How to read the media
The best way to gather information, I think, is from a variety of sources and viewpoints. Don’t just listen to people who believe what you do, and discount the rest. We can be the best informed citizenry by listening to the whole marketplace of ideas and information, within reason.
It would help, and be best for our country, if the liberal media were honestly liberal, and conservative media clearly professed to be that. Since it’s not that honest out there, we have to look for good analysis like this one on the media blog at National Review Online.
The quote, in context below, comes from a Christian Science Monitor profile of Bill Roggio:
“His bias can be overwhelming at times – his posts can sound a lot like government talking points filtered through war stories. When he’s not filing stories from a war zone, he likes to take issue with the mainstream media’s reporting of events, such as The Washington Post’s recent report on the dangers of Anbar Province. He often sees Al Qaeda as the hand behind most of what’s going on in Iraq, such as the Thanksgiving bombings that killed more than 200.
“Those views are not in the mainstream and many people, including Iraq Study Group cochairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton, do not subscribe to them. But while some might discount Roggio as a journalist who lets his patriotism and ties to the military get in the way of his work, there is value in his reportage.”
That his patriotism would be a reason for some to “discount” Roggio is the reason we need a new definition of journalism in this country.
That is a very good point.
 On his blog, Roggio A) accurately reports facts and B) expresses optimism about America’s mission and affinity with the men and women carrying it out. His detractors argue that he lets the latter “get in the way” of his work. A properly skeptical reporter, they would argue, should doubt America’s mission and regard its armed forces with suspicion.
And “this is indeed the mainstream media’s approach,” he quotes blogger Glenn Reynolds as writing. You can read these posts to sort through the names, but this makes good sense.
Dante Chinni, who wrote the profile, is probably correct to say that the right media diet is a mix of left-leaning big media coverage and right-leaning coverage from independent sources like Roggio. But unlike the former, Roggio doesn’t pretend to be an objective, neutral, unbiased source of information, which makes his journalism more trustworthy than most.
I’ve just completed an article on media bias, researching a lot of the reporting on politics and war in the MSM, and have to say I really agree with this. I already believed this to be true, but it’s good to see these posts telling it like it is.