Plaudits for reporter reflect media schism

Kudos, kiddo.

On-air validation and online adoration rained down upon Channel 8 reporter Nathan Baca after his electric interrogation of flummoxed media-sidestepper Sharron Angle last week at an appearance at Stoney's, a Las Vegas restaurant.

"Isn't it a shocker that when a reporter does his job, it becomes news? The world is tipped on its axis," says Channel 8 news director Ron Comings, his tongue wedged deeply in cheek -- but still dead-on.

Needling self-important I-Team promos last week, this column was amused by the "Sparks Will Fly!" tag line, but when Angle, the Republican challenger to Sen. Harry Reid was cornered by Baca (not an I-Teamer, FYI), sparks did fly.

Aggressively pursuing explanations about positions posted on Angle's website -- cutting the Environmental Protection Agency, "transitioning out of" Social Security and, most provocatively, alluding to "Second Amendment remedies" (i.e., guns) for frustrated citizens -- Baca challenged every Angle evasion, including deflections to "go ask Harry Reid" about his stances, then she strode away as Baca kept peppering her with questions in the parking lot.

Dogged journalism, period.

Footage hit YouTube, headlined: "Sharron Angle Gets Questioned By a Real Reporter." Bloggers hailed Baca. Liberal lion's den MSNBC roared approval as "Countdown" highlighted the clip and Rachel Maddow declared:

"Nathan Baca from KLAS in Las Vegas, you're doing it right."

Could "doing it right" be code for "doing it for the left"? That we're not sure is the trapdoor of modern media.

Maddow's here-here! carried a larger point about an "atomized" media "bubble" in which news consumers can flock to news outlets reflecting their own opinions back at them without that irritating exposure to contrary views -- and how it spills over to candidates such as Angle, who so confined herself to sympathetic right-wing interviewers that she seems stunned confronted by mainstream media whose agenda is simple fact-finding.

Endorsement by MSNBC comes at the cost of irony, though -- straightaway journalism rah-rahed by journalists veering leftward, as ideologically driven as Fox News veering rightward.

Shriveling credibility is the steeper price of doing business in the burgeoning world of advocacy journalism in 21st-century media. We've come to undervalue what now seem like almost quaint throwbacks to 20th-century journalistic objectivity at lower-rung local markets such as Las Vegas.

Americans don't often distinguish anymore between cable windbags (hi, Olbermann and Beck) and the missions of local stations. All "news media" blurs into a blackhearted, Darth Vader-ish industry defined by the loudest yammering of ideological invective, encouraging viewer cynicism, even over agenda-free, down-the-middle media.

As The New York Times wrote last Sunday: "Many Americans are more likely to assume that anyone they read or see on television has a political bias."

Local-level journalism, with all its shortcomings and strengths, is partial redemption, a corrective to the blather of lathered-up cable squawkers. Maddow is accurate, whatever her motivation for saying it:

Nathan Baca, you're doing it right. You'll also be doing it right when you aggravate the left -- and its media acolytes.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.