Fresh from re-watching Bush’s lame press conference through the eyes of The Daily Show, I found this journalist
who has been tracking the US media in recent years.
Danny Schechter, a media veteran of almost 40 years says:
“You have three times more pundits on air as opposed to journalists. That’s another sign of the post-journalism era.” And we have newscasters, who are neither reporters or pundits who give their commentary on the news that they are only hired to read.
He has made a documentary on the subject of the failure of the American mainstream media:
Academy Award Winner Tim Robbins narrates the trailer for Globalvision’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception).
Three questions from a recent interview:
I try to offer some fresh insights. I also try to speak to journalists about what this means in terms of our responsibilities to challenge and what this means in terms of democracy.
In the film, I make the suggestion that the Bush administration practices deception as part of its strategy and military strategy.[…]
Now, with study after study they say it was “group think” in the intelligence community. That’s why they screwed up.
If there was group think in the intelligence community, what about the journalistic community? There was group think there, too.
more…
Journalism is at a crossroads. There are many journalists today who still believe in the values of journalism but who are frustrated by the difficulty of practicing it because the companies they work for do not really respect journalistic principles. What they are there to do is satisfy their bottom line concerns, they have closed bureau after bureau.
There has been a pattern of dumbing down, and by dumbing it down it means people inside media are dumbing themselves down. They are not asking good questions, they are not challenging official narratives the way they should be.
Are blogs an alternative to mainstream media sources?
There are now 10 million blogs. Of those, maybe 10% claim to be journalistic. Some of the bloggers are very responsible, really challenging and doing investigative digging that mainstream media are not.
Some are motivated just by ideological concerns. Recently, for example, Eason Jordan, the former chief of news at CNN – when he said at Davos 12 journalists had been killed by US soldiers there was a big shock and he was forced to resign. In that case, a blogger took an off-the-record meeting and just blasted it out there with out having a full record of what was said.
[…]
Danny Schechter has a blog where he takes the top stories and covers what is not being reported.
He asks this question:
In memoriam for all the journalists killed in the line of duty.
