Conversations Around the Net Part III: Iraq War and Polarized Media

Over at the Castle, we were having a discussion about why the media doesn't report good news from Iraq. I made two points, one which was a bit of an analogy:

First, by nature of being an open media that decides what it does or does not print, say, or show, it has been assailed by many people trying to get them to show their point of view. They are like the beautiful woman with millions of suitors each of them offering her diamonds, money or a life of adventure if only it will come with that suitor for awhile.

Of course, the suitor had no intention of loving her, but only desired to screw her brains out and discard her. In response, the beautiful woman begins to develop a hard personality, supported by the scars on the heart and psyche of all the times she'd been taken in before.

There's more you can read in the comments section. Then I point out the polarization effect:

So, yes, I am saying that, while many a journalist will have individual ideas, they didn't drift into journalism at an organization like the NYT or CNN because they are simply a system of journalism but because those organizations most closely produce or resemble in thought their own perceived identity group. I mean that to be, not simply "journalist" but liberal (in what ever way you want to identify that). And, similarly, when these organizations (or any organization or corporation) hire journalists, they vet them for more than how well they construct a sentence, use punctuation or actually site verifiable sources, but the content of their writing and whether it matches whatever written or implied "standards and beliefs" that the organization tends to think of as its "identity".

We go on to talk about how Fox broke the strangle hold of the liberal press, but actually still represents polarized press and how narrative and perception create "truth". You can read it in comments and either comment there or here.