I have said it many times before: I prefer to read the news rather than listen to it on radio or watch it on television. Part of that is because I have very degraded hearing, and part of it is because newspapers have the capability, especially now that digital newspapers have taken some advantage of being able to ignore the printed space limitations of the dead trees editions. Reading the news enables me to go back and reread a section if I found it confusing or contradictory. There’s also the personal point that I delivered newspapers from the sixth through eleventh grades.

But I had to laugh, and I mean a loud, trying-not-to-spill-my-Rice-Chex guffaw, at Jenice Armstrong’s OpEd column in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

I don’t watch cable news much anymore. Here’s why.

Recently, I hosted a screening of “Trustworthy,” a new documentary that asked Americans what they think about the state of media in the U.S. No surprise: It isn’t good.

by Jenice Armstrong | Thursday, June 22, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

When I decided to pursue a career in journalism, it wasn’t that long after the glory days of the uncovering of the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon. Back then, Americans viewed us as heroes, champions of the people.

I worked at newspapers all over because I admired reporters such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I sacrificed time I could have spent with my family — or even starting one of my own — because I wanted to do this work. I’ve watched my colleagues do the same, only to end up working for a shrinking industry that Americans rank not far above used car salespeople.

Today, Americans trust journalism less than ever. A recent poll by the Knight Foundation and Gallup discovered that only 34% of Americans trust the news media to be accurate and fair; more — 38% — said they have “no trust at all” in the media.

Recently, I hosted a screening of Trustworthy, a new documentary on the subject of media distrust, at the Fitler Club, which was followed by a panel discussion. Executive producer Stephany Zamora, a Silicon Valley tech executive, created it after watching Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She woke up the following morning determined to explore the media and democracy and whether it’s possible to find common ground.

Despite having zero filmmaking experience, Zamora set off on a 5,300-mile bus journey across the country interviewing academics, journalism experts (including Inquirer editor and senior vice president Gabriel Escobar), and ordinary Americans about what they think about the state of media in the U.S.

The blurb to the right is a screen capture from Miss Armstrong’s column, and it’s certainly true. But the columnist is about to miss the entire point.

All it takes to discredit news media are two words, Escobar notes in the documentary: “Fake news. When people say ‘fake news’ and it is aimed at staining the work that journalists do, there’s great danger in that.”

Mr Escobar said that as though the “work that journalists do” is somehow beyond criticism, beyond question. But I am old enough to remember ‘Rathergate‘, in which CBS News used forged documents to try to sabotage the younger President George Bush’s re-election bid. More, I watched CBS News coverage on election night that year, as Dan Rather kept asking reported Ed Bradley, who was doing the numbers that night, for another scenario in which Senator John F Kerry (D-MA) could somehow pull out a win, despite the numbers going against him as the returns rolled in, and the hang-dog expressions on all of their faces as they realized that President Bush was going to be re-elected.

Miss Armstrong wrote that she blamed the problems that journalism is facing on “cable news,” at which point she commented on the failures of CNN to revitalize itself after the firing of Jeff Zucker and hiring of Chris Licht, an effort which failed, and Mr Licht was let go himself earlier this month, after barely a year on the job. Amusingly, the Associated Press reported:

A lengthy profile of Licht in Atlantic magazine that came out on Friday, (June 2, 2023), titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,”^[1]Internal link added by me; not in cited article. proved embarrassing and likely sealed his fate. Author Tim Alberta discussed how Licht’s effort to reach viewers turned off by CNN’s hostility to Trump had failed and damaged his standing with CNN journalists.

Another belly laugh here. According to the report, CNN’s journalists were complaining that, in effect, Mr Licht was trying to go for less strident anti-Trump stuff and trying to engage in less unfair more unbiased reporting.

Naturally, there was the Inquirer’s standard denigration of Fox News as slanted — which it is — but I was amused when Miss Armstrong told us that she used to keep cable news on as a “backdrop,” and “fall asleep listening to MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.” If you listen to Miss Maddow’s show, you’ll never run out of biased news, as she is as hard left, on an admittedly leftist network, as you can find.

Miss Armstrong concluded:

In the meantime, I have another solution: Stick to newspapers, which delineate between opinion and straight news. Also, turn off 24-hour cable news, which too often blurs the line between fact and opinion and hypes events to boost ratings.

That’s what I do. I’m way less triggered that way. I sleep better, too.

“Stick to newspapers, which delineate between opinion and straight news”? How many times have I noted the journolism — the spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity — of the Inquirer? There are 68 stories on this website alone in which a site search for Inquirer journalism returned. We have noted how the Inky deliberately censors the police reports they use, refused to publish a story on a pro-life clinic, in Philadelphia, being vandalized, and we have previously noted the killing of 12-year-old Thomas J Siderio, Jr, after he took a shot at the police, and The Philadelphia Inquirer’s attempts to drum up sympathy for a wannabe gang-banger with parents who are criminals. We have pointed out that while the Philadelphia Police Department wanted to keep the name of the officer who shot young Mr Siderio confidential, for the officer’s safety, the Inquirer dug in, found out the officer’s name, and published it, in what I can only believe is an attempt to get the officer killed. The Inquirer’s Editorial Board had already opined that the killing of a young, gun-toting punk who opened fire on police young Mr Siderio should “should make every Philadelphian outraged.” I guess that outrage means that the Inquirer ought to put a target on the officer, to try to get him killed, because that’s exactly what they have done. What apparently didn’t outrage the Editorial Board was the fact that a wannabe gang banger was carrying a weapon and took a shot at the police.

Many of those stories were supposedly straight news stories, not specified opinion pieces.

But it’s hardly unexpected, because the Inquirer itself told us that, to meet publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes’ requirement that it become an “anti-racist news organization,” the newspaper would censor the news, saying that the newspaper would be:

• Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.

In a city which has averaged over 500 murders a year for the past three years, and could be headed that way again in 2023, I’m not sure how the newspaper could possibly ‘overemphasize crime.’

• Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.

So, the newspaper has publicly committed to an “antiracism” mission, and that, rather than simply presenting the facts, will guide how it publishes the news.

• Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
• Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
• Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Put plainly, Miss Hughes told us that the Inky would bend its coverage on “crime and criminal justice” with an organization which specifically labels itself activist, which wants reparations from media organizations, and which, despite Miss Hughes’ efforts, wants the newspaper to go even further to the left. The newspaper’s publisher wasn’t telling us about the Inky’s editorial and OpEd pages, she wasn’t “delineat(ing) between opinion and straight news,” but about everything that they publish!

Yes, Miss Armstrong is right: the cable news networks have biases, biases strong and obvious enough that News Nation has seen an opening for straight news programming, though I cannot comment on how successful they’ve been in avoiding bias.

But The Philadelphia Inquirer has a bias, too, and not just on the editorial and OpEd pages; they have already admitted it. It’s understandable that, as a newspaper employee and writer, she’d want people to get their news from newspapers, but to claim that newspapers, especially her own, “delineate between opinion and straight news,” is just laughably false.