Gothamist

• Tomorrow from 5 to 9 pm at the new Chipotle on 23rd St and Lexington: $5 for any menu item, along with chips and a drink, and all proceeds are going to the American Cancer Society
• December 9 and 16 from 5 to 7 pm at the West 45th St and 5th Ave Chipotle: Free burritos given during performances by local singers
• Wednesday December 10th, 11 am to 8 pm: Free burritos at another new Chipotle on Madison Ave and 39th St

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The 340 students of Mitchell Stephens’ Foundations of Journalism Class were visited Tuesday by a spectral, otherworldly voice – a voice that they never thought they’d hear in safe, enlightened Manhattan. It was the voice of Bernard Goldberg, writer of the controversial 2001 book Bias that detailed the liberal bias that Goldberg saw in most mainstream media. The students knew that there were people who thought that way, but for many, this was the first time they’d talked to one – even if it was just over the phone.

“It isn’t the media’s role to affect change in society,” said Goldberg, his voice booming across 680 shocked ears. “It’s not the media’s role to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That’s the role of a minister, a priest, a social worker, a politician, but not a journalist.”

The students squirmed uncomfortably and glanced toward Professor Stephens for his reaction. That “comfort the afflicted” quote was one he’d used on them before.

“The last presidential election showed the media in a worse light than ever before. It isn’t unusual for the media
to put its thumb on the scale…but this time it was different, because the media wasn’t simply trying to witness history, it was trying to change history. But it’s not the media’s role to affect change in society even when it’s a noble cause in the minds of reporters,” Goldberg stressed.

Mitchell Stephens’ Foundations class was overwhelmingly liberal, as had been determined by an informal hand-raising poll a few weeks ago. But a poll wasn’t even necessary. It was a journalism class at NYU in Manhattan: three factors that conspired to produce some of the most gay-marrying, abortion-having, war-protesting, Obama-supporters in the country. Although the class had joked about their liberal leaning in a slightly guilty – mostly conspiratorial – way, no one really thought there was anything wrong with it. Was there?
“The problem is group-think,” Goldberg went on. “There are too many like-minded people in America’s big newsrooms today. Part of that is because they live in a bubble, mainly in Manhattan and in Washington, a comfortable liberal elite bubble. You can go for a lifetime and never run into anybody who has a really different view on the social issues of today.”

As Goldberg criticized the students’ Daily Show culture – which, admittedly, they probably shared with the students of Georgetown and GW – and especially when he dared to say that that bubble could turn people “into provincial folk,” there started to be some grumbles around the class. Wasn’t this conservative scumbag starting to sound a lot like crazy Sarah Palin? What was his agenda, what had CBS ever done to him? How had he been so manipulated by the Bush administration that he could turn like this against his fellow journalists?
Goldberg brought up the issue of affirmative action, a subject that he accurately guessed would really rile up those NYU students.

“How about a plan for affirmative action for the smallest minority in American newsrooms? Conservatives,” he said, which generated some more grumbles. Some people weren’t listening anymore.
“We have White liberals, we have Black liberals, we have gay liberals, we have straight liberals, we have Latino liberals, and we have Asian liberals. I’m glad we have a newsroom that looks like America, I really am, but I think we need a newsroom that thinks like America,” Goldberg said.

But not many of the 340 were listening by then anyway.

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The Municipal Art Society

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…for campaign news this year, according to Katty Kay of BBC.

Kay was a panelist on yesterday morning’s discussion of the press and the 2008 campaign, called “Covering the Campaign of a Lifetime,” which was held in NYU’s Foundations of Journalism class. Along with Kay sat Howard Goldberg of the Associated Press, Abderrahim Foukara of Al-Jazeera, Patrick Healy of the New York Times and Jay Rosen, an NYU faculty member and founder of the media-criticism blog PressThink. Topics of discussion ranged from McCain’s treatment of foreign media (“at one point, he did say [the BBC] were communists,” said Kay) to whether the candidates are going to follow in the press relations traditions of President Bush (who has mounted a “very aggressive reality-replacement program,” according to Rosen).

Kay was the first to introduce the “crack-addict” metaphor, explaining that the boredom she saw among election reporters was because they are “so used to having the most incredible headlines, that when there isn’t one, they say, hey this story’s getting boring.”

Healy, who covered Hillary Clinton’s campaign, said that his addiction “nearly did [him] in with Hillary. She was the ultimate supplier.” 

Kay and Healy emphasized the drama and significance of the 2008 election season, which has stirred up issues like race, gender, and religion that would not otherwise have been broached.

But the panel agreed that the press might be overlooking the issues and over-emphasizing the competitive nature of the race instead.

“The American press came into [this election season] with the narrative equipment and ideas that really were built for another world,” said Rosen. “They’re totally out-loaded and ill-equipped to deal with [this race].”

Rosen also stressed the way the candidates have been manipulating the press and charged McCain’s campaign with “conducting a culture war against the media in the tradition of President Bush.

“McCain decided to go with the full Rove, the full Bush, dump reality, say anything, attack the press so that it de-legitimizes them,” Rosen said.

Meanwhile, Foukara brought in the voice of his Middle Eastern audience and Arab-Americans, and reminded the panel that for his audience, the most important issue was Iraq, which “hits [so] deep within the Arab psyche…that the closest parallel is the 9/11 attacks.”

But the most controversial part of the discussion may have been when Healy decided to actually defend McCain.

“Lets be really charitable to John McCain,” Healy began, and pointed out that he probably wasn’t responsible for all the tactics of his campaign and that he has refrained from playing the race card.

“There are still some sense of limits in American discourse,” said Rosen.

Photo by Michael Stasiak