by Judi McLeod
May 13, 2004
The Dallas Morning News, a newspaper that delivers the news straight, is sadly in a dwindling minority. In a world dominated by slanted media, the Dallas Morning News stands out like a beacon in the dark fog.
The american daily had a personal impact on my journalistic life when I traveled to the Baltic States in 1990.
at the time of my visit, there was a great deal of political unrest in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were fighting for independence from the former Soviet Union.
Several Canadian news outlets had expressed interested in the stories I would be filing from abroad. Only as an afterthought, I had contacted the Dallas Morning News, whose editors gave me an idea about the kind of stories they would accept.
Enthusiasm began to wane somewhat when, upon my arrival, I discovered that it was difficult to find even a simple fax machine. a typewriter loaned to me by a university professor had a Russian keyboard. Meeting deadlines became problematic. Of the newspapers expecting my copy, I heard only from the Dallas daily editors, who tracked me down at my hotel reminding me of their deadline.
In a strange land at a tumultuous time, I had met Gracina, a professor in Vilnius who became my tour guide. Married to another professor, she would come to my hotel to meet me each day after her husband had returned from work. The couple had two teenaged daughters.
Because she was there everyday at the appointed hour, I had assumed Gracina lived within easy walking distance of my hotel. I was surprised when a Lithuanian gentleman in my travel group told me she lived miles away.
Gracina wore impossibly high-heeled boots, holes of which she repeatedly tried to plug with stiff cardboard. The boots, worn in this coldest of winters were not worn for style, but because they were the only ones available to the poverty-stricken professor.
Because she was so kind to me, one day when Gracina asked me if I would join her to pick up some eggs for her family, I agreed.
as a Westerner, I thought picking up eggs would mean a quick jaunt to the nearest supermarket before continuing on our way. Gracina waited in a lineup for more than three hours. When it was her turn at the front of the line, she was only able to purchase four eggs. They could have been Faberge’s jeweled Easter eggs from the joy displayed by the infinitely patient professor. "There’s an egg for every member of my family. This has been a very good day," she said.
With these words, I finally understood just a little bit about surviving the winter of 1991 in Vilnius. and so did the Dallas Morning News, which ran the story word for word.
So it didn’t surprise me when I came across a splendid editorial about media bias run by the Dallas Morning News a month ago.
"a recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press finds that the public believes the news media are politically biased.
"So what else is new? Several things, actually, all of which bode ill for both journalism and democracy" stated the editorial.
"When the Pew Center did the same survey in 1987, a solid majority believed that election coverage was free of bias. Today, only 38 percent do–including the usually high number of conservative skeptics, but now, notably, more liberals than ever. Fewer americans of whatever political stripes trust the media to give them their political news straight. and fewer americans rely on traditional news media for political news. Pew found that more of us, especially young adults, are turning to the Internet for news–and heaven help us–to political comedy programs. Naturally, those who get information from The Daily Show prove to be poorly informed. an increasing number of us seem interested in learning political news only from media that tell us what we want to hear.
"That’s dangerous for the press and the people. What should be done?
"It’s troubling that a rising generation sees no meaningful difference between news and entertainment.
"It’s time that we in the Fourth Estate admit that liberal media bias isn’t a figment of Rush Limbaugh’s imagination.
"Studies by the american Society if Newspaper Editors, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Knight Foundation have shown that, on average, journalists are much more politically and culturally liberal and secular than their readers.
"The first-century satirist Juvenal lamented that the Roman people had traded civic virtue for "bread and circuses". Because the Romans preferred to be amused and stimulated over anything else, they lost the capacity to govern themselves. It could happen here."
"The public should expect more from us in the news media. Our survival as a credible institution depends on it. The public should also expect more from itself.
"Our survival as a democracy depends on it."
Courageous words from a noble newspaper that is what all newspapers should be, in a time when we need to hear them most.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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