Entertainment & Sports: October 2004 Archives
I'll file this under "Entertainment" because it's hardly worthy to be "News".... Via Drudge, Peter Jennings admits that he's biased and that the ideal reporter shouldn't think.
"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective," Jennings said.Mr. Jennings is troubled that people want journalists to be objective, but says that "reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible". Huh? And the solution is for journalists to think less?Jennings said that everyone -- even journalists -- have points of view through which they filter their perception of the news. It could be race, sex or income. But, he said, reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible.
"And when we don't think we can be fully objective, to be fair," the anchorman said.
Jennings gets questions about a CBS report on Bush's National Guard service, for which CBS news anchor Dan Rather later apologized and said the story was a mistake. He's also asked about Sinclair Broadcasting's decision to air a controversial documentary on Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam war record. Another big question regards an ABC internal memo from the political director suggesting that reporters need not "reflexively" hold both sides of the presidential election "equally" accountable.Right. Airing an admittedly biased documentary is equivalent to airing programs that claim and aspire to be objective news, but are actually packed full of partisan propaganda. Get a clue.
