The Washington Post’s CEO and publisher Fred Ryan is stepping down. In an entry, LinkedIn News wrote thus, ‘While The Post is considered a “premier journalistic institution,” its subscriber growth has stalled and the paper, as a result, has “struggled to maintain momentum.”’ Amazon’s Bezos owns the company.
As a new leader takes over, I have the following suggestion: return back to your root of unaligned journalism. In other words, inform and educate and try not to take sides. Like the Guardian (UK), CNN and BBC (geopolitics), Washington Post does not inform in a fair and balanced way anymore. That is why many subscribers are leaving! (My focus is not on the tribal news organizations like Fox and NBC which are evidently biased; my focus is on the pretenders which claim they’re on the center.)
When you take a side as a paper, it becomes really hard to inform, impartially. You can pick many articles which these outlets are writing, and see how illogical they have become. Take this CNN one titled “Exclusive: Ukrainian troops witnessed Russian soldiers swept away in dam breach floodwaters”. As it blamed Russia for the collapse, not considering the illogical situation where a military will destroy a dam that would kill many of its soldiers, it dropped this line “The Russian units in harm’s way may not have been warned, possibly to maintain the element of surprise, Pidlisnyi said.”
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Yes, your units with dozens of soldiers could not be informed to leave their positions before you throw a grenade or send a missile to blow up a dam which you know will kill them. The old CNN would not have published that because it was illogical. Washington Post, Guardian, BBC, etc do this daily.
Sure – this is not about the support or against a war; I just want decent journalism. The media has power and all the players must use the power with civility, honour and decency.
I have noted that I have taken time to read New York Times chronicles of the Biafra War from 1967 to 1970. In March 1969, the New York Times reported extensively on attacks which killed 420 civilians in open markets (Ozu-Abam, etc) in Abia State, 15 miles from the front lines.I checked the Guardian and BBC, there were no such entries.
I asked why they did not want the British people to know about these civilian attacks? I learned something about the power of the media: the British people did not even know what was happening in Biafra because the supposedly impartial media houses were not telling the whole truth, focusing on the government narratives.
I wish The Post good luck. But unless it returns back to the root of impartial non-blinded journalism, nothing will change on the user growth.
Comment on Feed
Comment 1: “When you take a side as a paper, it becomes really hard to inform, impartially “ Well, Foxnews took a side and viewership has been booming.
My Response: Fox News is a tribal news media and does not pretend. The challenge is when you try to pretend. I did not include Fox, NBC, etc because they do not pretend. I included CNN because it pretends.
Comment 2: Impartial non-blinded journalism doesn’t improve user growth.
My Response: If you are tribal, focus on it as extreme and you will find value. The issue is pretending. I will not include Fox, NBC, etc because they’re tribal. I was writing on the pretenders like BBC.
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The problem with this kind of post is that the overwhelming majority of people who will give opinions aren’t different from the media houses and journalists being called out, because this thing called impartiality has become a moving target.
How do we know what is impartial especially when it’s coming from a journalist or media organization you don’t like their method? It is never easy to judge what you don’t like fairly, because your ground state is not neutral.
So, rather than focusing on elusive objectivity, it may be more productive to search for truth, which is more rigorous and demands a lot of patience and open mindedness, qualities that are obviously in short supply.
I rate Tucker Carlson highly, but many people are against him, until you ask them to point you to any other guy out there with clearer thought process and better reasoning, and then they point you to his right leaning, which means we are back to square one…
Ladies and gentlemen, in this fluid and vested era we are in, the concept of impartiality and objectivity has lost universally agreed meaning, because most minds are compromised and impure.
I will rather focus on searching for truth and proclaiming same, anything else is wordplay.