alain de botton tag!

Try to watch prime time news while high on LSD. It's an interesting experience.

I agree with most of his points, and the first point is fairly thought provoking, but God am I sick of bias-apologists! Journalists aren't there to think FOR us, they're there to provide us with information so that we can think for ourselves. Or rather, that's the way it *should* be, the way it would work in a society which cares about reason and progress through rational discourse on all levels of society. Sadly, this is not how it works; journalism has been reveling in it's own shortsighted bias for ages, and not just on a practicing level, no, but on an academic level as well. And this tendency to go with one's own bias and then rationalize the decision by wrapping oneself in ad-hoc "theory" (sophistry which conveniently elevates the journalist to Gandhi status) is, I submit, a (the?) significant contributing factor as to why the modern news media is a load of pig-dribble that teaches us nothing.

If you want to be biased and have opinions, do so as an activist or a politician. Turning the business of delivering facts and raw data into just another weapon for your own potentially flawed ideological preaching is not simply arrogant, it's downright dangerous.