Sorry to disappoint, but the truth isn’t at all the conspiratorial drama that just about everyone outside of the mainstream media assumes.

But before we go there, I want to address one other point that’s been bugging me for as long as the term “mainstream media” has been tossed about. What exactly is mainstream media? For lack of any other defining criteria, it’s fact-based media. It generally involves people who: A) Actually obtain and read reports, documents and other written material; B) Interview on-the-record sources reflecting multiple and conflicting views; and, C) Compile all that information in short order.

The non-mainstream media, which really is the opinion-based media, for the most part involves non-professionals who: A) Regurgitate selected parts of stories prepared by the mainstream media, oozed over with spurts of their own political seasoning; and, B) Carp that the original work of the mainstream media isn’t nearly bent enough toward their personal biases.

But I digress… Back to the original topic.

Here’s former East Valley Tribune andArizona Republic political reporter and current Democratic Rep. Harry Mitchell’s state director Robbie Sherwood discussing his biases as a reporter:

“Everybody’s coming from someplace. There is no such thing as an unbiased journalist. In fact, there’s not an unbiased anybody. You have your backgrounds. You have your education. You have your ethnicity, whatever it is that colors your experience as a person is going to play a role in how you see the world,” Sherwood said.

“What journalists often will get though is maybe a bias toward the underdog. You do stories about the little guy. And everybody’s guilty of that, because they’re often very compelling stories. I don’t think that those stories are colored by someone’s political ideology. I think almost has less to do with it than anything. You have a bias toward a really compelling story,” Sherwood said.

“At the Legislature, we had a bias toward stories where there was what we call a ‘real person,’ like someone who was not a political figure or a lobbyist, who was trying to get something done at the Legislature, who was impacted by a state law or wanted to impact the process. Whenever somebody like that showed up, you’d rush to interview that person, because it was so out of the ordinary,” Sherwood said. 

Here’s former Tribune and Arizona Daily Star political reporter and current state House Republican spokesman Barrett Marson discussing both Sherwood’s alleged political bias and his own: 

“I know that, obviously, it’s fun to say, ‘The media’s very liberal and look at Robbie who’s going to work for Congressman Harry Mitchell,’ however, for a year, he worked for Jason Rose. Jason Rose is not on Harry Mitchell’s Rolo-Dex,” Marson said.

“When I moved over from the Daily Star to the speaker’s office, it was all about Jim Weiers. I respected the man. I still respect the man. And I thought it would be an interesting challenge,” Marson said.

“When you get down to it, whatever my politics are, that doesn’t actually come into play much because I’m serving him and the other 32 members of the House Republican caucus. So my thoughts and opinions don’t really have that much of a matter; it’s whatever they want,” Marson said.

A quick aside here, Rose is a Scottsdale-based public relations agent who does work for Republicans Mitt Romney and Joe Arpaio, among others.

And here’s former Republic general assignment reporter and current Mitchell spokesman Seth Scott discussing the intersection of news and politics: 

“There are Republicans and Democrats who I liked; Republicans and Democrats who I disliked. But I never experienced any sort of conflict because I never covered politics. It was pretty easy. I covered neighborhood issues. I remember one story I wrote was about the playground equipment at a particular park that was not working well,” Scott said. 

“What was a good thing about working in the newsroom was the ability to be skeptical, the ability to look at things in a different sort of way and be able to get to the bottom of what’s really happening. And I think most people who come out of the newsroom and go into politics come with a more pragmatic than ideological sense. And that’s what their political views are founded in,” Scott said.   

And finally, here’s former Republic political reporter, former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano spokeswoman and current Republican Arizona Corporation Commission member Kris Mayes comparing her mainstream media job to her others: 

“That’s still my most fun job. Are you kidding? What a great job,” Mayes said.