Why Sean Hannity et al. is ruining journalism ... and other things

I am glad my old journalism teacher, Fr. Whalen, is not around to see what has happened to the profession these days. He wouldn't like what he saw. Thanks to verbal bombers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, reasonable, thoughtful prose is geting pushed aside in favor of vile vitriol.

Don't misunderstand. There have always been a few wild-eyed political commentators. But they were the exception, not the norm. These days, you are either for us or against the country. There is no middle ground. And you have to be flamboyant in your support. None of this "Well, it could be ..." crap. Responses must start out like "Your guy is wrong on the issue and hates the country he lives in ..."

The latest flap is over the New York Times turning down a John McCain Op-ed a few days after running a Barack Obama piece. Hannity and his fellow rightwingers, who spend much of their time telling us what a lousy, biased newspaper the Times is, suddenly are mad the paper didn't run the McCain submission. Of course, they overlooked the fact this piece as nothing more than simple talkback to what Obama had said ... and, unless it is something like USA TODAY does on its editorial page (where it is set up in advance), papers just don't do it that way.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times you tell them the ad department and the editorial department are actually mortal enemies, the right wingers stil think they work together because the NYT once ran an ad criticizing Gen. Petraeus. It doesn't matter if the paper says nine nice things about a Republican. The fact they didn't do it 10 times is a conspiracy, according to the right wing talkie crowd.

There are times when it is truly a black and white world but the fact is most of the time it is gray. Many of our work decisions aren't crystal clear -- many circumstances cloud every issue.

So it is here. Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing crowd refuse to admit there is ever a moment when decisions are not based on ideology. I am guessing that is because every decision they make is done so that way. That may work in the blurry world of talk radio/TV, which has a lot of time it needs to fill. But, with newspaper space at a premium already, hard decisions have to be made every day as to what runs and what doesn't. Reasonable people should be able to disagree aabout this and other subjects without getting yelled at for doing so.

When guys like Hannity railabout the conspiracy and bias of the media all the time, it may make for entertaining radio/TV. But it's lousy journalism because it isn't true. Even worse, it is turning us into a lousier society because this mistrust is now seeping into other aspects of life. We argue more now than we ever did on different topics, ranging from recipes to stop signs.

Damn them for doing that to us.