The American media are accomplices in the worst contemporary crimes
BY CHRIS HEDGES “The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press,” the late columnist Molly Ivins once wrote. “There is no such thing as objectivity, and the truth, that slippery little bugger, has the oddest habit of being way to hell off on one side or the other: it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view. The smug complacency of much of the press–I have heard many an editor say, ‘Well, we’re being attacked by both sides so we must be right’–stems from the curious notion that if you get a quote from both sides, preferably in an official position, you’ve done the job…”
