Washington Post writer Shankar Vendantam gets together with some of his scientist buddies and they, once again decide that mainstream news is glorious in  the Washington Post article "Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You (link below under green or red-orange print)

They come to the conclusion that the new Walter Cronkites as represented by todays's mainstream 'journalists' are what America needs to listen to.

Luckily, the article is put in the opinion page, because Vendantam's scientists don't have to put out much 'data' in their attempt to convince us.  I've noticed this about Vendantam and, admittedly, other science journalists.  I believe though, that when you're dealing with conflicts of interest, like when you are claiming that your type of publication is superior to others (and you say you have scientific proof of some kind), you'd better have some numbers ready for me.  Vendantam seems to substitute quite a lot of words for those numbers.

Vendantam's science buddies 'proof' is more like empirical "proof" as opposed to objective proof.  Empirical proof without objective proof went out after the famous classical and neo classical philosophers passed on, though many Republicans and preachers still use it quite a lot.  In general, in real science you can use empirical proof to make a hypthesis to be tested or to create a theory if all the facts fit in. But you have to have data and facts fitting in.

Vendantam's scientist friends say they have noticed that people of the same socioeconomic classes live close to each other and therefore attend the same schools and churches.  Though we most likely do have some connection to our neighborhoods, the ones I lived in during the 90s when housing wasn't so odiously priced contained a range of standards of living between those of us who rented houses and owned old Vanagons and those who owned redone houses and had a Lexus or two in the driveway.

Also we had a range of ages in parents and grandparents that helped out in school. Believe me even the parents at the school my kids and my grandson attended did not think like me. My neighbor in the old middle class 'hood' didn't think like me and we were always mixing it up at neighborhood occasions.

Now I live in a more modest neighborhood bordering on a ghetto as does our neighbor Lissa.  Lissa's pro-life while my wife and I are pro-choice.  We go to church with Lissa's family.  In fact we are living proof that Vendantam's scientist's conjectures that socio-economic factors breed minds that work in lock step is wrong  And beyond that, it is well known  that some poor people are lefties and others are very right wing minded.  But leave it to mainstream news that made up tacky categories like "Soccer Moms" and "Security Moms" to explain the broken electoral system in the U.S. so they wouldn't have to work too hard, and in telling us what is going on in our elections.

And Mr V. adds in that we are all so small minded that we only visit news sites and blogs that say what we want to hear.   But how could we liberals have ever developed Mr. V if we are such sheep?  We haven't had even a slightly 'liberal' news media for a couple of decades and a half.  Mainstream news realized by the 80s that it was better to cater to what big business (who pays their bills) wants than to be truly balanced.  Talk radio was captured for the right by the big business and fat cat bucks behind them.  Leaving a whole other media totally controlled on a nationwide level by the 'right' until Air America. 

In fact newspapers became better only as they were starting to go under because of the competition.  Will that hold?  Or will newspapers jump on the cheap way with more right biased AP news (I'm not very confident about the outlook. We are already seeing a lot more AP reports at major newspapers than even last year).

But Mr. Vendantam shouldn't be pointing fingers.  If he would look, he would find most liberal blogs allow comments and get them from both sides in bushelfuls.

And we should notice that journalist Shankar Vendantam and his sources both have conflicts of interest in this article.  I've dealt with Mr. V's above, but I've also noted that many of the WP's science writer's sources (in other articles he's written too) are people who make a point that show we should trust mainstream journalists to decipher the truth for us.

So, scientists, if you want to boost your career with an citation in the Washington Post, you know what you have to do cowboys (and er girls).  Call up ol' Shankar and pander, pander, pander.

Cartoon: Look Who's Playing Judas  David Horsey

Bonus cartoon: Stay Away from Those Kind of People Kid  Horsey

And Don't Miss Bush's Terrorist Killing Strategery  Horsey