Faux Populists in Print

In The National Post, Matt Welch dogs newspapers for phony populism and praises a new wave of daily tabloids for reintroducing some competition to the business.

The best line in the article: "Professionalism, while undoubtedly improving the overall standards of basic newsgathering, has had the unintended effect of putting lipstick on monopolist pigs."

Comments

[Kevin Carson]

I question whether "professionalism" (in the sense of an aura of phony objectivity) has appreciably improved the quality of journalism. I prefer the nineteenth century model of open advocacy in reporting the news, in which an adversarial process of debate between newspapers led, through the marketplace of ideas, to the truth. Truth is advanced by a Socratic dialectic in which all parties make their case the best they can, not by pretending not to have a position.