The Media's Ancien Régime

Columbia Journalism School tries to save the old order.

Hugh Hewitt writes about his visit to The Columbia University's School of Journalism to see how the clerics of the old order plan to revive the failing system of elite media. Apparently the school's big idea to save old media is to teach the students there to use regression analysis so they can understand statistics. While it is no doubt useful to understand the use of statistics, this article shows the underlying problems at the foundation of old media which have not been addressed and which probably won't be. Hewitt describes the pre-existing assumptions which are prevalent in the student body.

The "blue" nature of the student body is further confirmed by my polling of the class I attended, done with the permission of Shapiro. Six of the 16 were English majors, two studied history, and the balance spread across the humanities. No one had a background in the physical sciences. No one owned a gun. All supported same-sex marriage. Three had been in a house of worship the previous week. Six read blogs. None of them recognized the phrase "Christmas Eve in Cambodia"--though Shapiro not only got the allusion but knew the date of the John Kerry Senate speech in which he made the false claim about his Vietnam war experience. Three quarters of them hope to make more than $100,000 as a journalist, 11 had voted for John Kerry, and one for George Bush (three are from abroad and not eligible, and one didn't vote for either candidate). I concluded by asking them if they "think George Bush is something of a dolt." There was unanimous agreement with this proposition, one of the widely shared views within elite media and elsewhere on the left. The president's Harvard MBA and four consecutive victories over Democrats judged "smarter" than him haven't made even a dent in that prejudice.

This is the real reason that old media is dying. Ayn Rand was known for saying, "check your premises." The Elite Media Monoculture operates on a set of unstated assumptions which, when put to the test of reality, often come up short. Each of us has such a set of fundamental premises or axioms on which we base our actions whether we know it or not. The question is do they accurately reflect reality or are they false? If our premises are true, then they serve as a reliable guide to the world in which we live and our actions will be in accordance with reality. To succeed in life we need accurate information and an accurate road map. But if our assumptions are false, then so is the map and the result is that we quickly lose our way. For decades the left has been using a false map, and now they find themselves in the wilderness with no hope of return. But instead of getting a new map, they continue to blame those who are not lost for the difficulty in which they find themselves. They need a new map, but have yet to acknowledge it.