Posted on 01/10/2006 9:50:14 PM PST by nickcarraway
I like his take on the MSM bias. The fact remains that the influence of the dinosaur media lessens each year. The good news is that they still don't realize this because they live in a bubble. Hence, our vote is flawed instead of accurate, and the nation is ill-informed instead of more rounded than they are given credit for being.
There is someplace to go. Start writing fiction, and try to sell that instead of masquerading fiction as news. Maybe the readers will be interested in fiction . Readers are NOT interested in fiction that pretends to be news. Its also dishonest, and propagandaic nonsense.
I believe that spin news writing is a curse on the republic. Dan Blather is a case in point.
A blogger will do them and report the results to his audience, who will have funded the effort.
A good example is the Iraq "embedding" that Bill Roggio undertook a month-or-so ago -- which the Washington Post proceeded to misreport.
Roggio had an invitation to go to Iraq, but needed a.) credentials (which he obtained from the Weekly Standard, as I recall and b.) cash for travel and expenses, while taking a leave-of-absence from his regular job.
His readership raised $17K to fund the trip.
I'm thinking that, if we wanted to, say, fund a thorough and credible investigation of some enviromental rip-off, we could raise a respectable stipend right here on Free Republic.
FR already hosts some of the best researchers and investigative reporters in the universe...
Ping
Pray tell, how many bloggers get paid?
Roggio had an invitation to go to Iraq, but needed a.) credentials (which he obtained from the Weekly Standard, as I recall and b.) cash for travel and expenses, while taking a leave-of-absence from his regular job.
Oh, so he got cash from a publication! QED.
I'm thinking that, if we wanted to, say, fund a thorough and credible investigation of some enviromental rip-off, we could raise a respectable stipend right here on Free Republic.
Not from what I've seen. It took two years before a FReeper would even do a review.
if they had understood this they would have used a period typewriter for the bush ANG fake memo's and we MIGHT have kerry as president.
I imagine that in the future this will become more common. I would donate money to efforts such as this. The writer would have to have established himself as someone serious, and I would want to see a detailed proposal, rather than an open-ended vague promise to "investigate," but I think this is a real possibility for the blogosphere to establish credibility amongst the general public.
Let's hope, when history books are written in the future, the authors don't rely on MSM archives for their sources. What a long strange trip it's been.
I believe that the only possible hope for MSM outlets to survive the long term in the news business is to jettison the editorial and opinion sections completely, leaving those to people who are more qualified to comment on particular issues and who can do so without distorting basic news coverage.
I wonder what percentage of MSM workers would still be in the industry if there were no opportunity to pursue ideological goals in the reporting of news?
Excellent article nick; thanks for the ping Carry_Okie. And I associate myself with the remarks of okie01 and Miss Marple.I have seen newspapers go through two big, wrenching transformations. Today, we take for granted that newspapers print lovely color pictures and tight, sharp type. That's a product of the first transformation, a technical one, from letterpress printing to offset. In letterpress, ink is applied to a raised lead surface and applied to paper by presses as big and heavy as locomotives. In offset, a mixture of ink and water is applied to a far more delicate engraved surface, then transferred to a rubber blanket, thence applied to paper.
That change, an enormously expensive one involving a big new capital investment, drove marginal newspapers out of business in the late '50s and early '60s.
IOW, money that might have gone into good reporting and analysis went instead into production values - just like no party has nominated a bald-headed candidate for POTUS or VP (except Ford, who got to be POTUS without first being elected to national office) since the Eisenhower/Stevenson 1950s. Certainly a person with hair can be a fine POTUS - but it does no credit to the Republic that it now excludes from any consideration men who may have high qualifications but happen to be "folically challenged." Imagine being saddled with a President Edwards because of his hairstylist!! For that matter, might it no be that the narrow loss of Ford to Carter had to do with hairline??The second transforming influence came from national TV network news. When the latest news could be obtained from the tube at dinner time, the afternoon daily paper became obsolete. Seemingly overnight, cities with two newspapers were reduced to one, and big cities with half a dozen or more papers fell to three or two or one.
More production values stuff, primarily. The key thing to understand is that it rarely matters to the Republic whether you and I learn about something a day sooner or later. TV crowded out the evening newspaper because it was free and because it got you the news on a shorter deadline. But the medium also affects what is news; a TV cameraman loves a fire, for example. Or a weeping victim or survivor of a victim.Talk radio - which is simply journalism which does not claim to be objective, and therefore has less tendency to arrogance than "objective journalism" - has lower cost of production than TV. And the Internet has very small cost of production, which explains why you and I can make content for it. Broadcast journalism has been a powerful centralizing influence; the internet is a decentralizing influence which is why liberalism doesn't do well on it.
Ping.
bttt
Cub reporters functioning as stenographers for a powerful, disgruntled, manipulative FBI agent started the arrogance? Stunning.
Media bias bump.
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