Enough, already, of 'mainstream media' rap

Bert de Souza was on vacation last week. His column will return to this spot next Sunday.
Over the years, I've learned to get that announcement out of the way quickly. Some readers miss de Souza so acutely that they never get to the bottom of the column, where I used to explain his absence in tiny type.
I've learned that and a number of other things as I enter my 37th year in this business, but I haven't learned to put out perfect pages, ones that please everyone.
Putting out editorial and op-ed pages is neither rocket science nor brain surgery, obviously. But it's a balancing act, trying to give liberal readers and conservative readers something to like and something to get their blood pressure up.
Not everybody sees it that way. A recent e-mail exchange with a reader made that clear. He objected strenuously to what he saw as pandering to religious conservatives by the use of a Dec. 21 column, & quot;Christmas is under attack from all sides, & quot; by John Gibson, the Fox News news reader, whom he characterized as one of "the nation's most well-known loons."
I responded by pointing out that on the same page as Gibson's piece there was a column by William McKenzie, a Dallas Morning News writer, making a strong opposing argument. My correspondent was not mollified. Such juxtaposition only confirmed, he wrote, "that the Vindy has indeed taken the path so familiar to much of the mainstream press today: indulging in the publication of misinformation, disinformation, meaningless stories and inane, pointless editorials and then welcoming others to present their 'opposing views.' "
There was another exchange or two, but it became clear that my critic and I were talking past each other. There was no middle ground. Besides, he had used two of the words I have come to hate more than, perhaps, any other: mainstream press.
It was strange to have the term evoked by a liberal critic (I know he's liberal because he suggested Molly Ivins and Bill Moyer as regular columnists who could cure what ails my pages). Mainstream press is a locution of the right wing -- Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and the like, who have become media millionaires but apparently feel their status is only secure if they can marginalize every other voice speaking to America.
It is a phrase like government schools rather than public schools and the Democrat Party (why do those people who feel compelled to drop the "ic" from Democratic never say Republic Party?). Nobody talks about the mainstream press in complimentary terms. And apparently nothing Limbaugh or Fox could ever do would qualify them as part of the mainstream.
A few weeks ago, one of our regular conservative columnists, Thomas Sowell, wrote a column in which he repeated a litany of complaints against the mainstream press for its war reportage.
I dropped an e-mail to the account executive responsible for Sowell's column. Here it is.
"I have no way of knowing how long you've been making a living serving the "mainstream media," but I've been a newspaper reporter and editor for about 35 years. Bought a house, a bunch of cars, fed and clothed a family and put a couple of kids through college that way. So I have to wonder why I -- or anyone else who owes his livelihood to this business -- would feel compelled to pay for and use a column such as the one Thomas Sowell wrote for release Dec. 13, which uses a broad brush to paint the "mainstream media" as sniveling defeatists lacking credibility or value.
"I've run similar columns in the past --not necessarily by Sowell. Increasingly, though, I've found myself letting these columns die. ... I do not object to columns that criticize the press for specific and verifiable transgressions. I believe it is important for the press to turn a critical eye on itself. But this attempt to demonize and marginalize the mainstream press benefits only the alternative press and those who believe they can burnish their images by aligning themselves with media outside what they portray as the untrustworthy mainstream. ...
"If the capitalist in Marx's parable who sold the rabble the rope they would use to hang him was blinded by greed, it strikes me that we editors who use columns such as Sowell's latest offering are blinded by a need to feel open-minded -- or we're simply stupid. I would be pleased to be told why I am wrong and why I should be the least inclined to help Sowell or any other columnist undercut the medium that has sustained me and mine for more than three decades."
I've yet to receive a reply.
At this point, 'd be happy to get an explanation from anyone. My e-mail address: mangan@vindy.com.
Mangan is editorial page editor of The Vindicator.