I’m a little surprised, actually. A couple of posts below I put up an email I wrote to Edward Wasserman (“Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University” according to the piece I referenced from the Philadelphia Inquirer) concerning truth in journalism and how we, the “loud and bullying sliver of the audience” are asserting an “undue outside influence” on the media.
Or at least, that’s how he sees it.
Well, he responded. Here it is:
With respect, I don’t really think that the protest I’m talking about is fact-driven. (Not to say a fact-based critique isn’t fully warranted, and the instances you cite are disturbing.) But Bush supporters don’t, for instance, dispute the “facts” of his National Guard service. They do dispute the rightness, fairness and timing of the coverage of it. The Kerry people say that even if the Swift guys’ stuff was largely debunked factually, the media gave it so much attention the issue got undue credibility, and Kerry was forced on the defensive. The terrain of controversy isn’t over what’s factual, it’s about what’s important and about how much weight to put on this versus that. The people I hear from don’t want to correct me; they want to shut me up. Present company excepted.
EW
Now I’m going to have to write a rebuttal.
I wonder what he’ll have to say about RatherGate?
My reply to Mr. Wasserman is up.