PressThink Thu 2010-06-24 10:18 EDT

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press

Jay Rosen

That it's easy to describe the ideology of the press is a point on which the left, the right and the profession of journalism converge. I disagree. I think it's tricky. So tricky, I've had to invent my own language for discussing it...political journalists...are skeptical about changing society in any fundamental way...professional journalist...generate authority and respect...flee opprobrium...[by demonstrating] that they are not on anyone's ``team,'' or cheerleading for a known position. This puts a premium on stories that embarrass, disrupt, annoy or counter the preferred narrative...``True believer,'' a term of contempt...narcissistic reactions of both sides prove how mature and professional and detached he is...people with political sense in press treatment will usually be the moderates, mavericks and ``pragmatists,'' a word that in political journalism has almost no content beyond, ``opposite of true believer... ideologically flexible... not a purist.''...journalists try to win the argument not by having better arguments but by standing closer to a reality they get to define as more real than your reality...The Church of the Savvy...The Quest for Innocence...Regression to a Phony Mean...The View from Nowhere...He said, she said journalism...The sphere of deviance...

actual ideological; American press; clowns; jokers; left; PressThink; Right.

naked capitalism Sun 2009-09-13 13:59 EDT

Why Economists Rarely Say Bad Things About the Fed

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found...DownSouth comments ``The collusion between state and academe is the post-Enlightenment version of the old alliance that existed between church and state in the Ancien Régime. Academe currently fulfills the same function that the church did before, and that is to give the state the imprimatur of moral and intellectual legitimacy.''

Economists Rarely Say Bad Things; Fed; naked capitalism.