keanefrady

[keanefrady]

Times or Journal? ¿Porque no los dos?

Yesterday, my pastor forwarded me an email newsletter from a conservative commentator. One of those things where a writer sums up the previous week's news, interspersed with commentary and asides attempting humor. I did not find it especially compelling.

Even so, the newsletter did inspire me to pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal today. I get the New York Times delivered on Fridays and weekends, and sometimes I worry about being in an echo chamber of ideas.

The Journal was good. There's something about broadsheet newspapers that I find comforting, like knowing what I'm reading is worth my time. It's easier to trust an institution with a longstanding culture of adherence to traditional ethics and standards in journalism. The editorials in the Journal are quite different from the usual rhetoric I come across. Some take positions that are more sensitive to business interests, which is a new perspective for me and one that's not entirely off-putting.

I'm more used to pieces like this from the Times, an investigation into how Amazon avoids legal liability for crashes in last mile deliveries. I'm sort of predisposed to be interested in this topic because I use Amazon often and can also envision handling personal injury cases some day. The piece, while technically objective, suggests that injuries caused by contracted Amazon delivery drivers ought to leave the company with liability. I'm now more sympathetic to the opposite view, since personal injury damages are extensive and can discourage companies from pushing the envelope. If free two day shipping means Amazon has to hide behind third party contractors that absolve them of certain legal responsibilities, I can live with that trade-off as a consumer.

But the article does do a good job of explaining the individual, human cost such a trade-off carries. Being able to explain individual, human cost is the cornerstone of plaintiff's personal injury work and, in my mind, quite the admirable skill.

Making sense of these differing perspectives and how they fit into my larger world view is difficult. To purposefully overgeneralize, plaintiff's work is more associated with liberal economic ideology, since it's tied to ideas of "standing up for the little guy" against big business. The practice of civil defense is more aligned with economic conservatism, since it helps businesses remain profitable and enables innovation (some of the hallmarks of capitalism).

Reading the Journal today changed the way I interpreted the Times piece and brought to light sympathies for economic conservatism I didn't realize I had before.