Journalism’s prime sources create bias

Re Can columnists be activists, too?, DiManno, May 13 The common sense adage is knowledge is power. But the everyday practices of journalists and columnists invert this maxim, whereby power becomes the source of knowledge.

Their reliance on press conferences, photo-ops and reports orchestrated by government ministries, think-tanks, corporations and other expert organizations means they are being neither neutral nor objective. These institutions and those that populate them have particular biases and conceptions of how society should operate that are not benign.

A relevant example of this is how the news media treat accounts from police sources. The cultural respect and institutional authority police forces enjoy mean accounts from police chiefs and spokespersons are largely treated as unquestionably true and not subjected to deep scrutiny. Conversely, activists are often treated with great suspicion.

At the very least, the sacredness granted to state institutions as information sources by the news media means they are able to define the terms of public debate before marginalized groups can even formulate a response. Thankfully, the ubiquity of camera phones has altered this dynamic somewhat.

Rosie DiManno claims she is free of political taint by not voting in elections. But as a court commentator, etc., she is beholden to the deep state and its sources for the information, facts, etc., that comprise her columns and reportage.

Common sense, as defined by Antonio Gramsci, is ahistorical, received cultural wisdom that appears so natural so as to be neutral.

He believed there was an urgent need to develop critical outlooks that challenged common sense.

As 19th-century-derived objectivity is at the core of journalistic common sense, it is high time to subject this notion to a critical intervention in the 21st century. Robert Bertuzzi, Hamilton