THE CORRECT WORD – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Bernie Goldberg, who has become an acerbic and usually accurate press critic, had it right in a TV commentary last night.  He said that the behavior of the mainstream media has gone beyond bias and has now entered the arena of corruption.

He is correct, and "corruption" is the correct word.  The behavior of the press in the last week, in reporting charges against tea-party demonstrators, would have been enough to get a student expelled from any decent journalism school...at least at one time.

Reports started surfacing a week ago Saturday that some tea partiers demonstrating at the Capitol had hurled the "n" word against African-American congressmen walking past them.  One of the congressmen later charged that he had been spat at.

There was virtually no attempt on the part of the mainstream media to check these reports.  The charges simply went out, and what we saw was a major smear that would have made Joe McCarthy blush.  Even as a few brave journalists, mostly at Fox, dissected the accusations and examined the sound portion of videotapes made that day, the charges were lazily accepted as fact.  It was a sickening example of fringe journalism at its worst – destroying people without any evidence whatsoever.

No audio recorded that day picked up any racial slur.  The congressman who claimed he'd been spat at made a pseudo-gracious statement saying he wouldn't press charges.  But Capitol Police said they'd investigated and found no criminal violation.  So there was nothing to press charges about.

This is no longer bias.  This is corruption, a wilful portrayal of events that a press outlet knows is either wrong, or may well be wrong.  There's an old adage in journalism:  "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."  Today, too many stories go unchecked, as long as they support the prevailing party line.  Case in point – the early reporting of the Duke University lacrosse case, in which three innocent boys had their lives almost destroyed by false allegations of rape. 

I have no doubt that there are racists in a variety of political movements, and probably some racists among the tea partiers.  There are also racists on the left, especially in some labor unions.  But journalism, to win public support, must be based on fact, not assumptions or an accepted "narrative."

The mainstream media has been dying.  The Titanic captains among them keep convincing themselves that it's the internet that's doing it.  No, it's not.  It's a loss of faith by the public, and precious little is being done about it.

Don't depend on the journalism schools to help correct the problem.  They are heavily left-wing, and they are in the tank for the media outlets who hire their graduates.  They're silent when they should be shouting.

March 30, 2010