Kyle Palmer Quotes
Turner, forget it. We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York -- of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son-of-a-bitch Sinclair any way we can. We're going to kill him.
Catledge came to California to cover the gubernatorial race between incumbent Republican Governor Merriam and writer Upton Sinclair, an avowed socialist who was running neck and neck. Palmer was then the Political Editor of the Los Angeles Times and his newspaper never covered anything Sinclair did for the campaign and only covered Merriam. Catledge observed that this was not only unfair but poor journalism.
Kyle Palmer, *, Political Editor, Pundit & Republican Political Boss and “Kingmaker” of California Statement to Turner Catledge of the NY Times, Los Angeles, 1934, Quoted in Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1992
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Fox News was the first major television news channel in the United States to represent a partisan political position—in this case Republican conservative. Although this was a first for TV, in American history most newspapers were openly partisan until the latter half of the 20th century. The Third Reich reference was to Nazi Germany which had extremely partisan media control of German media of the day.
Even as late as the 1970s most media organizations did not feel any inhibition about having a spokesperson for a political movement or candidate comment about statements that were clearly untrue. The constant political criticism of the media produced this change and no matter how absurd or false a political statement is, most media will have a spokesperson for the lie appear on the program to repeat the lie. Both political parties are thereby encouraged to exaggerate or even lie as they will never by exposed by trusted journalists and can reduce all falsehoods to a “he says, she says.”
See Adolph S. Ochs for the original slogan. {601364}
Abe Rosenthal, statement to a reporter who he fired for having an affair with a politician, and continuing to cover his politics. There are multiple variations of this quote in circulation – this seems to be the most accurate.
Until the 20th century almost all American political media were shamelessly and overtly biased—left or right. Political Parties had their own de facto publications much like Fox News became for the Republicans in the 21st century. In the 20th century journalism developed into a profession that evolved standards of objectivity in reporting. That norm then prevailed for about 70 years. With the extreme polarization of the later years of the 29th Century the right wing began to accuse much of the media of a left wing bias, and the media tended to react as Krugman describes in this quotation. The model of having spokespersons for “each side” of an issue works for highly subjective political preferences with a two party system, but where it broke down is with scientific and technical issues. On these, there often really are not two scientific points of view, but there is a scientific consensus of the vast majority of scientists and almost all the prestigious and accomplished scientists are in accord. However, there may be some who have a cultural, religious and/or political concern for some science and its implications for society. They in turn find a scientist or two, often one who is unaccomplished and not recognized in the scientific field to argue a different point of view. The media have tended to equate the two and have a “debate” as if there were two sides to the science when there are not. These issues tend to cluster around scientific medical issues involving sex and birth control methods, environment and conservation, evolution, the age of the earth and the method of creation of the universe. The problem is particularly exacerbated by the general scientific illiteracy of the American population and the relatively few journalists who themselves are scientifically literate who can explain scientific issues well.
