes . . . the voice...
...paper could not seem to translate the wealth of its new owner, Eugene Meyer, into a voice that anyone but die-hard subscribers would hear. On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times spoke loud and clear, but it was far from the center of things, and its deafening bias against any news or newsmaker that might threaten the interests of the Chandlers or their land-holding friends had become a joke to outsiders. Humorist S.J. Perelman recalled stopping at Albuquerque during one train trip: "I asked the porter to get me a newspaper and unfortunately the poor man, hard...
Gans found his journalists to be predominantly upper middle class in origin and outlook, overworked, deskbound, interested more in pleasing their peers than their audiences; and determined to keep their reports free of bias. Gans did, however, see them subconsciously defer to a set of "enduring values": democracy, responsible capitalism, individualism, moderation. He concludes that the press pays too much attention to the nation's Government and corporate ruling elites, and too little to the poor and powerless. As one remedy, he proposes a national Endowment for News to ladle out Government money to improve coverage of ordinary folk...