Don Rogers: Media more slave than master

Summit Daily News ^ | Saturday, January 1, 2011 | Don Rogers

[SunkenCiv]

In "Annual Editions: Archaeology (2010)," of all places, I stumbled across this: "Today the mass media is the major source of epistemology in the modern world, and it underscores cultural values and also creates cultural myths by which all humans are made to live. The media is as much a response to our demands as we are to its manipulations. ... But the media mind is characterized by fuzzy thinking and skepticism."

Love it! Even misusing the word "epistemology" where I'm reasonably sure they meant to simply say "knowledge" (rather than "study of knowledge," which doesn't really make sense in that sentence)...

I'm often frustrated by our blend of skepticism and fuzzy thinking. Time crunches and lack of truly inside access to important decisions have an inevitable effect on the coverage and punditry that follows. I'm more often amazed at how close my brethren can get to the truth, given their sometimes severe handicaps...

I view anthropology, social science, political science and history more as deep journalism than I view journalism as the first rough draft of history.

Journalism borrows from the scientific method -- unlike that dude in his boxers blogging away at what he's sure must be right. It's the same discipline used by the scholars, only with a stopwatch and with more pieces missing from the picture in the rush of the moment...

I'd say the media is far more slave than master. All that media-as-bogeyman stuff is just fodder for the movies, conspiracy theory fans, and the odd anthropologist or two.

[Yardstick]

Our local editor does these touchy feely editorials to demonstrate he's more open minded than the rubes he's forced to sell papers to.

Lol -- exactly.

[Vaduz]

The papers continues to fail in Los Angeles too they are so small now you have to close one eye to read it.

[Condor51]

'Journalism borrows from the scientific method..'

That is one of the most STOO-PID^™ things I've ever read!

[abb]

Even the local rag in our small town is a joke. The city and the school district spend money and whine about budget cuts with no scrutiny from the local paper. No context to the arguments, just regurgitated drivel from “officials”

Take a look at where the city and school districts publish their legal advertising. That will tell you why they get no scrutiny from the local paper.

[colorado tanker]

Journalism is supposed to be a craft, the craft of telling a well-supported story. The lead graph was key, the grabber. Get out the five dubbyas in the first graphs. Make sure of your sources. Heck, for a big story, hit the "morgue" or the library and do some research.

All that was thrown out after Watergate. Suddenly, J-School kids wanted to "make a difference" - meaning scandalize Republicans and get them thrown out of office. The craft was lost and they became Democrat political hacks.

The baby was thrown out with the bath water. I frequently read stories with no political implications at all at the end of which I can't figure out what happened. These political hacks not only are biased, they've lost their craft, they can't write a lead, have no idea what the five dubyas are and can't even tell a story. The people who we rely on to tell us what happened are now some of the most incurious and incompetent people on the planet.