Hello, He Lied: Newest Owner of The New Republic (and Former Obama Adviser) Claims Magazine Will Not be Liberally Biased; Then Conducts Suckup Interview to Old Boss/Prophet, Obama

Why does every establishment news organization, supposedly unique in its mission of providing "truth" to its audience, make it its core mission to lie to the customer?

The new New Republic claims it will be free of party ideology or partisan bias. I honestly don’t know exactly what Hughes means by this, but it strikes me as a very bad start. A New Republic that is liberalism-free has no reason to exist (much as a National Review that is conservatism-free is pointless). A liberal New Republic that pretends it’s free of liberalism while it attempts to advance liberalism is a huge step backwards. After all, why should the reader trust a bunch of committed liberal opinion journalists if they can’t even be honest about what they are or what they are trying to do?

If the first thing out of someone's mouth is a childish and stupid lie -- not even a clever one, not the sort of lie that makes you think "Oh my that's wicked" -- why stick around for the second thing?

His second public action as TNR owner was to betray the promise he made in the first.

Based on that interview with Obama, I’d say Hughes is not striving that hard or he’s not good at what he’s striving to do or — most likely — he only wants to appeal to Democrats, so he only wants to do enough to seem to be free of party ideology and partisan bias to Democrats. Is this enough to make our target audience feel good about the nourishment they’re getting from this source? The good feeling is some combination of seeming like professional journalism while satisfying their emotional needs that are intertwined their political ideology and love of party.

Looks like TNR has decided to be Catfish: The Magazine.

Yeah I don't really know what Catfish is either but I'm informed it's a Topical Reference Which Will Appeal to the Youth Demographic. I made the grotesque error of watching part of Saturday Night Live this week (I remembered it even existed) and found them referencing it in their inimitable style, by which I mean, it wasn't funny.

posted by Ace at 06:39 PM

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