Quote:
Originally posted by ARTelevision
My journalist friends are good people. They just happen to be a part of a liberally educated cultural elite that does not publically acknowledge itself as a cultural elite. Privately however, they make it very clear that they consider themselves to be on a different level than their readers. They tend to believe that they have a broader perspective and are more socially aware than the rest of us. They are hypocritical to the extent that they have money and some power yet wish very much to see themselves as populists and friends of the common man and champions of the downtrodden.
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We do have a broader perspective and are more socially aware than most people. Why? Because most people, if they take in news at all, it's on shows like Fox News or (this one's crazy) The Daily Show. We on the other hand see stuff that doesn't even get published/broadcast. We spend our careers steeped in nothing but news. Is that a negative reflection on non-journalists? No. Airline pilots know a hell of a lot more about airplanes than I ever will. Why shouldn't a journalist know a hell of a lot more about the news than non-journalists ever will?
Yeah, you're correct in that most journalists that I've worked with lean toward the left in their personal politics. What exactly is your point? We strive to be fair and to present both sides. Quite frankly, Bush alone has pulled enough shenannigans that we could cover them wall to wall for a week and still not run out of material, yet we haven't done that. The media crucified Clinton for getting a blowjob, but any firestorm that boils up around Bush dissipates inside of a week. And yet people still have the gall to call us a liberal media. That's a joke.
As an aside, I'm not sure where you get the idea that journalists have money. Average starting salary for a television journalist is somewhere between $15,000 and $17,000. There are people at Burger King making more than that.