LA Times: Trashing the Media

[La_Serpiente]

Trashing the Media

You dislike us. You really dislike us. Or maybe the harsher truth is, we've begun to dislike ourselves.

Let's admit it: We in the mainstream media deserve some of this rancor and resentment after the year we've had. Jayson Blair's serial falsehoods, the New York Times management crackup, the Washington Post's gung-ho reporting (and later re-reporting) of the Pfc. Jessica Lynch rescue, media mogul Conrad Black's financial faux pas, CBS' leveraging of a Michael Jackson interview and entertainment special — the list of snafus in 2003 goes on and on.

No wonder so many people have been taking us to task: pundits, bloggers, journalism school professors and politicians right up to and including the president of the United States, who told Brit Hume of Fox News that he rarely reads newspapers because "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, Bush revealed, he relies on "people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Not only are mainstream media untrustworthy, Bush implied, but also largely irrelevant.

The leader of the free world isn't alone in his meager estimation of the fourth estate. It's no secret that the public's faith in the mass media has been slipping for years, that journalists today are regarded by many Americans as predatory, biased, out of touch with readers, motivated by personal agendas, complacent and complicit with the corporate and governmental powers that be.

more...

Trashing the Media

Free Registration Required

[JailForBush]

1. So why don't candidates for public office make the media a campaign issue?

I gave Seattle's corrupt media both barrels when I run for office, but I couldn't get one other candidate to join me. Why? Because they were all corrupt.

But what about candidates in other states and cities? Surely, they can't ALL be corrupt. Why will no candidate challenge the media, even if s/he knows the media will only attack him?

[izzie]

2. One reason , I would say, is its power.

I still think as voters we should have free time for the people running in prime time for many months before Nov.4 That in its doing would take a great deal of money out of the election. No one has to vote as the ads say but who is thinking about anything? Heck no one would have voted for Bush after they saw he left Texas in the hole with the money. He is doing the same with the country. He likes to spend others money. People should have seen that and that he became rich on the backs of his family's friends not on what he could do.