Michael Barone has some thoughts: ... and propensities.
Money quote:
I remember a conversation I had with a broadcast news executive many years ago.
"Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?" I asked.
"Oh, no, no," he said. "Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news."
"So what you're saying," I said, "is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans."
He quickly replied, "No, then it would be biased."
Maybe this is a difference between the UK and the US, but I don't think people would know whether their colleagues were labour or conservative, liberal democrat or green, necessarily, in the UK. Political parties have members, but the numbers are small.
ReplyDeleteThe standard of media reporting is probably no better on average, though. Maybe worse ;-)
I suspect that more people in the U.S. that in the U.K. take up journalism in order to change the world.
ReplyDelete