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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 3, 2006 / 7 Tamuz, 5766

Being a hostage of the liberal media ain't half-bad

By Bridget Johnson

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I have come to the conclusion that it might be easier to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a bar mitzvah than to defend the press to fellow conservatives.


I've tried it before, penning a tongue-in-cheek column about the insidious blogosphere acronym MSM (mainstream media), only to be pelted with FU and SOB initialism from offended right-leaning readers.


As a career journalist and lifelong Republican, I've often found myself caught between an elephant and a newspaper rack. How does one reconcile happily being a press-pass-carrying member of all that conservatives have come to detest?


Recently, a reader gently explained it to me: I'm suffering from the Stockholm syndrome.


Interestingly enough, every time the latest Iraq kidnapping tale hits the wires, my journalism colleagues note that I would make a horrible hostage. Between demanding a mirror to fix my hair before the requisite Al-Jazeera video and flinging my best flippant Arabic phrases at the New Balance-clad captors, I would, estimate my colleagues, be dead within about 10 minutes.


But being a hostage of the liberal media ain't half-bad. Sure, one endures sleep deprivation and sometimes sources would like to rip your fingernails out, but newsrooms feed hostages well, with a steady supply of chips and salsa, and free pizza provided on nights of elections and national disasters. These are the people with whom I spend holidays, laugh, cry, drink and watch televised police pursuits. Every day I willingly return for more.


But the Stockholm syndrome isn't just about being comfortable in one's hostage situation. It's about developing loyalty to your captors.


When I briefly left the newsroom to helm a magazine, the office with a view, 9-to-5 schedule, impeccable carpets and living wage completely depressed me. Within a year, I was back to the asylum and happier than Hugo Chavez in a red-shirt store.


I have never remotely denied that newsrooms lean liberal. I personally don't care how a reporter or editor votes, as long as their work is objective and fair. Journalists on both sides of the political spectrum can unfortunately be biased, or give off the impression of bias. I quickly learned my lesson as a newbie reporter when I pulled up to a Democratic election-night victory party with a GOP sticker on my car and nearly got chased with torches.


I've worked full-time in five newsrooms, and can report there are lots of liberals, lots of moderates (usually socially liberal, more conservative on crime and defense or fiscal matters) and a few conservatives. Cynical liberals and irreverent conservatives adapt best in newsrooms. The smug liberals and pious conservatives generally don't fare as well. Unifying factors among journalists usually include "South Park" or similar non-PC humor.


I've never been shy about my electoral preferences — not that it wasn't obvious that I was one of two or three people giddy on election nights 2000 and 2004 in a sea of newsroom glum. But through the years my desks have been decked out with stuffed GOP elephants, Reagan shrines or a "Let's Make Fun of the French!" calendar.


Sometimes my captors have pleasantly surprised me. A couple of years ago, I bought a talking Donald Rumsfeld doll for my desk. Instead of stringing Rummy up by his little loafered foot, a liberal co-worker bought him some friends: George Bush Sr. and Dennis Miller dolls. It's like a big right-wing tea party on my desk now — or starting to look like Republican "Chucky."


Sometimes my captors have scared the bejeezus out of me. One birthday, my colleagues at the time presented me with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Bill Clinton (sans Big Mac) inscribed on the back, "Dearest Bridge, Can't we all just get along? ... P.S. My place at six." Bill was soon after adorned by yours truly with a GOP baseball cap and lacy red bra, and a Bush-Cheney button was pinned on his lapel.


Fred Barnes once mused in The Weekly Standard that the politically homogenous newsroom — from 53 percent liberal and 17 percent conservative in a 1971 survey to 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative in a 2004 survey by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press — was due to increased diversity recruiting. "In truth, the effort to hire more minorities and women has had the effect of making the media more liberal," he wrote.


But I would add that drop is also due to news-happy conservatives avoiding the mainstream media; the explosion of blogs has especially provided a home for right-wing news junkies to write without fearing a partisan editor over their shoulder. Yet conservatives really need to take the bull by the horns and enter the mainstream press — in all echelons of the newsroom — and not just complain about leftist slant. Strive to be as fair and objective as you'd wish all of your colleagues to be, work hard and volunteer to bring the chips and salsa once in a while, and you'll be fine.


But will newbie conservative journalists become victims of the Stockholm syndrome as well? I'd ruminate on that, but I've got to go — my captors need me to shoot another video.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News (http://www.dailynews.com/bridgetjohnson). She blogs at GOP Vixen (http://gopvixen.blogs.com). Comment by clicking here.


Previously:

05/09/06: How to lose immigration debate

© 2006, Bridget Johnson

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