Sometimes people say things don’t really mean to say, reveal truths they’d rather not because they don’t understand what it is they have also said besides what they intended.  People let things slip now and then.  Its those moments of candor that you have to grasp if you are to understand what someone is really thinking.  Yesterday former Editor of the Los Angeles Times John Carroll let slip a few little comments that speak volumes, that give strong evidence of a politically slanted bias deeply ingrained in the news industry.  Here’s what former LA Times Editor John Carroll said yesterday (emphasis added):

To help newspaper journalism survive in the 21st century, the industry should seek out new ownership models, says John Carroll, former editor of the Los Angeles Times and the Knight Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University. In a speech here today at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Carroll said that the current ownership models simply aren’t working. "Restoring a balance at newspapers between financial performance and public duty is probably impossible under this form of ownership."

"Post-corporate" is how Carroll defines the contemporary state of newspaper ownership. The corporations who bought many newspaper companies in the last few decades now find themselves beholden to opaque investment funds, which care nothing about the practice of journalism, says Carroll. What they care about "could not be simpler: money. That’s it…. Gone is the notion that a newspaper should lead, that it has an obligation to its community, that it is beholden to the public."

"Gone is the notion that a newspaper should lead" is the first element of yesterdays reveal, Mr. Carroll’s unartful slip.  Could this leadership just be a phrase meaning to work hard providing the news?  Or does it mean something more direct like using their position of selecting what to print to form and change people’s opinions on matters of public import?   He goes on to talk a bit about newspaper reporting a bit more (emphasis added):

"With the shrinking of the newspaper’s purpose, we have seen a shrinking of the newspaper journalist. Even outside the corporation we have lost stature. We might see ourselves as public servants, but does the public see us that way?" Carroll asked. "We have a mission ahead of us, and we need to be rigorously clear-headed…It is not merely to produce good stories. It is not merely to save our newspapers. It is - and this may sound grandiose - to save journalism itself."

That’s the rest of the reveal.  Mr. Carroll is clear in pointing out that just reporting news isn’t enough, "It is not merely to produce good stories.  It is not merely to save our newspapers."  Not only in his eyes as a leader in the industry speaking to a group advocating a mission to "save journalism itself" is just good reporting not enough, neither is ensuring the success of their newspapers.  He’s absolutely explicit about that, that reporting the news and ensuring profitability isn’t nearly enough.

Helpfully he doesn’t leave us hanging either because he clues us in on what really is important to ‘Journalists’, more important than something apparently beneath them like reporting the news.  They see themselves "as public servants", not reporters and editors providing the news to the public in the unvarnished truth.  They see themselves as public servants working at a newspaper that "should lead".

To put all these reveals together, what John Carroll is saying is that from a "Journalist’s" perspective they are supposed to lead the communities as ‘public servants’ and recovering their position in that role as leaders of the public in the eyes of the public is what he means by the mission "to save journalism itself."  Because from a former Editor of the Los Angeles Times just reporting stories and the news well isn’t being a ‘Journalist’.  The article doesn’t elaborate on what he calls people who just go out and collect and report important or interesting news is but he clearly thinks that is a lesser calling beneath ‘Journalism’.

Apparently the rest of us hicks out here in reader-land have a misunderstanding about what the definition of ‘Journalist’ or ‘Journalism’ are because everyone I talk to seems to think it means people who have the profession of finding and reporting the news as honestly as possible.

How silly of us, how absolutely naive.  Its all clear now really, if the definition of ‘Journalist’ means a community leader and public servant then of course everything they are doing makes sense.  If that definition is correct then they are doing the job of a ‘public servant leader’, a.ka. politician, just like all the rest by spinning the information to the public to drum up political support for their initiatives.  Why by golly that must be it because that’s exactly what they’ve been doing!  Who knew until now huh?

We really ought to thank John Carroll for his public service.  I don’t know about what he’s done before but he certainly provided one yesterday.