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mcbride -> RE: "news" reports on health and science finding ~ pro or con and why? (4/5/2010 12:12:32 PM)
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"The media is..." Arrgh.
Anytime I see the word used as if it were singular, I wince. In the last ten years, a couple of the cheapest dictionaries have listed that usage as acceptable, but the word is the plural of medium, and the problem is that those three words are so often followed by a generalization that actually helps the worst offenders.
The problem is, when you don't discriminate between media outlets, you punish the outlets that invest in trying to get it right.
For every time I've seen a decent newsroom get a story wrong -- and that happens every day -- there have been ten times I've seen one accused of bias by someone whose side simply blew it, and looked bad because of the facts of the story. Individuals do that often enough -- no problem -- but corporate and political entities make it a matter of policy these days to exert pressure on outlets
The other major trend, as media are brought up by an increasingly smaller group of corporate owners, is to lay off reporters. News is often seen as a loss leader, and if you can fill the news hole with the same number of words, and cut out the extra diligence that used to go in to making sure those words are accurate and complete, you can certainly increase your profits. Consumers who just complain about the quality of news, but don't bother to discriminate between outlets that do or don't do that...are part of the problem.
One reason why you see those car chases is because a) they're a cheaper way to fill airtime than actually sending a guy down to the archives to dig up the facts on that legislation that's going to affect your life, and b) people, given the choice, will tune in to the car chase. And it's bread and circuses. The legislation story might be genuinely subversive to the status quo; the car chase isn't. I can tell you first-hand that "media consultants" in Los Angeles are dictating news content at stations far, far away, which is why my former program director ordered me to cover every single two-bit garage fire.
It's more of a problem because we're seeing less hard news, from people whose ethics require journalistic balance and accuracy, and more "information" from tin-hat sources like "Zeitgeist" and from dubious news aggregators, sandwiched between breathless rumours about who Jesse James plonked.
Of course everyone has biases, which is why journalists have codes of ethics. Pick an outlet that seems to put more weight on those ethics.
Don't ignore your choices, or you're part of the problem.
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