Media lingo 101

"There is no reflection of reality in the mainstream media. The New York Times is completely biased."

There are things to keep in mind when speaking to journalism students. Mainly, it's a matter of knowing the vocabulary. For instance, most journalism students are very adamant about the inherent bias of the media.

"Oh," you say. "What's wrong with that? Don't we all think the mainstream media has a bias?"

Absolutely, and journalism students are the first to stand up and say it's wrong to do biased reporting. It's so simple: report the facts, interview both sides of the issue at hand and don't have a conflict of interest.

Not so simple.

First of all, the media bias the student is talking about is a right-wing bias.

"Huh?" you say.

Take my mass media history class this quarter. I don't think I've ever taken a class that took me so deep into the mindset of modern journalism. If you think the professors are the big lefties in journalism, you are partly right. But you can thank the liberal professor of this class for at least sounding somewhat moderate compared to the student responses he gets.

The quote at the top is from a student during discussion last week. Her point: The New York Times, the newspaper most identified (even by themselves usually) as being on the liberal side of the political spectrum, is completely right-wing.

So what's normal, unbiased, reality reflecting journalism?

One person she mentioned in class is Dahr Jamail, an independent "journalist" who recently visited Western to give a documentary on American "atrocities" in Iraq. His Web site is a compilation of his "reporting," interviews with such vaunted publications as Socialist Worker Magazine, photos of dead Iraqi "citizens" (he is so original as to use raw official identification photos--opened body bags, etc.), and his uniquely unbiased, behind-the-scenes perspective, which is a funny concept since he was quoted in the Bellingham Herald as saying he went to Iraq because he was mad about the job the mainstream media was doing, which would mean, of course, he went there with his preconceived notions of what the real story was.

I could keep going on about the many other notions students hold, at which I can only sit back and shake my head in bewilderment. After all, since when was the government a smaller threat to the freedom of the press than "corporate consolidation?" But for now, just be assured that there is a different language you must learn to talk about such things with the average student of journalism.