On the May 5, 2013, edition of C-SPAN 2’s “In Depth,” British journalist Melanie Phillips spoke candidly of her new autobiography “Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain” and pointed out the flaws in liberal group think.
Phillips spent 20 years working at Britain’s left-wing The Guardian where she finally realized that many journalists were out of touch. She explained how journalists see the conclusion first, and then distort evidence and facts to prove their point. “There are quite a number of people who … start with the conclusion and say let’s make the facts fit the conclusion.”
According to Phillips, this type of “journalism” abandoned to average citizens of a country, whom she referred to as the “sensible center."
She then expounded on basic journalistic techniques. “You start with the evidence, and you don’t pretend things are not as they are. You don’t try and make the evidence; you don’t remake reality into what you hope it should be. You start with what’s there and then you tell the truth about it.”
Later in her interview, Phillips used environmentalism and man made global warming to show how people use conclusions to distort evidence. “Environmentalism says the planet is about to fry … because of man made global warming. There’s a bunch of evidence that says that’s not necessarily true.”
Phillips concluded that environmentalists and global warming enthusiasts “start with a conclusion” and then “wrench” the evidence to fit their theory.
A few callers asked for her to expand on her global warming doubts more because they thought she was wrong in her belief that global warming doesn’t exist. Phillips responded every time by stating that she would believe in global warming, too, if she only had the information that the media gives out. She pushed herself to go beyond that, however, and she had reached far different conclusions.
While Phillips is a British journalist and often said she is not familiar with all of the specifics of American politics or journalism, the problems she espoused about British media bias ring true here in America, as well.
