Columbia Journalism School is not politically balanced.

Fraser Seitel writes at O’Dwyer.

The Fall of the Columbia Journalism School

Full disclosure: After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism many, many years ago, I was rejected for admission to the nation’s foremost graduate school for budding reporters, the Columbia University School of Journalism.

So I went into public relations.

In the spirit of Groucho Marx’s disdain for any club that would have allowed him to be a member, however, I ultimately admired Columbia for refusing to lower its standards and accept the likes of me.

Columbia, after all, was the crème de la crème of journalism schools, and it had a reputation to protect.

But these days, I’m not so sure.

Under its current dean, former Washington Post reporter Steve Coll, the once mighty bastion of fairness and objectivity has increasingly become a willing spear-carrier for liberal political causes.

Today, what passes for “journalism” is more often the kind of one-sided rabble that Fox News spews on the right and MSNBC spouts on the left. Alas, the Columbia Journalism School seems to have forsaken its 100 years of teaching the principles of unbiased, indifferent reporting and has fallen down that same subjective rat hole.

Case-in-point: Columbia J School’s campaign to rid the world of fossil fuels and that most villainous deliverer of such fuels, ExxonMobil.

Headlining the school’s website is an invitation to read the three-part series that Columbia students, in association with the Los Angeles Times, produced its Energy and Environmental Reporting Project, which accuses ExxonMobil of hiding early knowledge about global warming and deceiving the public for years while it continued to pump out the filthy fuel.