“A journalist is a wild animal with an appetite for
conservative meat and should be interacted with that way —
always.”
—
Melissa Clouthier, Liberty Pundits
Thus does one conservative blogger express a sentiment that
bids fair to destroy the movement she desires to advance.
Having been told for so long that “the media” are the
enemy, conservatives have become hostile to journalism as a
profession.
One of the reasons why there
are so few conservatives in America’s newsrooms is
because the profession of journalism is relentlessly derided by
those who claim to speak for the conservative
cause. No kid who grew up listening to talk radio
could possibly believe that becoming a reporter is a
worthy ambition. (To be a talking-head pundit on cable TV,
yes; to be a mere reporter, no.) And this blanket
condemnation of journalism qua journalism is
sufficiently broad enough to encompass … well, me.
How many times have I gone to political events and
seen Republican Party operatives tighten up and mind their
words, speaking only in scripted talking points, when they learn
that I am a reporter? Even when I assure them that I’m a
conservative and I’m not there to play “gotcha,” the
instinctive Republican dread of journalists is such that all
reporters are automatically viewed as dangerous.
Well, there are indeed such things as conservative journalists,
but it is a corollary of the anti-journalism worldview of
Republicans that conservative journalists are judged not by
their skill — the accuracy of their reporting, the readability
of their prose, etc. — but by how useful they are in
the service of advancing GOP political objectives. Republicans
treat conservative journalists with a special disdain, as
mere errand boys or stenographers whose job it is to spread the
GOP message.
Although most journalists are indeed liberal, all journalists
prefer to think of themselves as independent-minded and fair,
their primary allegiance being to report the truth. And this
self-concept is in direct conflict with the
stenographic role that Republicans consider appropriate
to conservative journalists. So when a conservative
journalist discerns an objective fact that doesn’t fit the
GOP script, he finds himself in a conflict between his
professional self-concept and his prescribed task as
partisan publicist.
Consider the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s premature
endorsement of Charlie Crist in the Senate primary in
Florida. It is an objective fact that this move was a
spectacular blunder, one which called into question the basic
political competence of NRSC chairman John Cornyn and his
advisors. And I should add that the NRSC’s campaign
counterpart on the House side, the National Republican
Congressional Committee, hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory
of late.
Who will report these facts? If conservative journalists are
expected to be publicity agents for Team GOP, and if Team GOP is
being run into the ditch by the party bosses, where is there any
chance for the kind of sunlight-as-disinfectant reporting that
might prevent the imminent debacle?
But hey, don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just a “wild animal.”
