\u201cLeading the conversation\u201d\u009d is how you end up with the major Sunday shows somehow neglecting to invite a single anti-amnesty politician on a weekend dominated by the immigration debate. It\u2019s how you end up with officially nonideological anchors and journalists lecturing social conservatives for being out of step with modern values. And it\u2019s how you end up with a press corps that went all-in for the supposed \u201cwar on women\u201d\u009d having to be shamed and harassed \u201d\u201d by two writers in particular, Kirsten Powers in USA Today and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway of GetReligion \u201d\u201d into paying attention to the grisly case of a Philadelphia doctor whose methods of late-term abortion included snipping the spines of neonates after they were delivered.<\/p>\n
As the last example suggests, the problem here isn\u2019t that American journalists are too quick to go on crusades. Rather, it\u2019s that the press\u2019s ideological blinders limit the kinds of crusades mainstream outlets are willing to entertain, and the formal commitment to neutrality encourages self-deception about what counts as crusading.<\/p>\n
The core weakness of the mainstream media, in this sense, is less liberalism than parochialism….<\/p>\n