Unreliable Media

Why is so much of the news media we've always depended on in the process of falling apart? On cable, CNN had a solid reputation for real news coverage, and when it started msNBC had a reasonable mix of news and punditry on both sides within the political middle. Now they are both trying real hard to become clones of Faux News. According to people who watched it (I'm not one--I axed all but basic cable months ago and never looked back) msnbc covered the Scalito hearings yesterday for hours without a single non-Republican, non-Bushite voice, not even in interviews.

Now apparently our TV news and newspapers have lost interest even in their own. An outrageous incident in Iraq is alleged--after requesting interviews from U.S. military officials on a story she was doing on misappropriated U.S. and British funds in Iraq, U.S. soldiers broke into the bedroom of a reporter working for the Guardian newspaper in England, and fired shots as she, her husband and children were sleeping. According to jpol at Booman Trib, this has gone unreported in our news media. There are links to earlier posts and foreign press stories saying that journalists are being targeted by coalition/Iraqi forces in Iraq.

And around here, I'm still waiting for any sort of story on the death by hospital policy of Tirhas Habtegiris.

When journalists are slow to even defend their own, it argues for decadence or pervasive depression. I think it's both. It's decadence at the top--management with priorities, both corporate and personal, that don't include good journalism, plus decadent "stars" who make lots of money from running at the mouth and identify with the rich and powerful in that class world they are now entering.

And it's depression in the ranks, as resources for newsgathering are cut, newsroom layoffs, buyouts and firings are increasing, shrinking the number of reporters that together with marketing invades editorial policy, taking away ability and freedom to report. A friend at one city newspaper told me recently that editorial management called a meeting of reporters to discuss low morale, but everyone was too depressed to even show up. It was a joke, and it wasn't.

The news media in question is often called Mainstream Media or MSM in the blogosphere. Kos is arguing for the term "traditional media" because MSM is a right-wing invention, the media are not the enemy, and the usual newspapers and TV are no longer alone in the mainstream. He points out that Daily Kos has more readers than some cable news channels have viewers, and it would rank in the top five of newspapers by circulation.

The Big Blogs have their problems, too. But one thing they do well: if something significant is reported anywhere in the world via the Internet, it will get reported on one blog or another. Once a story gets some interest, bloggers will dig into available public records and scoop out the facts, the contradictions and patterns.

The major weakness is of course that if it isn't on the Internet, it's unlikely to be blogged. Bloggers do report on public events in their vicinity (speeches, election campaigns, etc.) but without getting paid to report, and without the travel and other resources of a news organization, there are limits to the news blogs can provide. So bloggers still rely on news media, though these days those news organizations are often overseas.

The deadly irony of all this is that the right wing fanatics effectively created the impression that American news reporting was unreliable (because of liberal bias), and because they were effective in tarring the media, news organizations responded in part by taking the right wing fanatical view, and in the process they have become unreliable. New ditzsy anchors, blowhard pundits, and regular apologies for bad reporting from major newspapers don't help.