This Saturday, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be joining forces in Washington DC at the Rally to Restore Sanity, but not everyone will be in attendance.
Today's news reported that NPR has banned any of its employees from attending the rally. Other news organizations are allowing their employees to attend the rally, but not participate in any of the events, sign petitions, or donate money.
NPR responded by saying that they're instituting the ban to preserve their journalistic neutrality. Some journalists are countering by saying that it's no longer realistic to expect that journalists not have a bias in the age of blogging and pundits clogging up the airwaves.
Even as I was typing out the title for this piece, I thought to myself--What am I saying? Of course journalists have opinions, and of course they should be able to. It's just a question of how good they are at hiding those opinions.
Nowadays, is there even a point?
Everybody knows which way the major news networks lean--MSNBC and CNN skew to the left, Fox News goes to the right. Even newspapers and magazines often wear their political affiliations on their sleeves.
Still, I admire NPR for attempting to keep their journalists unbiased, but is barring them from attending a rally the way to go about doing that? Isn't it an infringement upon their right to lead private lives outside of their careers? Plus, let's be honest, it's pretty easy to see that NPR has a more left-leaning slant. Trying to cover it up by barring employees from going to a rally that's merely attempting to satirize political extremists seems, well, the phrase "methinks they doth protest too much" comes to mind.
Since it seems impossible to continue the antiquated image of the "perfect journalist," maybe it's better for journalists to just come right out and let readers and viewers know where they stand.
And if they stand for a little extra sanity in the world, what's wrong with that?
Today's news reported that NPR has banned any of its employees from attending the rally. Other news organizations are allowing their employees to attend the rally, but not participate in any of the events, sign petitions, or donate money.
NPR responded by saying that they're instituting the ban to preserve their journalistic neutrality. Some journalists are countering by saying that it's no longer realistic to expect that journalists not have a bias in the age of blogging and pundits clogging up the airwaves.
Even as I was typing out the title for this piece, I thought to myself--What am I saying? Of course journalists have opinions, and of course they should be able to. It's just a question of how good they are at hiding those opinions.
Nowadays, is there even a point?
Everybody knows which way the major news networks lean--MSNBC and CNN skew to the left, Fox News goes to the right. Even newspapers and magazines often wear their political affiliations on their sleeves.
Still, I admire NPR for attempting to keep their journalists unbiased, but is barring them from attending a rally the way to go about doing that? Isn't it an infringement upon their right to lead private lives outside of their careers? Plus, let's be honest, it's pretty easy to see that NPR has a more left-leaning slant. Trying to cover it up by barring employees from going to a rally that's merely attempting to satirize political extremists seems, well, the phrase "methinks they doth protest too much" comes to mind.
Since it seems impossible to continue the antiquated image of the "perfect journalist," maybe it's better for journalists to just come right out and let readers and viewers know where they stand.
And if they stand for a little extra sanity in the world, what's wrong with that?
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