Whenever I talk to print reporters about blogging I hear the same refrain: We’re destroying their credibility, we don’t give them enough credit for how hard they work, and people need to have faith in their institutions.
For the most part, it is the reporters themselves that have destroyed the credibility of the corporate press. It’s hard to recognize hard work when that work comes across as lazy and hopelessly credulous. And it should not be the job of the press to create faith in any institution other their than their own specific organizations.
Bloggers do not want to ruin the press, we want diversity and we want them to do their jobs. And they should get cracking, because the public is totally untrusting at this point.
More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don’t care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.
And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news — roughly one quarter of all Americans — were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.
More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don’t care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.
More than half — 53 percent — of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for “failing to stand up for America”.
Again, the normal response to this from print reporters is to blame bloggers. But bloggers would not have emerged with this degree of ferocity if not for the reporting of William Safire, Judith Miller, Michael Gordon, Tom Friedman, the Washington Post editorial board, the cable news, Time and Newsweek, etc.
We do not need to restore faith in our institutions, be them the press or the government. We need to learn not to have faith in them. Read blogs.
And deconsolidate the media.
Well said Boo! They did it to themselves. Now they are looking around to blame someone? I understand that they are for the most part restricted by their editors and owners, but still they have fallen in step. It’s a funny thing about human nature, if the normal ways and means of the citizenry does not give them what they want. . .real news, real reporting, truth, etc. . .then those with passion and concern will always bring forth some way to get the information they desire in the way they want it.
What whiny little babies. As an American, I lost faith in the ‘institute’ of American journalism long ago because it is almost completely devoid of ‘news’. On the rare occasion they attempt to report something, they do little or no research. I rely almost 100% on foreign news (CBC, BBC, The Guardian, to name a few.) and internet sources (truthout, rawstory, crooksandliars) If they want to be relevant, they need to be relevent.
For the most part, it is the reporters themselves that have destroyed the credibility of the corporate press.
not the reporters, their management destroyed the credibility of the press
I disagree. Management didn’t tell Safire and Miller what to write. They lied and distorted and tossed away their own credibility and they no longer work at the Times.
Management promoted Safire and Judy Miller in preference to those who told the truth.
actually, they fired Miller and accepted Safire’s retirement.
They negotiated to keep her, even after they had spent huge sums of money paying her legal bills and putting the Times’ credibility behind her legal stance (which was, basically, I deserve the privileges of being a Times reporter but feel no obligation to share the news I gather with the Times readership if it inconveniences me politically). Sounds like an endorsement to me.
For some reason the mainstream media fail to see the connection that Orwell did:
You’re damn right, BooMan. Deconsolidate the media.
Kudos, and please don’t stop bringing this up/
http://www.projectcensored.org
http://www.augustreview.com
It is of course a corporate press and the only answer is to tell their advertizers we are not all retarded.