Over at True North, Swiftee assails the Minnesota Monitor’s (and its parent body, the Center for Independent Media’s) claims of “independence”.

As does this piece by Danny Glover at the Beltway Blogroll:

I don’t have a problem with [partisanship and political principle in journalism], and I’m perfectly fine with both existing within the new media order — so long as people are transparent and honest with readers about their partisan leanings and their principles.

I don’t believe that’s entirely the case here.

I think that’s been the issue most of us on the right have had with the Monitor and the CIM since its inception; not that it’s a rent-a-blog, but that it’s been opaque to the point of disingenuity about both its funding and its mission.

Glover:

The folks behind the center clearly understand “independent” to mean something different than most politically informed Americans, and Morley was transparent about defining the term as he understands it. But casting as independent a Washington-oriented publication that admittedly is not politically independent, of both party and philosophy, is still misleading…calling the new publication The Washington Progressive and its parent the Center For Progressive Media would be far more truthful. Why run from the political terminology the operation embraces?

That’s bothered me; it seems as if the Center and the Monitor have tried to have their cake and eat it too – publishing explicitly “progressive” content, while trying to camouflage the motivation.

The Center for Independent Media has a worthwhile mission, and people with competing worldviews should consider organizing similar efforts to train the next generation of journalists. Anyone who reports the news with what Morley calls a “moral perspective,” regardless of what that perspective is, needs to pursue “rigorous adherence to the highest standards of journalism.”

Unfortunately, the center’s word choice, something endemic to sound journalism, does not rise to those standards.

Read all three pieces.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Blogs, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.