Not far from where I write this is a very nice park, a true urban oasis: one of those elongated greenbelts that, together with the sweeping peripheral roads on either side, particularly lends itself to the description "parkway." For the past quarter-century, the park has been inhabited by a gentleman named Earl. It follows th at this gentleman, now nearing 70, bears the whimsical/romantic labe l "Ea r l of the P a rkway." Earl's exploits have been much-chronicled , such that he is today something of a f olk hero, albeit a melancholic one, among those who live in areas adjacent to the park. Strictly speaking, Earl doesn't have to live in the park. He has options. Many would thus say he chooses to live there. (Or, if we prefer not to use terminology that evokes issues of free will vs. determinism, we could posit simply and neutrally that Earl continues to live there, regardl ess of whether alternatives objectively exist.) You might say that based on that de
From time to time since February 2008, when my long article on journalism and the news media first appeared in the online version of Skeptic * , people have asked me for more specifics on what I regard as the building blocks of valid, serious-minded news coverage. This is going to be a lengthy post, so I'll dive right in without further preamble. The News must be apolitical. This line of thought reached critical mass in 2001 with the controversy over Bernie Goldberg and his muck-raking book, Bias ** , which savaged the mainstream media for its strong (and unapologetic) left ward tilt. It's a familiar argument by now and there's no need to go into it at any great length. I think we'd get a fairly universal buy-in—at least in principle—on the idea that the News should never have a specific political agenda, Left or Right. That consensus is likely to crumble a bit when you g et to a more pointed discussion of implementation. For example, we'd have no trouble finding