In August 2023, local police raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper and the homes of the reporters, supposedly in search of evidence that reporters had illegally accessed a state database looking for DUI records of a local coffee shop owner. @kedavis asked me for an update in a comment, but I decided to do a longer post instead.

The editor/owner of the newspaper, Eric Meyer, grew up in Marion, and his family has run the Record for decades. Before returning home to run the local paper, he had been editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and taught journalism at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, so he has national connections. Thus, the story went viral within hours.

Proximate Cause. A local restaurateur had been driving without a license for years due to DUI convictions, with the acquiescence of the local police department. She applied for a liquor license for her restaurant but was denied because of her DUIs. The newspaper investigated and learned (from her ex-husband) that the police had been letting her drive illegally. She was buddies with the new police chief, so she went to the chief and told him that the newspaper had illegally hacked into the state database to get her DUI records. The newspaper says that the database is public and that they didn’t hack anything. (Yes, it really is that petty.)

As one of the 99.9% of Americans who never or rarely ever watch MSNBC, my viewing habits were unaffected by the reports of the hissy fits triggered by the hiring and then firing of a failed RNC chairwoman.  The pull of bias at MSNBC has so completely collapsed into itself like a cognitive black hole that there is not even room for a token punching bag RINO on staff.

I used to tune in occasionally.  I was interviewed by Chris Matthews regarding a topical issue way back when the network was brand new, back when he was still using a blue-collar, regular-guy Democrat persona based on his former staff work for Tip O’Neill.  That version of Chris Matthews disappeared into the bias black hole long ago.

Any savvy consumer of news media should be keenly aware that, in general, the overarching purpose of the speaker is not merely to impart information. The goal of media is usually much broader than this: whether NPR or the BBC or Pravda, news media organizations seek to frame and spin information to sculpt and customize the way in which the listener sees the world.

This can, of course, be a feature and not merely a bug. It is quite a good thing to be able to see things from the perspective of others — though of course, it is no virtue to have your world view shaped for you, without even noticing what is going on. The goal should be to consciously grow our understanding of how other people think.