The launch of the Daily Caller is a necessary step toward creating ideological parity in the all-too-clearly biased mainstream media. It is a good thing that you, Tucker, are admitting that you come to the table with certain ideological baggage, and my new site Big Journalism will be there to watch your back when the well-funded, organized left’s knives come out to try to discredit and attempt to destroy you. Believe me, they will.
In my mind, you are coming to the table as an honest broker, like me and Arianna Huffington. As partisans and ideologues, to one extent or another, we don’t have carte blanche to propagate lies. In fact, our survival and success depend on creating trust with our readership, and ensuring that the mainstream media can’t ignore the stories we break. By being upfront about our political ideals, readers can process the facts through their own ideological prisms and then make up their own minds. This process is how it’s been done for fifteen years online, and it has worked incredibly well. The mainstream media is dying as we are rising, and yet their only explanation for their fate is that Craigslist has stolen their classified advertising.
Over the last fifteen years, the Internet has become the battlefield, where the mostly false notion of “objective” and “bias-neutral” journalism clashes with those of us on the right who believe that media bias is the central issue facing our nation, and even the world.
The fact that the mainstream media’s existence is built on this false premise of objectivity serves as a suicide pact, as their ever-dwindling audience – one viewer, one reader at a time – perceives the obviously subjective “news” they are being served. Our competition in the so-called mainstream media claims that our admitted biases render it impossible for us to report stories truthfully. I couldn’t disagree more.
Those in the media who proclaim neutrality while reporting slanted, one-sided information represent the core reason why subscribership is down in most newspapers (The Wall Street Journal notwithstanding) and why ratings are down for news networks (Fox News notwithstanding.)
While I am not clever enough to understand whether true objective neutrality in journalism can be reached, I know that there are some in the profession who strive for that ideal, but those newsroom anomalies are becoming an ever-rarer breed, as new media makes its mark on old media. Except for a few network and newspaper closet cases, who we all know suffer grave consequences for voicing their dissent, the original content news drivers, those that craft the daily narratives from their sheltered offices on 6th Avenue and near Times Square remain protected by this grand inside joke of objectivity. “Our reporting doesn’t show any ideological slant” they will say, with a knowing wink to each other. But remember, they also say they are thrilled with Anderson Cooper’s ratings in the same breath. You decide.
From its inception, the Internet has stood for the free-flow of information, unfiltered by a small handful of influential “deciders,” dolling out news like the miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, with a stack of gold coins. As more news and more information found its way to consumers, an amazing thing happened: The market for this information grew.
The consumer of news and information now has a clear and distinct choice between two approaches in delivering this valuable commodity:
On one side you have the New York-based intelligentsia, driving the narratives of our times with the guidance of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Anyone who knows this crowd knows them to be neither “objective” or “bias-neutral,” yet that line is propagated on television news and in print media and we are supposed to accept it. They have built walls between themselves and their customers, disdainfully and grudgingly accepting their criticisms only when forced to acknowledge their egregious errors (are you still out there, Mr. Rather?).
On the other side you have writers, researchers and pundits from every corner of our land, proudly disclosing their true core principles for all to see. They present the stories that move them and respond in real time to the interactive feedback of their consumers. They lose credibility (and audience) not for their opinions, but for journalistic errors and, more importantly, how they handle those errors. The fact is this: they are actually held to a higher journalistic standard because of the frank and honest disclosure of their point of view. When they mess up, they make their own side look bad. This ends up being a much tougher code of ethics than something dreamed up by a J-School panel of advisors.
When you look at the two sides it becomes pretty clear that it isn’t really a choice at all, is it? One side represents an outdated mode of operation borne of necessity due to the limited technology of a by-gone age, perpetuated by a self-congratulatory graduate-school culture that rewards and protects its own while simultaneously denying the legitimacy of the opposition. The other side is based on freedom, liberty and market forces, using reason, logic and a reliance upon the reader’s own wisdom and common sense to form his or her own conclusions after receiving all of the unfiltered information available. Which would any normal person instinctively choose?
And now, Tucker, with the launch of The Daily Caller, you immediately bring a new and credible voice to our cause. I expect you to be the target of multiple attacks in the very near future. I expect this because I expect you to be effective. To that end, be on the lookout for a bizarre operation by the name of Media Matters for America. You will have a team of dishonest “fact-checkers” distorting many of the stories you report with the goal of intimidating the mainstream media from taking your work seriously.
What I’ve come to recognize over the past year is when you have a guy reading your every word, or listening to and transcribing every single thing Rush Limbaugh says, it means that what you’re doing actually matters so much to America that you now have to deal with Media Matters for America. In other words: You know you’ve made it when pathetic watchdog groups like MMFA clog inboxes with desperate screeds, written in haste, marred by inaccuracies – the result of a keyboard clogged with boogers and desperation.
Welcome to the Battle.
Andrew Breitbart is the publisher of the news portals Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv.
