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November 29, 2012 at 09:05 AM
Reporting and blogging at the same is, as I’ve written before, difficult, because blogging damages the illusion that I’m at least subtle enough about expressing my opinions to avoid dumping them in your face.
The idea that any reporter is free from opinions is, of course, absurd, because simply being alive expresses the opinion that, all things considered, being alive is at least somewhat close to being as attractive as the alternative.
Writing articles expresses the opinion that someone out there wants to read my articles.
But, at the same time, I don’t want to feel as if I’m writing with an obvious partisan slant, because, really, that’s just no fun at all.
Even if you’re very liberal and very Democratic: it’s not much fun when Nancy Pelosi agrees with you. Of course she agrees with you, most of the time. What’s fun, in that case, is to get John McCain — or, even better, Orrin Hatch — to agree with you.
Similarly, if you’re conservative, you already know that the Heritage Foundation has your back. What would be extra special is to get Consumers Union to support you.
I’d like to be enough in the middle that, when I express an opinion, you think: “Oh! She saw the light!” Not, “Well, of course.”
But it seems to me that it’s fair for me to be very open about holding certain opinions, beyond the opinion that it would be nice if people read my articles.
I openly believe in something that I at least think is free, or freeish, market capitalism; I think the government probably has some kind of hard-to-define real-world responsibility to regulate markets in some way or another; and I understand that social programs can cause a lot of problems, but I want fewer really sad looking panhandlers to be working around the Hoboken offices of LifeHealthPro.com.
Similarly: I am completely biased in favor of the idea that someone out there should talk at length about the implications for insurance when the Senate is considering bills, resolutions or other documents that include what look like significant references to insurance products.
