Another Victory of Unreason over Reality

We live in blessed times. Man is making great strides forward. After we have done away with the shocking notion that one religion or culture might actually be superior to another if only because one stayed barren while another caused civilization as we know it; and even the regrettable scientific theory of the existence of objective truth has been discredited, thus enabling us to commit oppressive ideas as 'lies', 'wrong', 'mistake' and 'error' to eternity; today we can celebrate that neutrality as vital prerequisite for professional journalism has finally fallen in the name of victory of unreason over reality.

That the mainstream media (MSM) have become a by-word for political bias was an accusation which - till today - was always vehemently denied. Yet any owner of a bit of an open mind reading the papers, watching television or the Internet, could come to the conclusion that the dice are loaded on the left hand side.

As neutrality and emotional distance once were the trademarks of professional journalism, one would have thought that the allegation of bias is a serious one. Yet the BBC has gone within the course of one year, from the standard bearer of the trade to one of the worst offenders against it.

Since anti-Americanism re-took hold - as it usually does to some degree with a Republican President in the White House - even the pretence of impartial reporting got less and less with each passing year that George W. Bush has been in office.

As former neoconservative politicians turn into Gerbil Mix wherever the opportunity presents itself, U.S. ally Israel is at present singled out by Britain's 35,000 strong membership of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) as a particularly savage country, as it sits in an ocean of human and social injustice. But in this vast field of choice in the Middle East, the NUJ has declared a boycott against America's ally.

Just say No! to Israeli agricultural produce, they demand, echoing former U.S. President Carter's ludicrous accusation of "Apartheid!". Ludicrous, as the essence of Apartheid is discrimination on the basis of race: the author was the first to deny that this was the case, thereby declaring the title of his own book null and void.

The luminaries and intelligentsia that make up the Leftist elite, likely subscribers of the Euston Manifesto and other such offences against reason, en masse adhere to "multiculturalism, that university-nurtured version of cultural relativism that has now firmly ensconced itself wherever politically correct college-educated elites congregate, which is to say just about everywhere." Needless to say that the vast majority of the NUJ are likely self-proclaimed members of said elite.

Another trait of this côterie is the blood-chilling cynicism that is the result of the disappointment after communism failed to live up to its earlier promises to put an end, once and for all, to Western civilization. After a decade or as so of brooding over this unsatisfactory state of affairs, a particularly nasty piece of irrationality was dreamed up: relativism, accompanied by its ugly stepsister multiculturalism.

A lot has been said in these pages about these postmodern pseudo philosophies, but the fact of the matter is, at heart, these fallacies to a large extent cloak cowardice in a shroud of intellectualism. It sounds as an excuse, but Clifford Day in his article "Hacks or Flacks?" on the site of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies describes why the NUJ seems to be caving in to intimidation:

"Johnson’s kidnapping (by Palestinians), the abduction and forced conversions of Fox journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, the video-taped decapitation of Daniel Pearl - these and other atrocities are intimidating a growing list of journalists."

He sarcastically concludes that "with this as backdrop, perhaps the NUJ boycott against Israel should be seen less as bias and more as a kind of tribute - a sacrifice of journalistic integrity in the hope it may appease the editors who matter most, those who cut not with red pens but with butcher knives, those who produce not packages for the evening news but snuff videos for the Internet."

I say, if you haven't got the spine to uphold your own standard of professionalism against your personal political activism, go find a job where your lack of character and spirit is less required. Go restock store shelves, or something!