It is in our nature

Last Thursday, Hugh Hewitt recorded an enlightening interview with Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times. This interview aired Monday. (Transcript is here.)

The interview is enlightening because it is yet another sign the mainstream media (MSM) is due for a Reformation.

In speaking of a decline in the LA Times's ad revenues and readership, Mr. Hewitt asked this spot-on question:

Why is it that a monopoly institution, in a city and a state that loves information, can't seem to grow? What's going on?

Why are many consumers of the MSM choosing to get their news from other sources, such as the blogs?

Later, Mr. Hewitt asked Mr. Rutten who he voted for. Mr. Rutten declined to answer:

Oh, I never say that.

Mr. Hewitt again cut to the white bone, and pointed out exactly why these consumers are looking elsewhere for news. He replied:

You see, I know that. And no journalist ever does, because they're not transparent. That's why they're not trusted.

That is exactly right. Consumers are fleeing from the MSM because the MSM has had its thumb on the scale for a long time, and won't admit their worldviews shade the way they present the news.

With more choices, people are acting and going elsewhere to sources they trust and whose biases are known.

I wrote about one way the MSM shades their coverage here. Details are chopped off around the edges that might present a different picture than the one we're allowed to see.

Reader John G. has emailed me some cogent thoughts on the media, and in one email he said:

For facts with no frame are meaningless. Without context, journalism is a farce.

In the days when the MSM reigned supreme, it was all we knew. We assumed the world we saw on the evening news was the world as it really was. We didn't know any better.

With independent sources now, however, we can see the world for ourselves, and what we see is often quite different than the world shown to us by the MSM.

Mr. Rutten doesn't see how one's worldview can affect how one presents that view of the world to others:

TR: There are millions upon millions of individual decisions that go into the production of a newspaper every day. It's a miracle that more of them aren't wrong.

HH: Especially since everyone making them is a liberal.

TR: No, particularly...No, because they're all humans.

The MSM has very much enjoyed its position of preeminence in American culture, and they are reluctant to let go of it. It’s just human nature.

It was the same in Galileo's day. The Church served as arbiter of knowledge, and rejected a Copernican worldview.

But when Galileo put his eyes to his telescope, and saw an imperfect moon, Jupiter’s moons, the phases of Venus, he saw Nature as it truly was.

Today, we are looking through our own telescopes now, we see things for ourselves, and we will never again trust the ecclesiastical gatekeepers who once taught us.

Mr. Rutten may not fully understand why the LA Times readership is down, but we do.