Plus c'est, but not quite
Is media bias new?

Fuck no.

But there is one difference. From Broadcasting Magazine, Aug 1964.

A request for public opinion on "prejudicial expressions" in CBS newscasts was voiced July 20 by Rex G. Howell, owner of KREX, Grand Junction, Colo., in a TV editorial. Mr. Howell, whose stations are CBS affiliates, said he had been registering protests with the network "for many months" over newscasts which "constituted opinion-making rather than reporting of factual news." He said: "We protested the snide manner in which Eric Sevareid interviewed Senator Goldwater, and the side comments frequently voiced by Walter Cronkite which seemed to convey the impression of extreme hostility toward the Arizona senator."

"We fervently wish," Mr. Howell said, "that Mr. Schorr and some of his other liberal colleagues would practice greater regard for the basic principles of fairness in journalism." The editorial quoted Mr. Howell's telegram to CBS President Frank Stanton. In it Mr. Howell said: "It is a source of great personal sorrow that the ideological differences between certain network personnel and the Republican nominee for the presidency has led to such unfortunate exchanges as to reflect upon our dedication to the principles of the fairness doctrine and our own sense of journalistic responsibility."

The one real difference: Howell headed a local station. Now no local station would complain. Everyone is on the same side. There are only ponents and pluponents, no opponents.

Another difference, at least in formalistic terms, is that Howell had the LAW on his side. CBS was violating the fairness doctrine and forcing local stations to participate in the violation.

Howell pointedly FOLLOWED the law by finding a local Democrat to give a counter-editorial after his own editorial.

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Later: I looked to see if Sevareid vs Goldwater was available on Youtube. The specific interview wasn't there, but the search led to an even more perfect example of pluponents.

CBS recently ran an 'archive' feature from the '64 election, with a clip of Sevareid discussing media bias.

Headline:

Think media bias is a new issue? Think again: Here's a 1964 special hosted by CBS News correspondent Eric Sevareid, who speaks of "an ugly boil of hostility towards the press."

Media bias as defined by the media has NOT changed. As seen by CBS then and now, media bias means "an ugly boil of hostility toward the press" and nothing else. Deplorables are zits.

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On a vastly more positive note, here's a 1975 interview of Howell by a Grand Junction oral history project. A fascinating big picture of radio from a thoughtful and objective man who was there at the start. He mentions one 'backwater' that I haven't read about: In the '20s the wire services like UP and AP refused to deal with the upstart radio industry. So a group of broadcasters formed their own coop news service, strictly by CW. When one station had a scoop, or read something important in their local newspaper, they sent the item to the other stations. Most early stations were founded by hams, so Morse was universal and natural. It would also have been semi-secret, not easy for casual listeners to intercept.

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Personal: I mentioned Barry a few days ago, now he turns up again. It's odd that I still think of Barry on first-name terms. I supported him in '64, even though I was an ignorant young leftist then. Now that I'm a slightly less ignorant old populist, I still have positive feelings about him, though he would count as a tech-monster Libertarian in modern terms. In '64 he was probably serving as a pluponent provocateur, helping LBJ to steer the reluctant Dems into total war without feeling like warmongers. "We're not pro-war like those horrible Goldwater zits! We were reluctantly forced into total war by Tonkin Gulf."

Why do I still look at Barry in a positive light? Probably the ham radio thing, a SKILL-based guild that runs deeper than ideology.

NOW I SEE: And why have the modern monsters been wiping out SKILLS since 1975? Specifically because SKILL runs deeper than ethnicity or ideology. When people work together, using shared SKILLS on an absorbing project, ideology and race don't matter nearly as much. Now that all SKILLS have been offshored or obliterated, we have nothing but ethnicity and ideology, which are incurably and intentionally divisive. This also applies to schools, which led the way in eliminating all SKILL-based projects and job training. It's not surprising that schools have also led the way in ethnic and ideological division.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, NOT alternate universe, NOW I SEE, Pluponents, skill-estate

  ¶ 9:44 AM