[From article]
The late Mike Royko -- a columnist in Chicago for many decades -- warned young reporters against hobnobbing with politicians because it might compromise their objectivity. As he noted, “[i]f you get too close, then you’re going to feel uncomfortable when you have to stick it to them.” Unhappily, contemporary media personalities such as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, along with most of the press, seem to be unaware of Royko’s wisdom.
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(Young people are the least politically knowledgeable segment of the populace.) Now, after revelations that he secretly met Obama in the White House, and especially since Obama’s most recent appearance on his show, Stewart is not credible when it comes to speaking truth to left-wing Democrats in power.
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Not only do many media denizens routinely associate with the ruling class at work and at play, it is no longer rare for a journalist’s significant-other and/or relative to be a key government official. The presidents of CBS News and ABC News, for example, have siblings who are major players in Obama’s administration. In 2013, CNN’s deputy bureau chief, Virginia Mosley, was married to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Tom Nides. One also thinks of instances in which a former key member of a Democrat administration -- such as George Stephanopoulos -- becomes a TV anchor at ABC News. (I originally wrote that Stephanopoulos “changed careers” to join ABC News, but after remembering that he donated at least $75,000 to the Clinton family foundation, I decided he hadn’t “changed careers” after all.) Other former political operatives may not work in the media, but they hold prominent positions in major J-schools.
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Today the connections between the media and the ruling class are so close that it is virtually impossible to separate them.
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media personalities and the ruling class tend to come from the same socio-economic background, and to attend the same schools and colleges/universities.
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Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, for example, perhaps the most famous journalist of the late 19th century, dropped out of school after the 5th grade.
Perhaps the best-known American journalist of the first half of the 20th century was H. L. Mencken, a.k.a. “the Sage of Baltimore.” Mencken graduated from a mathematics, technology, and science-oriented high school, and took a correspondence class or two in journalism from Cosmopolitan University. Beyond that, Mencken learned journalism on the job.
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Virtually all members of today’s media are college/university graduates
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a large portion of those working in the media have, at worst, upper-middle-class backgrounds, and thus have little or nothing in common with America’s “common” men and women.
More important, given their socioeconomic background, and the locales in which they live and work, today’s media personalities have much in common with our ruling class.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/08/what_mike_royko_knew_that_jon_stewart_and_the_mainstream_media_dont.html
August 6, 2015
What Mike Royko Knew that Jon Stewart and the Mainstream Media Don't
By Richard Winchester
