PR firms and boogeymen of the left

I don't know Brian Gard – I don't move in those kinds of elite circles – but I think I like the man. That's because on Sunday the Oregonian newspaper of Portland ran a "profile" of him as one of the left's leading boogeymen.

Mr. Gard's indiscretion? He runs a public relations and advertising firm, and last year people – gasp – paid his firm over a million dollars to develop and place political advertising!

TRENDING: Caught red-handed

To the Oregonian, this was scandalous, indeed. Perhaps that's because the newspaper normally does the same kind of work for the political left absolutely free? Now, I'm not saying that Howard Dean composes the Oregonian every day (he's far too busy already doing the New York Times); I'm just saying that the finished product at the Oregonian bears a remarkable resemblance to the Democrat's e-mailed "talking points." And let's be clear: I'm not pointing fingers. For all I know, this could simply be an economy measure so newspapers can further reduce their staff and make even more money for their "evil" capitalist owners.

Two items bear on this topic. Last week, I received this e-mail about my column suggesting that mainline journalists weren't the brightest bulbs on the Wal-Mart discount shelves:

"I am a newspaper reporter who just recently went to the good side (I now handle magazine duties for [publication name deleted]). I just read your article on stupid journalists and I have to agree with you. During my many years in the daily newspaper grind, I met very few journalists who could actually think through an issue fairly. Most seemed to be pre-programmed to think a certain way on certain social, economic and political issues, the facts be damned."

That same week CBS News' Dick Meyer wrote a piece entitled, "Is This Column Futile?" In it, he discussed MRI evidence showing that the brains of most political partisans simply shut down when confronted with evidence that contradicts the party line. I thought this was a nice complement to my column, which suggested that the brain scans in most newsrooms have been flat-lined for decades.

That's exactly the behavior my letter writer observed firsthand. Much like the students who stormed and occupied college administrative buildings during the 1960s, the left has occupied most major newsrooms ever since. Their minds shut down and become incapable of functioning when confronted with facts contrary to the opinions they hold. Sadly, the majority of them learned this behavior in institutions of "higher" learning.

Whether they know it or not, the majority of the nation's mainline news media act as unpaid public relations firms for the Democrats and their daily talking points. Their criticism of others who engage in this behavior is harsh: "Play up irrelevant facts. They omit key details. They intentionally confuse." (Oregonian article).

I wonder if that would be like the media's reporting of the Catholic priest sex-abuse scandal? Beyond the very earliest reports, I've never seen one that informs readers that this was 99.44 percent pure homosexual sex-abuse of boys. Perhaps that's because such information might "taint" the public's view of homosexual "marriage" or hinder homosexual adoption?

Public relations firms, just like newspapers, have an obligation to their clients. For Mr. Gard, that obligation is to the people who hired him. For a newspaper, that obligation is to their readers. It looks like Mr. Gard could teach the Oregonian something about journalistic integrity. Unless, of course, the brains in the newsroom have already switched off.

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