Should We Know How Journalists Vote - Road to the Middle Class

Their usual response is that their professional ethics prevents them from responding. You see, if we don’t know a journalist’s political opinions it makes it easier for us to accept his/her journalism as objective. (Yes, they really make that argument!)

So yesterday Hugh asked the Question in an interview with Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly was on to push his new book Culture Warrior.

Like the MSMers, O’Reilly declined the question. He said:

But say I get behind a candidate, or say I voted for something else. I lose, I lose some of my objectivity, because…
HH: No, no you…
BO: Let me explain. If you vote for somebody, and this is…every study in the world shows this, then you’re more likely to give that person the benefit of the doubt. So if you vote for Bush, you’re more likely to say, give him a lot more rope, than you would if you voted for Kerry.

Not very convincing, you’d have to agree. But O’Reilly was willing to discuss his political opinions—on abortion, gay marriage, guns, and school vouchers. So listeners could get a pretty good idea where he was coming from.

But should MSM journalists say who they vote for?

Actually, I don’t think it matters. What matters is what the journalist says in answer to the Question. If he is perfectly frank, then we know we are dealing with someone is perfectly frank. If he bobs and weaves, then we know we are dealing with a person who likes to bob and weave about important issues.

And that is all we need to know.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

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Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
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E. G. West, Education and the State

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

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Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

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Conservatism

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US Life in 1842

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Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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