Media Research Center vice president for research and publications Brent Baker begins a Feb. 24 NewsBusters post this way:
HBO’s Sunday night dramady, Enlightened, is delivering something very rare: A true to life depiction of a journalist – specifically identified as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times – as a very obvious left-winger, one who cavorts with and reads books by far-left authors and goes to the newspaper newsroom wearing a “John Kerry for President” shirt.
Well, not so much — the depiction is more of a caricature of what right-wingers like Baker think a journalist is rather than a “true to life depiction.”
Unlike the vast majority of MRC employees, I have actually worked in journalism.The vast majority of the journalists I worked with are not conversant on the works of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and they certainly wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a T-shirt from any political campaign, liberal or otherwise, in the newsroom lest they be accused of having a bias.
The fact that Baker and the rest of his MRC cohorts really believe that the journalist character on “Enlightened” is “true to life” demonstrates just how out-of-touch the MRC is with how journalism works — which makes their “media research” highly suspicious, since they seem to believe that their wishful thinking is reality.