Media warrior Andrew Breitbart’s death March 1 should bring pause to anyone who follows the news or intends to enter work in news media.

On campus, two newspapers are available free to undergraduates: The New York Times and USA Today. In the spirit of Andrew Breitbart’s fight for diversity of opinion in media, students and faculty of Syracuse University should advocate for the replacement of USA Today with The Wall Street Journal to balance the leftward leanings of the New York Times.

Further, the industrious among those attending the S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications have unparalleled opportunity to assert themselves in industry, but before they do, they should consider Andrew Breitbart, writer, columnist and publisher.

In 43 short years, Breitbart packed action and fiery rhetoric into a life lived on the cutting edge of new media. Although an outspoken conservative, Breitbart helped establish both the right-leaning Drudge Report and the liberal Huffington Post.

He also launched his own news aggregation website, breitbart.com. His stated mission: ‘The destruction of the old media guard. And it’s a very good business model.’ His justification: ‘I’m at war with the mainstream media because they portray themselves as objective observers of reality when they are hacks.’

After breaking the Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal on his website and sustaining doubts of credibility from the regular media, Breitbart arrived unannounced at Weiner’s press conference and took to the podium in his own defense, fending off reporters’ attacks and accusations for 14 minutes.

Instead of addressing the issue, reporters accused Breitbart of everything from making up the existence of the photos to hacking into the congressman’s Twitter account and planting the photos. As expected, our mainstream journalists covered for the left and attacked a conservative instead of seeking the truth.

When Weiner finally arrived, he admitted everything. Andrew Breitbart was right, they are hacks. Notwithstanding the Fox News Channel, Matt Drudge, Glenn Beck and a few other sources, our news media leaves much to be desired.

It’s not the conservative leanings of Fox News, the Drudge Report and the like that make these sources valuable in an objective sense. Instead, it is that they admit their leanings. The trouble is not with biased sources because people are smart enough to pick from different sources to read or watch, compare them and think, aggregating it all to develop their own worldview.

For example, speaking about his network, Fox News host Chris Wallace explained, ‘We’re the counterweight. They have a liberal agenda, and we tell the other side of the story.’

The trouble is when a media source calls itself objective, totally free from all biases, and people believe. Some of our professors hawk The New York Times like they are receiving secret kickbacks from Adolph Ochs, toting it as a nonpartisan source.

We need more than one perspective to know what is really going on because no source can be truly objective. The New York Times’ slogan ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’ sounds too ominous to be objective. So, one must wonder what happens to all the news that is not ‘fit to print.’

Maybe it goes into USA Today, but just in case it does not, we should call for USA Today to be replaced with The Wall Street Journal. Andrew Breitbart occasionally wrote for The Wall Street Journal after all.

Michael Stikkel is a sophomore computer engineering major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu.    

 

Published on March 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm