The media are barely covering the political and human catastrophe unfolding in Venezuela:
Out of approximately 50,000 total evening news stories on ABC, CBS and NBC combined in the last four years, just 25 have covered the ongoing crisis in socialist Venezuela, according to a Media Research Center study published Tuesday….
…and they certainly aren’t slopping the blame over to…well…you know…:
…out of the 50,000 total evening news stories on the three networks, just 25 covered Venezuela, and only seven mentioned “socialism.”
For many journos, it’s the “ideal” they were raised to revere (minus all the misery and bloodshed;
And for others ? Free markets are a lot harder to cover than planned ones; covering a free market would involve learning, rather than talking with highly-placed planning officials.
You know, journalistic laziness does explain a LOT of how they tend to the left. Going out on the streets to uncover stories like my great uncle did–he uncovered a gambling syndicate in Louisiana in the 1960s and was sued (unsuccessfully) for it–is a lot of work and can be dangerous to boot. Bureaucrats don’t tend to bother you unless your work threatens their job, and you “can” just quote them on what they want to do, no matter how idiotic it is.
Two links:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-medias-ancien-rgime/article/7805
The first shows a decline in Americans’ trust of the media, from about 53%, 1997-2003, to ~32% in 2016. The decline in trust began about at about the same time as the Iraq War.
The second link is Hugh Hewitt’s essay on his visit to Columbia School of Journalism. CSJ is the blue-ribbon journalism school. Hewitt finds the students at CSJ don’t look much like America at all, economically or culturally.