Slashdot Mirror
Are Journalism and Politics Inextricably Joined?
An anonymous reader writes "Retiring figure Bill Moyers makes his case in a recent speech delivered at the Society of Professional Journalists 2004 national convention. 'But I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined.' It is a deep argument, made poignant by the recently murdered Francisco Ortiz Franco of Mexico, Manik Saha of India, and Aiyathurai Nadesan of Sri Lanka, among others. It is a broad argument, touching on history from America's first best seller to yesterday's blog. Is it a convincing argument?"
That should be Dateline NBC for the trucks and Audi, not Volvo for the cars. A much more recent and politically linked example is the current Rathergate with the forged documents and a steadfast refusal by Rather and company to admit that they are wrong.
In the Rather case, he has been personally invested in the Texas Democratic Party for several years. Because of his politics, he blatantly manufactured news with a few of his daughter's cronies. In this case it is the journalistic equivalent of throwing a previously shot cat into Shroedinger's box, and then accusing Shroedinger of being cruel to animals.
The real world impact that was hoped for in this case vanished when the sham was unraveled. First the forged documents and the strings of experts. Then the star interview of Barnes was found to be both not in power at the time, and discredited by his own prior statements and his own daughter. The most recent national polls are probably reflecting a backlash to the "dirty tricks" aspect of this little episode, more than Bush or Kerry's own campaigning. This kind of journalism in action is fair to neither Kerry or Bush, and shouldn't be practiced by any of the press.
Now CBS is still feeling the pain and can't escape from it until they perform a major mea culpa or have a major purge of their perceived bias (Mr. Rather). In this case they lost right leaning viewers because of perceived left slant, and principled left leaning viewers because of tainted credibility. Now their ratings rely on rubberneckers waiting to see what the next act is in this train-wreck. Witness the strings of press releases announcing that they will be announcing something. Pathetic.
-- Len
People do not want to be informed -- they want to feel informed. I agree with everything you say, but it is this which has doomed true journalism. People want so much more to be "right" than to understand, to think, or to suffer challenge to their long-held beliefs.
What we get in America today is not true journalism. Partisan bias, which is largely demonstrated in the choice of what is and isn't "newsworthy", has been pushed to the fore of our media.
There is a very interesting study here that basically tries to gauge how minsinformed the US public is, and then break that down by which candidates they support, which news channels they watch, how clseoly they follow the news etc.
Now, the report has its biases in the sorts of questions they ask, and to some extend how they present the data, but if you read the report as well as just skimming through the somewhat damning graphs littered throughout, you'll see that there are some real systemic problems with US media coverage. In general, if you watched/listened major news outlets (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC etc.) you tended to be more misinformed the more closely you thought you followed the news.
And then there's the problem that this study didn't even consider - all the significant and interesting questions that are simply never be asked by the mainstream US media. Ah well, what can you do? Try and seek out other news sources I guess.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts