If you are interested in politics at all, read this following excerpt to its end. This is the most interesting political discussion I've heard in a long time. HH is Hugh Hewitt, father of the conservative political blogosphere and radio talk show host.
He is interviewing Thomas Edsall, who spent 25 years at the Washington Post, retiring this year from his post as senior political correspondent.
HH: A proposition. The reason talk radio exploded, followed by Fox News, followed by the center-right blogosphere, is that because folks like you have been the dominant voice in American media for a long time, and you’re a pretty thoroughgoing, Democratic favoring, agenda journalist for the left, and you’ve been the senior political reporter of the Washington Post for a very long time. And people didn’t trust your news product…not you, personally, but the accumulation of you: the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and they got sick and tired of being spoon fed liberal dross, and they went to the radio when an alternative product came along.
TE: To a certain degree, I agree with that.
HH: And so, why do you think it’s wrong, somehow, for people to want to hear news that they don’t consider as biased? I mean, that’s what it is. It’s just that unbiased news is what people wanted. That’s why conservatives like me got platforms, and our blogs get read, and our columns get absorbed.
TE: One, I don’t think it’s unbiased.
HH: It’s transparent at least. Everyone has bias. I agree with that. Everyone’s got bias.
TE: It’s transparent. Okay, that I would agree. And I agree that whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it, many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left.
HH: Well, that’s very candid.
TE: Well…
HH: Have you ever said that…in the course…when you were working for the Post, would you tell people who you voted for, and how liberal you were?
TE: You mean people people?
HH: Yeah. You ever write a column about…you know, I’m a left wing Democrat, but you can trust me. I won’t mess around with the candidates?
TE: No, because I’ve screwed over as many or more Democrats as I have Republicans.
........HH: Is there any big name political reporter, and you know them all, Thomas Edsall. That’s why your book, Building Red America, is getting read left and right. Are there any of them who are conservative?
TE: Big name political reporter?
HH: Right.
TE: Jim Vandehei of the Washington Post.
HH: Think he’s voted for Republicans for president?
TE: Yes, I think he has. I don’t know, because he’s never told me. But I would think he has.
HH: And so, of those sorts…and he’s a very fine reporter.
TE: He is.
HH: He probably is a Republican. But given that number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?
TE: It’s probably in the range of 15-25:1 Democrat.
HH: Can the mainstream media ever be fair as a result?
TE: Well, you know, you’re asking, I think, a wrong question. I think the problem is that there is a real difficulty on the part of the mainstream media being sympathetic, or empathetic, whatever the word would be, to the kind of thinking that goes into conservative approaches to issues. I think the religious right has been treated as sort of an alien world…
How much more honest can one be. I almost drove my car into a ditch. It has been my position, stated here and elsewhere, that the dems and libs don't read our stuff. They are not exposed to our pov enough to be empathetic. Conservatives have no choice. We are force fed lefty pov in schools, universities, MSM, and even our TV programs and movies. We understand and empathise, but reject liberal thinking. Then when you argue with the Dems, the debate gets all muddled with their feelings instead of facts. Why? Because you can't argue effectively against what you don't understand.
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