What happens when the education system — rather than imparting critical thinking skills — produces a swarm of leftist graduates who are convinced they are responsible for creating truth?
In the wacky world of American journalism, it means the death of truth and the demise of journalism. It’s called relativism, the place where truth becomes more emotion than reason, subjective rather than objective.
Just look at the iconic leftist news stronghold of the New York Times to get a feel for how bad it is. Management at the behemoth news organization is busy trying to put down a “rebellion” brewing in the newsroom, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Fox News senior political correspondent Brit Hume put it like this, “The Times let itself become a hotbed of activists seeking to use reporting to advance their personal views. The paper, once prized for its impartiality, is struggling to get itself back on the straight and narrow. Good luck.
The Times let itself become a hotbed of activists seeking to use reporting to advance their personal views. The paper, once prized for its impartiality, is struggling to get itself back on the straight and narrow. Good luck. https://t.co/PWubrMVVE7
— Brit Hume (@brithume) April 12, 2024
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Good luck indeed. How can you run a newspaper where objectivity is sacrificed on the altar of leftist ideology?
Management at the Times butting heads with the newsroom over union negotiations is one thing. Throw in disagreement about coverage of sensitive topics like transgender and social justice and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. This kind of internal conflict isn’t new at the Times, reported the Journal.
In the latest flare-up of internal strife, top Times editor Charlotte Behrendt, in charge of workplace issues, has called for interviews with almost 20 employees to find out which staffers leaked confidential information to another media outlet.
Do you trust the mainstream media?
The Gaza war is a particular point of contention in the flare-up. When an article was published about how Hamas weaponized sexual violence in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, some newsroom staffers questioned the efficacy of the reporting, according to the Journal. Hamas sympathizers masquerading as reporters felt the suffering of Gazans wasn’t getting enough coverage.
In March, the higher-ups at the Times said they stood by the reporting.
Are you ready for a rumble?
Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn pointed to what he sees as the cause of the factitious culture at the organization. The Times employs a lot of digital-savvy workers who aren’t trained in independent journalism. That could be a part of the problem. People trained to think like machines aren’t expected to discover the truth in the messy realm of human discourse.
Khan then cut to the chase by suggesting colleges aren’t preparing graduates to be tolerant of dissenting views. These are the people who end up as new hires at the Times and most other media outlets.
“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,” Khan said.
In other words, our education system encourages students to say, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” If anybody disagrees, the newly-minted leftist stooges promptly assign a title such as “racist,” “homophobe,” “white supremacist” or “Christian nationalist.”
Khan went on to say that it’s up to the Times to instill values like independent thinking in its employees, according to the Journal. He encourages back and forth that used to be a staple of any newsroom — journalists challenging assumptions and debating about a topic to get to the truth.
That’s well and good, but why bother hiring college graduates if you have to turn around and retrain them?
The Hamas sexual violence article in question was written by veteran correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman and two freelancers in December. The boundaries of internal debate about truth were crossed when a confidential Times work product was allegedly leaked and details about the internal strife among staffers were revealed in an article published by the Intercept, according to the Journal.
As to be expected, some Times staffers were okay with the internal probe to determine who leaked the information. Others, of course, claimed the management was going too far.
So, who’s in charge at the Times? Management or staff? From the tenor of things, it appears that management may be getting fed up with babysitting leftist ideologues fresh out of college. If things keep going the way they appear to be, management may have to dictate what staffers can and can’t report. Good luck.
That’s what happens when truth is sacrificed on the altar of leftist ideology. Somebody has to come in and clean up the mess of opinions dressed up as truth. There’s a word for it: totalitarianism. It’s where progressivism inevitably leads.
