um, experts in WHAT, exactly?

More mainstream media arrogance, via The Line Is Here, regarding the cover of Time magazine in which a tree replaces the flag the Marines were raising in the famous Iwo Jima photo, from Richard Stengel, the magazine's managing editor...

"I think since I've been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that's needed in journalism is that you have to have a point of view about things...You can’t always just say 'on the one hand, on the other' and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We're experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let's just say so."

Which leads to the question I posed in the title to this entry...experts in WHAT, exactly? On just about every issue under the sun, these people always, ALWAYS toe the socialist line, on issues from global warming to gun control, and if the facts belie that socialist line, well that's just too damned bad. Case in point, we have this little snippet from this anti-gun, anti-freedom diatribe from Don Campbell, a lecturer in journalism at Atlanta's Emory University:

...if Congress had the guts to take the lead, it would appoint a commission of reasonable people who I believe would agree on:
* The optimum firepower and configuration needed in a weapon to defend your home, bring down any critter from a quail to a moose or shred a paper target.
* Banning civilian ownership of all automatic weapons and all semiautomatic weapons that hold more than six rounds of ammunition. Six rounds is enough for any serious hunter, let alone a gangbanger.

Really now, are those the musings of a man who knows anything about guns or how they're used in real-life situations? Are these the recommendations of one who's experienced -- not just studied -- self-defense scenarios from home invasions to riots to Hurricane Katrina-type situations? Or are they a part of just another lecture from some self-righteous ivory-tower elitist who presumes to know what's best for the rest of us? I'd say the latter. Maybe it's just me, but I didn't think any caliber in existence would be equally suited to taking down a quail and a moose...and really, would you want your moose gun to defend your home with? But I'm getting way off track here. If these people knew what they were talking about that'd be one thing, but in so many instances they don't have a solitary clue! On just about every issue under the sun these people are NOT experts in any sense of the word. They just more or less tell what other experts are thinking, and even then THAT is a best-case scenario. Likely as not they'll go to someone who is more than a little bit biased and who has an agenda. I think it's safe to say that the lion's share of mainstream media professionals are degree-certified experts in journalism and nothing else. I've heard it said that to have the most credibility as a journalist, your best bet would be to learn another field in addition to journalism, so you could -- wait for it! -- at least speak credibly on topics related to that field. For Richard Stengel to stand there on his perch and say that journalists are experts at what they do is quite the height of arrogance, no?