Exploding media, college myths

The answer to the enduring question, “Are the media liberal or conservative?” is easy: it depends on where you stand politically.
To conservatives, the media are liberal. To liberals, the media are conservative. If you are a leftist, the media are center-right and Establishment to the core.
But one thing often forgotten in the argument: the Bushites who broadcast on Fox and MSNBC have ever so much more influence on American public opinion than the sophisticated New York Times.
Another persistent myth: universities are swarming with lefties, poisoning the minds of youth by inculcating socialism. It simply is untrue.
Of the 608 fulltime professors at the University of Nevada, Reno, no more than a handful are leftists.
The board of the Nevada Faculty Alliance, an advocacy group for UNR professors, has 14 members. Liberals all, probably, but not a leftist among them except this columnist.
The NFA refuses to call itself a union. Unions are for “lowly” workers, not “lofty” professors.
The UNR journalism school has 15 faculty members. Most of them are liberals--but just barely. Radicalism? “Sensible” people don’t think Left.
Just as the media in America represent the Establishment, so do journalism schools.
Situational ethics
I have endured many mediocre journalism speakers, panelists and events since I began teaching at UNR in 1981. In all those decades I cannot recall a better and more applause-worthy speaker than Lynne Dale.
Dale, who spoke during the recent UNR journalism week, and her ABC colleagues broke the Food Lion scandal on “Primetime Live” in 1992.
She showed nauseating film footage: meat and fish marinated in Clorox to hide the smell, rotten spots cut out, outdated food masked with baking soda, and mouldy products relabeled with new expiration dates.
Some of the professorial “ethicists” complained that the ABC exposé resulted from undercover techniques. Yes, Dale had a camera hidden under her wig. Yes, she got the job as a food wrapper in the Red Lion superchain outlet in Pickens, N.C., by lying.
But ethical, smethical. ABC was doing precisely what the media should be doing: exposing corruption. It served the greater public good.
Purists deride what ABC did as “whim ethics.” No, it is situational ethics. Something is right or wrong depending on whether the public must know. The ends justify the means when it comes to infiltration reporting.
As the San Francisco Chronicle editorialized: “The fraud was committed on customers by Food Lion, not on viewers by the network.”
P.S.: Food Lion did not sue ABC for libel because truth is an absolute defense in libel suits. The jury in the U.S. district trial court, not allowed to see the horror film, found for Food Lion. But justice triumphed when a U.S. appeals court ruled for ABC.
Undercover muckraking is an old and honorable journalistic tradition. Nellie Bly of the New York World feigned insanity to get herself commited to an insane asylum in 1887. She wrote a devastating exposé.
Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle” revealed the horrors of Chicago meatpacking with rigorous research, extensive interviews--and by masquerading as a plant worker. The novel led to the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
In 1971 the historic Pentagon Papers were purloined from Defense Department files by Daniel Ellsberg. The Chicago Sun-Times set up a bar to expose bribe-taking Chicago officials.
Life magazine exposed a quack doctor by gaining access to his house under false pretenses, surreptitiously recording conversations and clandestinely taking photographs. CBS’s “60 Minutes” went undercover to reveal that medical lab kickbacks were a way of life in inner city Chicago.
The Cincinnati Enquirer ran an 18-page investigative report detailing the unethical and illegal practices of Chiquita banana. Sure, one of the Enquirer reporters gleaned some information from illegally obtained voice messages. But the greater benefit accured to the public.
All writers need editors
Everyone who writes needs an editor, including this columnist. I am a careful writer, striving for accuracy and grammatical excellence. But this “Homer” sometimes nods.
Nevertheless, my aim is the same as Franklin put it in an essay for the Junto, an intellectual club in colonial Philadelphia: writing must be “smooth, clear and short.”
Ben’s excellent advice has never been adopted by academics. Their writing is muddy, wordy, repetitious.
As editor of the Nevada Faculty Alliance newsletter I shudder at their terrible prose. It’s the worst editing job I ever had.
Oh, the academics are learned. But they should be compelled to take a journalism writing course before getting that glorious PhD.