Hugh Downs denies press coverage is liberal and instead proves that journalists are arrogant elitists

One of the biggest old ladies on broadcast news, Hugh Downs, is hereby nominated for the "Pigs are unaware they're laying in their own waste-products" award for the following self-serving statement he made on Scarborough Country:

SCARBOROUGH: Conservatives have forever accused the media of being liberal. We have a poll that the Pew Research Center put out. Seven percent journalists out of 500 local and national reporters questioned called themselves conservative; 34 percent say they are liberal; 54 percent say they‘re moderate.

Is there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the most money?

DOWNS: Well, I think the latter, by far. And, of course, when the word liberal came to be a pejorative word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn‘t want to be thought of as merely liberal.

But people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a little more about what the background of what‘s happening. So, I suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what‘s happening. [emphasis mine—johnh]

Let’s stop right here and examine the part of Hugh Downs’ statement that I’ve highlighted. Marvel at its fundamental idiocy. If stupidity had mass then that statement would have imploded into a black hole and sucked Hugh Downs right into it.

Hugh Downs’s premise is that journalists are liberal because “they’re in-touch with what’s happening”. I object to his premise on two grounds: (1) it is an insult and (2) its falsity is blindingly obvious.

First, regarding the insult, if Downs’s premise is true then people who are not liberal “are less liberated in their thought" because “they are further from events” and “know a little less about the background of what’s happening” than their liberal counterparts. And, for good measure, people who are not liberal are “a little less in touch with what’s happening”.

Well bless the non-journalists’ simple little minds! Downs’ must find it inexplicable that we’ve managed to produce ingrates who oppose receiving liberal coaching—cleverly disguised as news (similar to hiding a child’s crushed aspirin in their applesauce)—from such cultured and worldly beings.

OK, I can’t go on like this.

Downs’ smug rationalization is Exhibit A if you ever want to make the case that the media is arrogant, haughty, condescending, self-aggrandizing, snooty and conceited. Downs is saying, in short, people who aren’t liberal are just too ignorant to be otherwise.

That attitude just makes me want to give Downs a hearty boot to his crotch.

Now let’s consider Downs’ transparently idiotic assertion that the experience from “being closer to events” and “knowing a little more about the background of what‘s happening” makes journalists liberal. Please.

Let’s give Downs’ insult to everyone’s intelligence the dignity of a test. Let’s pick a profession that it not known for being more liberal than the general population. Oh, I don’t know, let’s pick policemen.

Policemen, as a group, are, if anything, right of center. Now let’s apply the factors that Downs identified that mold journalists from average citizens into leftists ideologues impersonating journalists.

…people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events… Well I can’t think of anyone who is “closer to events” than policemen. Sometimes policemen get so close to the events that it gets them killed. I know this because journalists—who keep themselves at a safer distance than cops—report on cop killings.

…people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they… know a little more about what the background of what‘s happening. Again, it is a cop’s job to document evidence, take written statements, be streetwise, exercise judgment regarding the characters he’s dealing with and more. Furthermore, unlike journalists, defense attorneys will attack a cop’s work in a courtroom setting. The only thing that journalists have to endure is being fact-checked by hundreds of bloggers.

A reasonable person, applying Hugh Downs’ theory—which rationalizes why most journalists are liberals—to cops, would conclude that all cops should be even bigger leftwing nutbars than the typical journalist. Commonly known facts implodes Hugh Downs’ theory even faster than Dan Ra^ther’s memo story.

Regarding the insult implicit in Downs' comment: you are implicitly insulting the listener’s intelligence if you expect the listener to accept a deliberately stupid statement you’ve made as true. Evidently Downs confidence in the audience’s stupidity was such that he uninhibitedly offered an patently silly excuse—and one that only required about 32 milliseconds of thought to refute—and expecting a credulous audience to swallow it without gagging.

I’m sure he would have fabricated a less blatant deception if he thought his audience was any smarter.
So why are leftists attracted to the media? For the same reason they’re attracted to academia: it gives them a means to shape our culture by controlling how information is presented.