| September 16, 2005 Editor’s Desk by Aaron Selbig It’s been a conspirational week here at Insurgent Headquarters. The other day on ‘Frost & Fire’ (the new KUDO show hosted by Jack Frost and yours truly), the topic of conversation somehow got around to the vast ‘liberal conspiracy’ in American news media. A gentleman named Scott called in to the show to challenge the journalistic credentials of myself and i49 Middle East correspondent Karen Button. “What school of journalism did she graduate from?” Scott wanted to know, “and couldn’t your newspaper be more accurately described as ‘propaganda’?” Good question, Scott. And now I have one for you: Can you name one news source anywhere that isn’t biased in one way or another? I didn’t think so. From Fox News to The New York Times to the ADN to the Anchorage Press, every single reporter for every single news medium in the country (the world for that matter) brings some sort of personal point of view to everything they do. It’s inevitable. It’s human. This whole notion of “unbiased” or “fair and balanced” journalism has always bothered me. It’s a disingenuous load of crap, and it fails to give readers credit for having the intelligence to discern and interpret what they read and see in the news. It was this absurd notion that news outlets must be credentialed and unbiased to be legit, as a matter of fact, that led to the birth of insurgent49 in the first place. News media is changing, whether any of the lazy, myopic and narrow-minded editors out there bother to notice. More people are getting their news from the internet. More people are getting their commentary from weblogs. And more people, wherever they fall in the political spectrum, are looking for real honest-to-goodness insightful perspective in the news, in whatever form it may take. How else to explain that Jon Stewart is America’s new Walter Cronkite? You want journalism credentials, Scott? Sorry, you’re right ... we don’t have any. What we do have at insurgent49 is a growing group of passionate, concerned citizens who feel that what they have to say is a worthy contribution to the marketplace of ideas. What we’re attempting here is a brand of journalism based in community. We accept and publish material from just about anyone on a wide variety of subjects. Contributors to insurgent49 can expect a lot of freedom. We edit conservatively. We encourage the first-person viewpoint with the idea that real stories from real people have real value. And, most importantly, we leave the interpretation up to our readers. I wish, by the way, that I could claim that we thought up this philosophy all by ourselves, but I can’t. Newspapers like ours have existed in cities all over the lower 48 for years. Alaska is always late to get everything (kind of like The Gap or ... um ... meth). As for that liberal news media conspiracy? I dunno. I’m lookin’ around Anchortown and I’m thinkin’ we’re it. That’s okay, though. We’re here, we’re not going anywhere, and we’re just happy to be publishing viewpoints that seldom make it into print anywhere else in AK. Does that make us propagandists? You be the judge. Regards, Aaron Selbig Editor, Insurgent Media AK |
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September 9, 2005 September 2, 2005 August 26, 2005 August 19, 2005 August 12, 2005 August 5, 2005 July 29, 2005 July 22, 2005 July 15, 2005 July 8, 2005 July 1, 2005 June 24, 2005 June 17, 2005 June 10, 2005 June 3, 2005 May 27, 2005 May 20, 2005 May 13, 2005 May 6, 2005 April 28, 2005 April 21, 2005 April 14, 2005 April 7, 2005 April 1, 2005 |
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Insurgent Media.
All rights reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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