Marquette Warrior: Admission of Bias From Washington Post Staffer

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Admission of Bias From Washington Post Staffer

Via Lakeshore Laments:

. . . how one Washington Post staffer has complained about liberal bias among the staff of the paper:
Thursday, Book World Editor Marie Arana, noting that she had been “a Young Republican at 15, a marching SDSer at 20, and roundly disgusted by the blue-team, red-team political dialogue by the time I turned 30,” criticized an article on what was called a “stealth evangelism” festival by saying: “The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions. . . . We’re not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I’ve been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats.”
Liberal bias in the media is seldom the result of a conscious attempt to skew the political landscape to the left. Most often, the reporters are just engaged in what they consider unbiased reporting.

The problem, unfortunately, is that the reporting embodies their biases and their presuppositions. This is why even the New York Times has admitted the need for greater diversity on the staff, and and unlike the typical “diversity” hustlers, they don’t mean having more blacks and Hispanics and gays and lesbians who all think just like white male liberals and leftists. The Times has even said:
. . . we will make an extra effort to focus on diversity of religious upbringing and military experience, of region and class.
My, my. Is it possible that more Times staffers will be Christians, or people who served in the military, or Southerners and Midwesterners, or people with working class families?

We frankly doubt the Times can pull this off, but at least they have a meaningful definition of diversity.

One wonders when we might get more diversity in the Marquette English Department, or School of Education.

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