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Total blather.

I am a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (in the late 1970s), and while there I was amazed at the extent to which the students and faculty parroted the conventional wisdom of the media (at the time, the students all seemed to believe that Ayatolla Khomenei was a would-be Jeffersonian Democrat who would bring a new era of peace to the world).

This columnist can be pinioned by his own example. Why would the softball game be part of the news? Why wouldn't it be news? Herbert Gans wrote a book called "Deciding what's News", but it really doesn't begin to answer the question. The fact is, the mainstream media (and all other media, for that matter) decide what's news by instinctive feel within very general guidelines.

This journalist wants to be one of the high priests in the temple, making decisions that no mere commoner can fathom. The fact is, this kind of failed elitism is what has brought the mainstream media to the state they are in today.

I don't believe that the bloggers whom he refers to are right-wing as much as they are appalled by the important information that does not get reported, and by the way that other stories are portrayed. They started as a reaction to the failures of the media to cover stories from a fair and balanced perspective. As the mainstream media, led, I believe, by Pinch Sulzberger's New York Times, dug in their heels, the bloggers have discovered that they can function as a source of news themselves.

Moreover, where Free Republic stands head and shoulders over even the best of the webloggers, is that it has a democratic self-correcting mechanism -- the threads. People here have a real instinct for what is news. When an article is posted, other FReepers will read it carefully for bias and comment on any unfair word usage, prejudiced selection of information or other spin. If there is an outright inaccuracy in the article, FReepers will jump all over it to correct the mistakes. What we are doing here is a transparent collection and dissemination of the news in real time.

It is the failure of the mainstream media to recognize their own biases, coupled with the availability of alternative sources of news (and interactive participation) in weblogs and Free Republic, that is killing the media. Today, even if the media were to turn overnight into a fair and balanced vehicle, I think it is too late. By their failures, they have created a viable alternative to their closed system, and information flow will never be the same.

If there is an outright inaccuracy in the article, FReepers will jump all over it to correct the mistakes.

And a blogger is limited to his own personal knowledge and experience. FR has thousands of very informed persons, and you can take almost any subject and you will have FR posters who have personal and/or expert knowledge of the subject. And differences of opinion and variances of facts are tried in a very public court on the threads. That is where FR is vastly superior to the blogs and the MSM.

Outstanding post! Journalism isn't brain surgery. It turns out that pretty much anyone can be a decent blogger (read "news editor"), even working part time.

Some of my leftist friends are stymied by Fox News. They insist that they lie and just make stuff up. I tried to explain to them that media bias usually doesn't manifest itself by reporting fake news. Media bias is mostly a function of excluding real news that doesn't fit an agenda.

When Fox runs a story and then 3 days later, it shows up in the New York Times, that's not Fox's "bias". That's a SCOOP. It used to be considered a GOOD thing.

As a graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism (late 80s), I agree with you.

I think part of the visceral reaction we see from those who run the "mainstream" media nowadays centers on the fact that there are news consumers today who can make news judgments on their own - and are no longer afraid to sing out when they feel wronged.

Most consumers can't perform the tasks that you and I were trained to do (although some, especially bloggers, can and do), but the point of the matter is that at least from an editorial standpoint, there are people who know at least as much as the editors. That frightens them, and the result is the pablum we see quoted by this writer.

Bravo. Well said. I can't do better, but I'll try.

The "real story" about Iraq is that the US was able to take it with so little effort, in such little time. We are cleaning up the country faster than any such job has ever been done before (Germany & Japan in 1945). And we're surrounding an Islamic Facist state (Iran) on two sides (Iraq and Afghanistan), where we can direct insurgent actions against it.

Iraq and Afghanistan are quickly becoming democracies, where the people are sovereign.

The US military, under George Bush, has objectivly done a better job than has ever been done by any military in all of history.

THAT is the news. We the people are tired of the media telling us how bad this country is. We're proud of it. And we don't want to hear bash stories ANY MORE!

The media and Democrats lost Vietnam. We'll be d@med if we let them loose the middle east.

Moreover, where Free Republic stands head and shoulders over even the best of the webloggers, is that it has a democratic self-correcting mechanism -- the threads. People here have a real instinct for what is news. When an article is posted, other FReepers will read it carefully for bias and comment on any unfair word usage, prejudiced selection of information or other spin. If there is an outright inaccuracy in the article, FReepers will jump all over it to correct the mistakes. What we are doing here is a transparent collection and dissemination of the news in real time.

Amen. And guess what...I homeschool my jedis and I'm teaching them to do the same thing. We've already discussed the forgery situation at LENGTH this morning...even my five-year-old gets the gist.

Today, even if the media were to turn overnight into a fair and balanced vehicle, I think it is too late. By their failures, they have created a viable alternative to their closed system, and information flow will never be the same.

Well, to quote John Kerry, "I agreed with your statement before I disagreed with it." The collapse of the big media networks and newspapers was as predictable as the collapse of the buggy whip industry. It would have happened no matter how well they tried to do their job. When cable TV became popular, it became impossible for entertainment networks to dominate ratings, no matter how well they programmed. There were just too many other choices. Dittos for the news networks. Why do I need CBS to tell me what Al Jazeera is saying, when I can go to Al Jazeera's web site and find out for myself? Where I agree with you is that by shamelessly shilling for the Socialist/Marxist point of view, and trying to silence all voices that disagreed with them, they greatly accelerated the growth of alternative media. However, their decline and fall was inevitable, no matter how "fair and balanced" they were.