The Media Research Center’s Clay Waters spent a Feb. 21 post whining that a non-right-wing website — which he made a point of calling “mortifyingly woke” in his headline — was featured in a documentary that aired on PBS:
“Breaking the News,” the latest entry in PBS’s documentary series “Independent Lens,” celebrated the 2020 launch of leftist journalism start-up The 19th* (asterisk included), which became a popular source for the most woke of PBS NewsHour journalistic guests.
The doc’s creators are clearly on the same wavelength with the feminist, LGBTQ-oriented site.
[…]It opened with Emily Ramshaw, former Texas Tribune editor and co-founder of The 19th* at home with her husband David — wincingly identified as “He/Him” on screen. Stuck at home in March 2020 during COVID, she’s talking to a white male potential funder about how women are underrepresented in the industry.
As for that pretentious asterisk? Let editor-at-large Errin Haines explain(?).
Haines: I work in a newsroom that’s named for the 19th Amendment but with an asterisk in our logo for the omission of the black women, who were, frankly, sacrificed so that white women could get their access to the ballot. What have they done with it? You know, used that access largely to uphold systems of patriarchy and oppression, right? So, you know, that is a dynamic that persists, and it’s a dynamic that we have to confront.
Yikes.
After complaining that the documentary included a “trans-man (i.e. biological woman),” Waters took offense at Ramshaw noting that “our journalism isn’t about both sides. In some cases there aren’t two sides,” huffing in response: “There you have it: A one-sided media outlet celebrated by PBS, a one-sided tax-funded news network.” Funny, we don’t recall Waters ever criticizing any right-wing media operation like Fox News for being “one-sided.” Yet he continued to attack the 19th for offering viewpoints that clashed with his right-wing narratives:
Ramshaw made the case for denying conservative voices access to the media.
But in the last few years, some newsrooms, including The 19th*, have come to realize that bothsidesism doesn’t really serve the audience. As The 19th* CEO and co-founder Emily Ramshaw asks in the film, if one side isn’t interested in the facts or truth, why bother giving them a platform if they’re only going to spread hate and false facts that hurt and harm particular groups of our community?
Interestingly, Waters did not dispute Ramshaw’s contention that right-wing media “isn’t interested in the facts or truth.” And he’s never going to argue that Fox News or other right-wing outlets — and definitely not his own employer — stop denying access to liberal voices.