Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at FrontPage Mag. Some excerpts are below:
During the Nordic Media Festival in Bergen, Norway, in May 2012, the largest media conference in the Nordic region with 1600 delegates, Professor Frank Aarebrot voiced his deep concern over the fact that an increasing number of Scandinavians prefer websites that are not edited by proper, decent journalists. He considers this trend “disturbing,” since it leaves a confused audience to search for information on their own. The flock might presumably be led astray without qualified shepherds to guide their path.
Research done by him and others in Scandinavia proves that journalists have political sympathies that are far to the left of the general population, and have had so for decades. Yet Professor Aarebrot is quick to reassure us that this has absolutely no impact on the political profile of their journalistic work, none whatsoever.
As a matter of fact, if you believe that journalists with far-Left political sympathies might slant the way the mainstream media report issues, you’re just as crazy as those who believe that Elvis Presley is still alive or that little green men from outer space walk among us and built the pyramids in ancient Egypt. Yes, that was the exact comparison Aarebrot drew in court in his expert testimony during the trial against Anders Behring Breivik. This comes from an oft-quoted and respected professor of political science in his native country.
But if journalists have some special ability or gene that makes them immune to the weakness of personal bias that affects that rest of mankind, why can’t neo-Nazis make excellent journalists? That would be the logical conclusion if we truly believe that the personal views of journalists have no impact on their reporting.
After hearing the news of Breivik’s massacre at Utøya on a summer camp of the Labor Party’s youth league (AUF), the American television personality Glenn Beck found it distasteful that a party would have a political youth camp at all. As The Sydney Morning Herald commented, “Norwegians have hit back at former Fox News presenter and Tea Party darling Glenn Beck, after he compared the country’s shooting victims to the Hitler Youth in a radio show overnight. In a monologue on the syndicated radio show The Glenn Beck Program, the conservative commentator said: ‘There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.’“
Frank Aarebrot, who has studied in the USA, retorted by calling Beck a pig, a “Fascist” and a “vulgar propagandist” leading the American public astray and trying to surpass Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. When Aarebrot is not presented as an objective scientist totally devoid of personal bias of any kind, he is also a Labor Party supporter and a lifelong honorary member of AUF.
To his credit, Glenn Beck did note that Breivik is a mass murderer and a terrorist who is just as bad as Osama bin Laden. Some observers might claim that his comments were in poor taste, but it is nevertheless a fact that Utøya is a place where Socialist politics and ideological indoctrination is combined with youthful hormones.
It is somewhat odd to label somebody a Fascist when that person advocates less political indoctrination of impressionable youths, not more. Let us leave aside the fact that Beck has earlier warned against the rise of European “Fascists” such as Geert Wilders.
Presumably, to people like Frank Aarebrot, “Socialist” and “unbiased” are seen as synonymous terms…
[…]
In every single Western country for which I have seen studies, journalists have political sympathies to the left of the general population, sometimes quite far to the left. The question is: Does it matter?
I think it does. The mass media are incredibly powerful. They are the eyes and ears of modern societies and affect how we collectively perceive the world around us. If they distort our senses by viewing everything through red-colored glasses, it becomes hard to accurately recognize and deal with problems. When faced with real enemies — and there will always be enemies — such a systemic distortion of reality could prove fatal.
Read the rest at FrontPage Mag.
For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.
3 comments:
One's public expression of opinions and biases has a lot to do with the general public reaction toward those biases.
When the media is predominantly liberal, any liberal bias will be treated "more fairly" than a non-liberal bias. Same goes for any conservative biased media source.
The average reader and average person isn't going to express their non-liberal opinions if it means being publicly mocked and humiliated by so-called fair journalists.
To be "truly fair" one must report without any bias... and that would make for some really boring news that advertisers may not be willing to pay to support for their advertising campaigns.
So...
Isn't it ironic that the liberal socialist media elites blast capitalism while at the same time engaging in capitalism to fund their organizations?
The dichotomy of hypocrisy in this is on the side of the liberal leaning media, because conservative media clearly supports the capitalism which funds their organizations.
We are observing the ultimate consequence of the liberal establishment imploding due to their own anti-establishment ideologies.
Liberal reporters are very biased and it shows, one only needs to read the NYTimes or LATimes to see this. Not only does it effect the stories they do cover but also the ones they decide not to because it doesn't fit their political filters or agenda.
The sad fact is, you won't get objective or honest coverage of any issue where Liberals have a stake in. Say for example illegal immigration, radical Islam, reporting on the ethnicities of criminals or the 3 strikes law.
And this terrible liberal bent is why news weeklies and the major dailies in the U.S. are dying. People are sick of being fed distortions and agit-prop disguised as news. Another problem is that their reporting staff does a rotten job, most don't even know the 5 W's any more.
Hey Lawrence,
You seem to be noticing that socialists are quite the "capitalists" themselves. They love their flow of capital, they've figured out a way to get as much as they can with the least amount of work possible, as long as the rest of us will keep working for them, that is. Instead of creating product and selling it, they create laws to take money from others and pass it on to themselves. Not classical capitalism (the term coined by socialists), but it's still capital-ism.
The true opposite of socialism is free-marketism. Socialists are in love with money, but what they despise is free markets. They are no good at it, the don't want to risk or be responsible.
Tell your favorite socialist how great the free markets are and watch them molder in fury. Tell them they should really learn to coexist with free markets.
Socialists are like rats. When a group of them implode (usually getting caught in crimes), more rats just slip in to take over. The power of socialism is waxing and is greater than at any time in history, although we are seeing some pushback. As I recall, some great wars were fought to stop socialism, yet here they are, they've got the schools and the media.
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