Upon Journalism

Thoughts which emanate from a Bogardian Ethos, on the subject of journalism:

Essentially, newspaper circulation is decline while the Internet
continues to take off as a source of information. Bloggers play a
significant part, but the fact that the younger generation reads
articles online more and more instead of in print signals the slow
demise of news as we know it. Rupert Murdoch, head of FOX News, even
proclaimed the coming death to a roomful of newspaper editors
recently. A new age is coming and everyone must adapt thanks to the
Internet.

In addition, the public regard for the press is remarkably low;
quality control is at a low ebb with a variety of disasters occurring.
International bureaus are shrinking while award-winning newsrooms are
being laid off. The bottom line of news, now a solely business, hurts
its product -- but journalists are to blame for incompetent, formulaic
storytelling that does not excite or educate the reader. Frankly, if
blogs continue to rule, the reader might have to become a professional
media critic to decipher the bias -- even more so than one has to with
print and television mediums. But even the blog's existence is highly
dependent on the media it is thumbing its nose at: the majority of
content is criticism of the press and its original reporting. Some
blogs have empowered "citizen journalists" to report and gather their
own news to digest, but a lack of a realistic business model for an
Internet press has limited their scope.


My own Ideas on the subject:

Taking my own city's newspapers and television news as an example, journalism inceresingly is forced to resort to tabloid tactics. As my esteemed counterpart points out, news has become a business focused on the bottom-line, where thought-provocation is eschewed for paper sales and viewership. The exposition of genocide that occurs daily in Africa, and makes the death tolls of all recent American tragedies and armed conflicts pale in comparison, is journalism in its essence. However, the update on "Wacko Jacko" and his trial, the sensationalist slop spread in the trough for consumption, is what is asked for. Fox News leads the pack in ratings, and misses the integrity and accuracy bar raised by an 8th grader taking 45 minutes after school to blog.

I believe that news-blogging is an interesting tool.News blogs vary from less-biased and more objective than popular news media, to far more so in all regards. I also agree that news blogs are highly dependent on the popular news sources, and criticism thereof. Often, blogs will take stories which are presented in the media, and respond by telling the truth of the matter, or the bloggers perception of said truth. However, a blog's relative lack of censorship allows brings a lack of fact-checking and editing. Recently, a Newsweek story on the supposed flushing of a Quo'ran as an intimidation tactic by guards at a detention center, led to a flare of violence throughout the Muslim world. This story was later attributed to fraudulent information from a source. While many blogs do not have such a wide spread audience as Newsweek, they are also lass subject to the amount of checks one would expect a world-wide magazine to go through.

I would be interested to see if The Epic believes that those who tune into popular news outlets, or read local papers for news, are after exactly what they receive. Do people who get their news from the popular media only want the sub-par "journalism" that they are given?