Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo® – 4/28/25

I’ve always been an independent voter. I don’t vote for single issues, but for the entire “platform” and entire person. And I was writing well before the last election that we were faced with two weak candidates, a Hobson’s Choice. When Biden was forced by his party to withdraw, the Democrats seemed to say, at the very least, choose the least objectionable, least odious candidate.

And the voters did.

I bring this up because a lack of objectivity creates lack of credibility, and my proof this morning is the mighty New York Times, the US “paper of record,” with “all the news that (they see) fit to print.”

I receive about 40 headlines and synopses every morning from the Times as part of my subscription. About 30 of them every day are anti-Trump. (Usually, but not always, the weather and sports are unaffected.) This applies to “news” stories, editorials, and their opinion columnists. And because of this, I begin to doubt a great deal of what they present because they are so oriented toward lambasting Trump. That’s not to say he doesn’t deserve it, but they remind me of the old saw that, if Trump walked across the surface of the Potomac the paper would print: “President can’t swim.”

To be effective at influencing people you have to prove you’re an objective source and not merely a biased advocate. The “journalist” Chris Matthews said publicly once that it was his job to get Barack Obama elected. In that case he should have been on his staff and not “reporting” the news.

I find when I’m reading or listening to critique I find it far more believable if there are also some positives mentioned and social proof of both sides of the issue. Otherwise it’s not news, it’s propaganda.

I once spent a glorious two hours every Sunday reading the New York Times. I’m sitting here in a hotel in LA where they deliver the hard copy of it just for me. I read it in about 45 minutes, and I spend a lot of that on the book review.

I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, is not. —Michael Pollan

The journalistic endeavor—at least theoretically—is grounded in objectivity. The goal is to get you to understand what happened, when and to whom. —Victor LaValle

As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. —Vincent Bugliosi

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