Washington D.C., Oct 29, 2008 / 03:13 am
Michael Malone, a 25-year veteran journalist and technology writer, has penned an essay for ABC News lamenting what he sees as the decline of journalistic ethics and the “sheer bias” in the media favoring Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
“The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates,” Malone wrote on ABC News.
Granting that there has always been bias in the media, he argued that contemporary journalism has blurred the lines between reporting and opinion writing.
“I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.”