The News

I'm sort of out of my element here, but I believe there is some real truth to this. With the advent of cable news and then the Internet, the network news and "important" papers lost a lot of their authority as the only real sources for news. In a sense, these organizations were "setting the table" by deciding what to cover in the short time or space they had. Now people can hear and read news 24 hours a day. They also have lots of choices and can seek out the sort of coverage that either fits with their world view or challenges it. I think most people go with the former. How many people today choose to get their tv news primarily from MSNBC or Fox? How many people get their Internet news primarily from HuffPo, Daily Kos, Drudge Report, or Little Green Footballs? So a lot people just hear one perspective by choice. When confronted by a news story they don't like, they can run to a partisan source and find out how their side is spinning the story. On a side note, I would be interested to hear where most people here get their news.

The traditional news outlets had the trust of the people. A consequence of the fragmentation of news sources is that there is no anchor today with the public trust of a Murrow to stand up to McCarthy or a Cronkite to declare the Vietnam war lost . In some ways, that's a good thing. Because the media monopoly has been broken up, we hear stories that traditional media wouldn't cover. We also have a million bloggers who will fact check the major organizations to keep them honest. The downside is pretty obvious too though. With so much information out there, I think people tend to "trust" those who tell them what they want to hear from a perspective they already agree with.

Commercialism has always been a part of news though, hasn't it? Have newspapers in the modern era ever really survived on what people pay for the papers? It's the ads that bring in the revenue that helps the media pay the bills. As the market is fragmented, companies look to the most popular news sources for their ad buys. News providers realize they can attract more eyeballs with a hook, more entertainment news, pretty anchors, and strong partisanship with their editorials.

A touchy topic for sure.

Also, the ramifications in the longer run will be interesting, as news isnt free. Somebody has to shell out the cash to send Brian Williams to Afghanistan, and that someone isnt HuffPo.

But that aside, I honestly think people who pick news sources which feed their own beliefs were never truly interested in news. They felt the need, maybe they felt required by their society to know certain things, but it never really mattered to them what it was. Someone who knowingly avoids news sources which might not tell the stories they like isnt really looking for news.

The other problem is one that I believe the "old" media has been proven to be unable to handle, and that is the necessary level of professional knowledge and information to handle many modern topics.
Whenever I see a news piece about one of my many interests, its almost inevitably there is a GROSS misinformation or outright mistake in the piece. Its because the reporter in question is a layman, cannot be bothered, doesnt have time, and sometimes its in the interest of constructing a cooler story or a more appropriate message. Either way, its not facts, its not news, its spin or outright fiction. More news sources means more chances for someone to get it right.
I have to assume by now that every story I read which is about something I am not knowledgable about is probably not correct, as none of the ones I can verify are. So if I am truly interested, I have to spend a few minutes and check different sources.

Unfortunately, the signal-to-noise ratio has gotten much worse with the news aggregator sites often stealing from the same carcass, and just dressing it up a bit differently. The increasingly bothersome trend of putting "wikipedia" in the place of actual fact-checking is another problem.

I think this is kind of the caterpillar stage of this new way of getting news and information out to the people. It sort of has its use, but we havent seen the butterfly yet.

As a sidenote, since jvy is interested, I am getting my news from a variety of websites, mostly the "spiegel", a german magazine, the HuffPo, and a smattering of other sites focused on areas I am interested in.

In his book "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs", Chuck Klosterman wrote a great essay where he said media bias (to the extent it exists in mainstream news organizations) wasn't based on a partisan agenda of the (likely liberal) reporter or the (likely conservative) owners. Instead, it was based on who would return the reporter's phone call in time for the reporter to meet a deadline. An excerpt:

I wonder how true that is.

Also, since I asked and Khaunshar was nice enough to reply, I should say where I get my news. I'll check Drudge Report and CNN.com several times a day. I'll go to Real Clear Politics to see what the whole spectrum of editorial columnists (Krugman to Kristol) are going on about. Then I'll usually pop over to National Review Online to get some conservative analysis. A few times per week I'll head over to Daily Kos to find out what progressives have to say. I will also have CNN on tv in the morning when getting ready for work. If I watch the evening news, it's PBS. I can't stand any of the prime time cable news analysis shows and rarely watch them.

I've been interning at a newspaper for the bast couple of months, and I can say that there is a large amount of truth to what Klosterman says there. All the politicians who complain about media bias either need to make an effort to return their phone calls or hire better press staff. Most reporters want the most complete story that they can get, and they want all sides of an issue. Where it gets tough is when certain sides of the issue don't speak up.

This can’t be stressed enough, the NewsHour is the only American evening news program that even feigns to do what it’s supposed to.

About darn time! David Shuster possibly in the process of being fired from MSNBC

And not a minute too soon. There are some faces that should never be televised. His is one such face

PK, just out of curiosity, what is it you have against David Shuster?

He is just terrible on television. Whiny nasal voice, not particularly clever. He's a really awkward sketchy guy. I have some news personalities that I don't like (for reasons other than their politics), and he is one of those people

Shuster might be a fine journalist, but that doesn't mean that he should be invading my tv box every day of the week

I believe that tv news being a profit-making concern has destroyed it. As it has become corporately owned, its profit-making potential tends towards sensationalism of non-stories and outright fake stories, and favorable treatment of industries in which its principals have a stake.

I believe newspapers have likewise suffered from corporatization, with Mitt Romney types buying papers using leveraged buy-outs, thereby saddling them with debt they can only meet by laying off, dumbing down, swallowing more small fry, and ultimately dying.

In terms of news sources, I try to ingest as much real news as I can from a variety of sources.

TV: BBC & Al Jazeera's world news programs, Bill Moyers, Frontline, Rachel Maddow

Newspapers (online): Financial Times, LA Daily News (for local stuff), UK Guardian

Internet: Huffington Post (more as a snapshot of the picture since I stopped even looking at Drudge), Raw Story, Truthout, The Nation, Crooks & Liars, Calitics (for California political news), and a number of other blogs like Matt Taibbi, Krugman, Andrew Sullivan, Truthdig, TPM, etc.

Radio: Diane Rehm Show on PBS Talk/wamu.org, other NPR shows, Thom Hartmann on thomhartmann.com (also on LA station KTLK and Sirius), Make it Plain with Matsimela Mapfumo on Sirius, and at the top of the hour I listen to the NPR news roundup

When has TV news not been corporately owned?

And yt, to the extent that you seek out so many left-leaning news sources, do you worry you're only getting one side of events?

jvc, Diane Rehm, Financial Times, Guardian, BBC and Al Jazeera are not left. They are news, information, facts. If Diane has a lefty on, she almost always has someone from a right wing think tank to provide the "other side" of an issue. In fact, I'd say more often than not she has right or middle of the roaders on.

I left off a couple of blogs I look at because I don't want to encourage anyone else to look at them, but suffice to say that I also get an eyefull of the "mainstream" (which is generally center-right) and far-right perspectives, which I hold separate from information-gathering, as I do with more radical far-left sites, which I also left off this list.

In terms of corporately owned, I should clarify. I'm talking about gigantic corporate entity-owned. Also, there's a great misconception about the Fairness Doctrine, which has been relaxed since Reagan (along with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act). It's not a question of right vs. left, it's a question of: does the advertising dept. talk to the news division? Does the news division serve the public good by providing news? News organizations used to have to answer those questions satisfactorily or be shut down. They have obviously suffered with the near total degradation of these hard and fast boundaries.

Huffington Post as "real news?" Please.

While TV news had always been corporately owned, in the early 80's when all three major networks switched ownership (ABC to Cap Cities, NBC to GE, and CBS to Larry Tisch) they looked at where they were losing money and most of it was on the news division.

Each took their own steps at cost cutting. The big thing was up til this point news was looked at as a "public trust" which basicly meant the news division put in the money they spent at the end of the year and that was that. With the new owners that ended. News directors were being told to make a yearly budget and explain why certain expenses were needed something that was a first time experience for many veterains of the tv news industry.

While there was certainly waste in the industry, the question is of course did the networks cut too much.

If you can read the book Three Blind Mice by Ken Auletta a great read about TV buisness in general.

Also, while my and yt's list is remarkably similar, despite what you might think, I tend to read a lot more magazines (which is where the great reporting and the great writing is still happening), and I'd add Charlie Rose to her TV list.

This might be slightly derailing but I am more than curious if this Wikileaks story will get any media attention in the US. On Al Jazeera and over here it is rather huge. And while this might not be a perfect example I am more often than not amazed on how different news are presented and selected on the different sides of the pond.

That was covered on the Huff Po world page

PS My news sources of choice:

Huffington Post: The Internet Paper of Record
BBC World News
CHUD

I used to read more news from a wider variety of sources, but now CHUD takes up the time I used to spend doing that. Hopefully when I get highspeed internet at home that will change



PS: Yes! He was suspended indefinitely!


Amazingly, that is not a photo of Shuster reacting to his firing. That is his normal face!