American Media's True Ideology? Avoiding One

In a media landscape littered with opinionated talk show hosts and ideology-driven websites, strong points of view are hardly tough to find. But media critic Jay Rosen says mainstream news reporters don't disclose what they believe enough of the time.

"I'd like to know something about their background –- like where they're from," says Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University. "If they've been covering a beat for a while, I'd like to know what fascinates them about their beat, what they think are the biggest challenges facing the nation, who some of their heroes and villains are, and any convictions — deeply held convictions — they've developed by reporting on the story over a long period of time." Rosen says there would be a real benefit to such disclosure. "We can tell where the person is coming from and apply whatever discount rate we want to what they're saying," Rosen says. "I also think that it's more likely to generate trust. And this is the main reason why I recommend 'here's where I'm coming from' replace 'the view from nowhere.'" That phrase — "the view from nowhere" — is what Rosen calls the media's true ideology: not exactly on the right, and not exactly on the left. It is, he says, the way news organizations falsely advertise that they can be trusted because they don't have any dog in the fight.