Journalistic Sickness
Dean
Neo-Neocon has an interesting piece on the practice of using anonymous sources in journalism: where it started becoming commonplace, and how much it's changed over time.
Meanwhile, John Cole says that those of us who are mad at the media should take it all back. Sorry John, none for me. The people in the war-coverage press appear to run a broad spectrum: from those who are not on America's side to those who outright want us to fail. That impression did not occur in a vacuum. As much as some people would like to believe that it's all the fault of the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, the truth is that the talk radio people are the symptom--not the disease.
I want a press that feels embarrassed (hi Bill!) and more than a little dirty to publish something with an anonymous source--and is both reluctant and apologetic whenever it does so. I want a press that doesn't take disparate events that occur in different countries and even different continents, separated by months or years, by people who don't even know each other or work for the same department, and paint it all as part of a "pattern of behavior" that therefore makes unsubstantiated allegations "credible."
Prison abuses happen in every country, in every prison system. Worse things than Abu Ghraib happen every day in American prisons full of all-American criminals, and way worse happens every day in prisons in places like Saudi Arabia or Syria (and certainly did in Saddam's Iraq)--and by the way, pointing all that out is not about "excusing" anything, it's about perspective and making moral distinctions.
And, of course, it's also about not acting as enemy propagandists.
The press grabbed a collective halo for itself in the Watergate years. They didn't deserve one--Woodward and Bernstein deserved one maybe, but even they had the good sense to be embarrassed and uncomfortable with some of their own methods. The rest of the press shamelessly spent the next three decades trying to ride those coattails, and made themselves look worse and worse and worse all the time. The chickens have come home to roost: these people are despised for a reason, and it's not because some "right wing attack machine" is being mean to them.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Why The Press Is So Bad On War Coverage
- Journalistic Sickness
Bernstein, the former Washington Post journalist who, along with fellow reporter Bob Woodward, unearthed the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, said much of today's news has deteriorated into gossip, sensationalism and manufactured controversy.
That type of news panders to the public and insults their intelligence, ignoring the context of real life, he said. Good journalism, Bernstein said, "should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them."
He said the modern press lacks true leadership, citing such examples as AOL Time Warner and mogul Rupert Murdoch as media owners that have increasingly abandoned the principles of meaningful reporting.
"Their interest in truth is secondary to their interest in huge profits," Bernstein said.
Still, he said people can change that trend by exploring the Internet and piecing together from reputable sources their own news about important world matters."
..it's kind of funny that this story languished in the St. Peterburg press. Why on earth didn't the media cover it? :-)
Does this apply to bloggers or just MSM?
I would argue that talk radio is not merely a symptom but indeed the antidote. With precious time and so many news sources today vs. just 20 years ago (talk radio, blogging, etc.) average consumers of news are better equipped to correctly identify facts from propaganda and editorial. In other words, the people not only can shield themselves from MSM rhetoric, they can fire back with both barrels by way of embarrassment and plummenting subscription rates when proven factually inaccurate.
The MSM has never developed armor for such an attack on their collective credibility and information and thus has been crumbling for the last decade.
Zippo: But talk radio has its own propaganda and spin that's also troubling. Less so when they're honest about it but still--I thought more of talk radio until the internet really started to come into its own. It allows information sharing and collaboration that "cult of personality" talk radio doesn't.
Along the way, the MSM became the news, not merely the medium (think CSPAN), with journalists' agendas exposed by talented talk show hosts from both political sides.
I absolutely believe that the internet picks up where talk radio leaves off providing that instant access to real-time facts but talk radio provided the bridge of collaboration limited of course by the people's ability to get through on the phone.
The current limitations of the internet will continue to provide talk radio a place in the market (i.e. inability to interact or just listen and yell at the talk show host while sitting in traffic). MSM networks are hampered by natural attrition from older generations who have not embraced today's technology and continue to rely on it solely for news of the day.
But weekly periodicals like Time and Newsweek (their current problems notwithstanding) are dated in an instant news world. Even daily newspapers and network news programs are "too late" getting scooped every day by the 24/7 internet and many times even talk radio.
Eventually, as push/pull news technology increases, talk radio will seem as arcane and rediculous as the MSM does now.
On the bright side they have lost all credibility. Anyone citing ABC, CNN, the NY Times etc probably is going to tell you that they saw Elvis at the WalMart.