Oct. 29, 2004
It’s a well known fact that the media sucks. Or is that merely a widely held opinion? I’d like to argue that it is a distinction that makes no difference, that opinion-free facts are the mythical creation of insecure epistemologists, that all the recent laments over the media’s becoming too opinionated are understandable but confused, that the corporate media has a powerful interest in the myth of non-opinion because it allows the expression of corporate opinion unsupported by argument, and that what’s wrong with the media – in a word – is dishonesty, not “opinion.”
Disney employee and ABC News President David Westin, according to the Harvard Crimson, recently warned against the proliferation of opinion commentary in the news media: “The more time we express our opinions, the less time we have to talk about the facts,” Westin said. “Unfortunately, opinion is driving out facts too often in most of what we see on television today