A shadow of hope
I'm usually a harsh critic of the New York Times (and for good reason). But, when they avoid indulging their political leanings, they tend to have really good articles. Here's a prime example: Coastal Cities of Mississippi in the Shadows.
2 Comments:
*is confused*
I'm sitting in San Francisco Bread Co. (I know, how "hippy"), and randomly opted to check your blog to see if you had anything on the Roberts confirmation hearings which have thoroughly saturated the news, and I have to say that you have successfully left me speechless with puzzlement. It sounds a bit like you're saying that if a newspaper or some sort of news agency has any sort of underlying political ideology, then their integrity as a member of the media is questionable and they are undeserving of any serious respect or consideration; and that, moreover, there can ever be a story which is somehow "free" from ideological influence.
The NYTimes is always a journalistic outlet. The stories they choose and their focus of analysis might, indeed, be colored by the political leanings of the individual reporters and editor-in-chief; the same is true of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and Mother Jones. No surprise there. But how is this story - noting that the Mississippi coast has essentially been left clear of the heavy eye of the media storm - a break from their normal pattern?
In fact, I'd almost say that even in this story you could possibly discern the NYTime's underlying ideologies - for instance, the sympathetic mention of Vietnamese shrimpers, the classification of the area of town by the casinos as a "lower and middle-income district".... Even the sentence structure in some respect reflects this: "left" papers and news sources are more likely to phrase a sentence as, "Everyone was happy, though the sky was falling," whereas "right" papers and news sources typically arrange sentences in the opposite way ("Though the sky was falling, everyone was happy.").
People can't really separate the underlying philosophies they have from how they conceive of information and frame issues; the media isn't any different.
And now I have to run away and pick up Micah. Maybe in a few months I'll check your blog again. Heehee.
;) *poke*
And that was me, by the way. I don't know why it didn't include my name. 9_9
~Kes
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