Restraint, RIP
I've been lately pondering the increasing political polarization of the news biz. We see left slant (like NPR) or right slant (Fox News). The three networks undeniably lean left and have for years. I wonder if it has always been so, or if it is more a product of the 60s when restraint, in all its forms, went out the window?
Because it does take restraint to write for a television news show and not slant it. Blogdom is a "celebration" of lack of restraint, a venting of things you can't say in polite company. And you also notice the lack of restraint extends to never letting the other guy get the last word. (Bill O'Reilly cracks me up on this score - he's always saying, "I'll let you have the last word" but half the time he will sneak in a couple words thereafter).
I embrace the emergence of Fox News and conservative talk radio because I am a conservative and because it provides another point of view. But the shame of it is that so few even try to be objective. The notion of an "honor code" that used to define more chivalric wars (i.e. don't kill civilians) also used to define the journalist profession - they were bound to describe, with equal enthusiasm, both sides of an issue. But now that code appears more and more moribund.
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