...Whenever the media analyses itself, you can always feel the competition between an earnest desire to understand the world and outcome based reasoning. The outcome they need to arrive at follows from their view that democracy depends not just on a free press, but on the very peculiar kind of free press that developed in the decades after World War II.

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One of the many, many things I love about this piece is that Brian Beutler never once uses the left-right spectrum metaphor. In fact, he outright rejects it and replaces it with a DARWINIAN METAPHOR!!!! I am so happy!