“[T]he biggest challenge facing America's struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry ... non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias.” ... “And, yes, some newspapers are more liberal than their readership and do a lousy job of concealing it.”
Hmm. It’s my fault newspapers are declining because I’ve been accusing them of bias. But, yes, they’re biased. Okaaay ...
“But the greater truth is that newspaper reporters, editors and institutions are responsible for the boots-on-the-ground grub work that produces the news stories and performs the government watchdog role so crucial to a democratic republic.”
Half right. Produces news stories is correct. But “performs the government watchdog role” is flat wrong. That's my responsibility – and yours – as citizens and voters.
“How does the newspaper industry survive in a climate in which the public doesn't know what it doesn't know? Or what it needs?”
Again, half right. But it’s wrong, flatly, deadly wrong for journalism to claim that its their responsibility to decide for the public “what it needs.”
“[Journalists] are the champions of the industry, not the ... bloggers ... who rely on newspapers to provide their material.”
Journalists are essential, yes, but only to the extent that they report the facts and not their opinions.
[Alex S.] Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, says newspapers have to focus on their traditional core of fact-based, serious reporting.
Close, but no cigar. Replace the phrase “fact-based” with the single word “factual” and you’ve got it.
We might add to that formula the need for a serious populace informed about the fragile thread that connects a free press to a free future.
We’re already here. We’re called “bloggers.”
It's like if a waiter brought you half your order, claiming he knows what you need better than you do. Even if he was right half the time, would you still go to the restaurant?
ReplyDeleteUgh. When did we become a country where people stopped understanding that bias should help you search for facts to support your case, not carefully filter the facts that come to you? Pitiful.