It occurs to me the last two posts are linked.
Two reporters and at least one editor at the Uptown paper of record decide to edit out a police comment which IDs the race of suspects in a series of violent attacks. Nothing happens.
One photographer uses modern software to restore the color and shading balance to an underexposed image. He is fired.
Does this remotely make sense to anyone? Outside the corporate news biz, I mean?
I get very tired of conservative complaints about the news media, Rush Limbaugh comes to mind, which posit that editors and reporters have some sort of active, overwhelming left-wing agenda in play. Most do not. Besides, I think this angle of criticism tends to downplay the real problem with much news-reporting and that is it is driven by totally artificial rules and goals that are alien to and hidden from the broader news consuming public.
These two particular incidents, however, illustrate both criticisms. Leaving out the race of suspects, info other news outlets reportered, is hard to square with anything except some sort of left-wing social justice/social responsibility jag. And the photog flap is such absurd inside media biz baseball, yet these kinds of rules shape so much of what we see and hear.
