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.
