CHAUTAUQUA–Not many people who speak at Chautauqua Institution can do what this speaker did.

To the delight of the July 17 morning-lecture audience, he flashed his long-ago credentials from when he was an intern at the Chautauqua Daily, the newspaper that the institution publishes during its nine-week summer season.

Since 2016, the speaker–a longtime summer visitor to Chautauqua–has been publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Meet Almar Latour, whose presence proves that it’s possible to speak both softly and forcefully, and that in some circumstances, the person who speaks most softly can be the most effective.

Latour also shared that presence on July 20 at the Chautauqua Women’s Club.

In the amphitheater he spoke of the responsibilities of the press and focused on the rights of the press.

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It’s no secret that some in the press–not Latour–speak of the press’s rights and never, or almost never, of its responsibility.

Some of them then–in some manner–charge those who speak of the press’s responsibility with being against the press’s rights.

Any decent seventh-grade American-history pupil can see the fallacy in such a charge: Saying that the press should do something is different from denying the press’s right to do the opposite.

Besides, the press’s responsibility accompanies the press’s rights.

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It used to be that, as a matter of responsibility, opinions were limited to, for example, news analyses or to newspapers’ editorial and op-ed pages.

It’s no secret that, especially in the national establishment press, opinions aren’t so limited. Somewhere in today’s newspaper you can probably spot a national-establishment-press news story with a reporter’s opinion. Citing something such as what “experts said” can be among the revealing clues.

Turn on a radio or television. You’ll probably hear or see something similar on national-establishment-press network-news broadcasts.

It’s also no secret that the national establishment press’s political bias overwhelmingly favors one of the two major political parties and one side of the political spectrum.

So much so that many in the national establishment press undertake actions that at least in effect–to borrow one of their phrases–“interfere in elections.”

Such bias is both caused and perpetuated by the obvious lack of sufficient diversity of thought among the staff of many organizations comprising the national establishment press.

Do other factors also cause or perpetuate such bias? Of course they do. That, however, doesn’t diminish the effect of such bias.

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The bias can manifest itself in various ways:

¯ One subtle way is through advocating the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” which–to put it simplistically–would require that, in some circumstances, some press organizations allot equal resources to both sides of the political debate.

How is it, though, that many “Fairness Doctrine” advocates were relatively silent about what they call “fairness” before their political opponents found ways to make their voices heard in the press?

Hmmm.

¯ Another way–this one not so subtle–is through not only how the national establishment press covers news but also what the national establishment press covers and what it doesn’t.

To give a recent obvious example: Evidence is growing that–through an elaborate web of many, many organizations–an officeholder and members of the officeholder’s family are the recipients of many, many millions of dollars funneled to them in ways so complicated that some are reported to have predicted it would take 10 years to follow the money trail from the payors to the payees.

To what extent has the national establishment press covered this?

To what extent has the national establishment press asked what the payors sought or received for their money?

How would the national establishment press conduct itself if the officeholder instead belonged to the other major political party or were on the opposite side of the political spectrum?

None of these questions is hard.

You, gentle reader, know the answers.

You know the answers.

Randy Elf never interned at the Chautauqua Daily.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF