J's Cafe Nette

Yesterday I wrote in admiration a story about the executive editor of the Seattle Times chastising his newsroom for cheering when they heard Karl Rove resigned.

Apparently, it impressed MSNBC personality and former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough, who is quoted here on what happened his first night at MSNBC, which also happened to be the night of the president’s State of the Union address in 2003.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: There was a story out of Seattle, and the reason I love it is that it’s transparency in the news. You have an editor who was actually outing his own people. The Seattle Times newsroom broke into applause when Karl Rove resigned. And of course that’s bad. What I like about it is that the editor actually wrote about it and went in and told the people in the newsroom that was unacceptable.

And I’ve got to say, my first night here at MSNBC was the President’s State of the Union address in 2003, and I was shocked because there were actually people in the newsroom that were booing the president actually from the beginning to the end. And I actually talked to [NBC/MSNBC executive] Phil Griffin about it, and he said “how was it last night?” Because he was the one that called me out of the Ace Hardware store, got my vest on. He said “how was it last night?” I said “well, it’s OK, I understand it’s a little bit different up here than it is down in northwest Florida, but you had people in the newsroom actively booing the President of the United States. Phil turned red very quickly. That didn’t happen again.

SCARBOROUGH: Chris [MJ producer Chris Licht] told me something in my ear during break, that we talked at 6:02 about the Seattle Times and back in 2003, back in 2003, the newsroom at MSNBC booing George Bush . . .

BRZEZINKSI: Some people, yeah [Mika wanting to make clear it wasn't unanimous.]

SCARBOROUGH: A lot of the people that were actually charged with the coverage.

BRZEZINKSI: Oh dear!

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, that’s bad. And I talked about how Phil Griffin found out, got very angry,

BRZEZINKSI: Right, as he should.

SCARBOROUGH: And cleaned that up. That never happened again.

BRZEZINKSI: N-o-o-o.

SCARBOROUGH: And this whole place has changed an awful lot since then. But NewsBusters, already has a story at like 6:30.

BRZEZINKSI: Oh my God!

SCARBOROUGH: Ruthless efficiency!

BRZEZINKSI: I try not to look there. They don’t like me.

SCARBOROUGH: They said I pulled back the curtain. You know what? Sunlight’s the best disinfectant.

BRZEZINKSI: Darn right.

Almost everyone has a personal view on politics, but if someone is in the news business it’s his or her duty to remain neutral when reporting the news. If a personality has a discussion show then his or her political opinion should be acceptable to state publicly.

My problem is I don’t want to know the political affiliation of a news reporter by reading what he or she reports if it’s news and not opinion.

The news should be neutral in how it is reported and this is where the major media has gone wrong. It reminds me of what we heard called “Yellow journalism” in school.

To read that an entire newsroom, consisting of some of the very people who would report on the story, were booing the president’s speech during the entire speech gives me less faith in our news organizations than I previously had, and my opinion of them was already low.

I want news that presents the facts in a neutral way, and if I want an analysis of what I’m supposed to think about what I saw in a neutral way I’ll read the op-eds or listen to the opinion shows. Is that too much to expect?

Go here to see a partial video of Scarborough explaining what you read him saying in this post.

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