The Responsibilities of a Free Press

Freedom of the press is a foundational necessity for democratic rule. Ed Driscoll has published the first of a two-part series on media bias. Much of the essay centers around his interview with former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg, whose book Bias helped breech the walls of network denial that they were anything but uninterested observers who reported the news from a neutral vantage point.

Just as enlightening are Goldberg's comments on something we've noted here before (see the April 10 entry): the ignorance of many journalists that prevents them from practicing their craft competently, with or without any political agenda. To wit:

"If there's a problem besides bias with the evening news,' Goldberg says, 'it's a lack of intelligence. The reporters are intelligent -- that's not the problem. The news is not intelligent: they squeeze it into a minute and a half. They don't know anything about outsourcing, yet they do pieces about outsourcing. They do pieces on unemployment, but they no [sic] nothing about productivity problems.'"

Replying to a call to register every citizen to vote, Bill Buckley once asked a incredulous voting rights advocate, "But why do you want dumb votes?" One might also ask, why do we believe dumb news stories? More on Driscoll's columns tomorrow.