An editorial by a friend of mine who leans leftward and might be regarded as a present-day conventional liberal (as opposed to those like Dean Esmay, Jeff Goldstein, and this author, who call themselves classical liberals).

Terrible news about the miners in West Virginia. I was awake, of course, and watching when CNN broke the news that initial stories of twelve survivors were wrong and, in fact, there was only one survivor. Over on MSNBC, they were running tape of an eariler press conference on the subject, and on FOX a panel of conservatives were assuring each other that the scandals surrounding the White House and Republican congressmen weren't really scandals and wouldn't affect the Administration or the Republican grip on Congress.



Only CNN was live. Only CNN had the story. An astonished Anderson Cooper broke the news of a single survivor after a women ran down from the Baptist Church where miner's families were gathered and blurted the distressing news to him.



The New York newspapers, which are put to bed before 3 a.m., when the news of the "miscommunication" broke, all ran headlines like "ALIVE" (the New York Daily News).



But again, experience and class tells. The New York Times ran the story saying that families had told them twelve miners were alive, but they (the Times) were unable to confirm it. It seems the other papers published the news as fact, whereas the Times did not.



CNN and The New York Times take it in the balls about every fifteen minutes on FOX and conservative talk radio, where they are called un-American, pro-terrorist and things even more vile. They are favorite targets of the Right wingnuts. It's all bullshit, of course.



Last night, CNN and the New York Times showed why they are the preeminent news sources, world-wide. They are the best at what they do, and the fact that they're not perfect detracts not one whit from that.

I'll remind everyone here that this friend of mine has been very kind to me in a lot of ways. So, sticking to the facts, how would you begin to quantify the degree of error in various news sources? If you accept the premise that we all want to believe what we want to believe—and would prefer to get our information from organs that share our respective slants—how would you cast doubt on either my friend's conviction about the New York Times, or my own?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:49 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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