The Patriot Post® · Mainstream Media Forgets Its Roots

To strive toward excellence is a noble aim. To hold a self-important, elitist view of oneself over and against others is the hallmark of the fool. Which brings us to the establishment class, which generally regards the outsider as lesser and beneath themselves. This elitist attitude was recently expressed by members of the mainstream media’s Washington Post when the paper protested the inclusion of The Daily Signal among the White House’s press pool.

But there is also a sneaky insidious angle injected by the mainstream media into its objection to citizen journalism, and that is the elitist belief that they are the only press organizations qualified to report the news due to their self-proclaimed “objectivity.” Andrew Seaman, a reporter for Reuters and the chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee, also objected to The Daily Signal being included in the White House reports pool. “It’s concerning that news organizations with a clear and stated bias are serving as the eyes and ears of the White House press corps, regardless of their political leaning,” he lamented. “In a perfect world, only news organizations with editorial independence and a proven track records of reliability should be able to provide pool reports for the White House or any other government agency or official.” Well that would eliminate quite a few Leftmedia outlets…

The Washington Post and many of its mainstream media brethren have lost a sense of their own histories and have deluded themselves with the false premise of their own objectivity. Before and during the America’s war for independence, it was citizen journalists who reported what the then mainstream media of the day refused to print. At the time, much of the established press were loyalists or feared reprisal from the crown should they write against the king. In many ways, if it weren’t for those early American citizen journalists — men like Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin — the Revolutionary War may never have occurred.

The Founding Fathers recognized the important role citizen journalists played in establishing the nation. The freedom of the press was meant to be accessed and enjoyed by any and every American who so desired to report on events or express their opinions without the fear of reprisal from the government. Further more, the freedom to report contrary perspectives challenging the mainstream narrative proves to balance and improve news coverage, often leading to more accurate reporting. No one news organization has the corner on objective journalism.