The theory of our free press is that if an administration makes many bad mistakes, has massive incompetence, the press will accurately write the stories and inform the public.
Why, then, is the history of the last six years one in which many big mistakes which are now becoming 'ok' to discuss - even insiders such as Richard Perle are saying that what he thought was the most competent security team since Truman turned out to be among the worst - went largely unreported as such in the mainstream media?
One idea: because if the truth had just been written up and published, resulting in articles very critical of the administration, the sales would have suffered; the public has a large element which would have made strong attacks of 'bias', and the public would have turned away enough that the lost sales would have been catatrophic to their finances. And so, the need for the news to be a profitable product took precedence, and the facts were withheld in large part, if covered at all done ineffectively, such as with 'critics say...' discredting.
The result? The media preserved some better finances, at the expense of not fulfilling its role to inform the public.
Instead, only minor publications wrote the accurate stories; but with much of the public discounting minor publications, this was no substitute for the mainstream media.
This is not a partisan issue - the same pressured could prevent the media from accurately reporting the disasters of a bad democrat if sales would suffer, too.
Worse, the maintream media has a pressure to actively discredit the minor publications telling the truth, lest their lack of reporting become known.
You can see an example of this when reporter Jim Webb wrote major stories in the 90's on the history of the CIA's relationship to cocaine in Central America in a local newspaper, which implicitly showed that the big newspapers had not reported the same important stories; the NY Times and LA Times (the stories largely involved LA, making the LA Times look especially bad) trashed the stories. The national mainstream media attacks led to the paper's retracting the stories.
The stories were shown to generally have been correct a few years later when congressional hearings brought out the history.
So, it would seem that our news media in the US has become broken - too beholden to profitability to tell the public 'hard truths' which will cause a backlash to sales.
This creates a fulfillment of 'ignorance is bliss' - the public isn't disturbed in their view that the government is doing just fine (its opponents can attack it for other things, unaware of these facts); and the media can go on making the money it wants reporting on stories which have no backlash.
The only downside? The good of the nation that an honest press brings, in helping the nation to learn of covered-up problems, is lost; corruption thrives like hidden bacteria.
Things would be much worse if the price of entry had not been so lowered by the internet. Those 'minor publications' have become far more trusted as they have told the stories.
But there's still no substitute for the mainstream media. As the powers that be are ever better-funded and have mass media techniques at their disposal, the public needs more and more a media which will tell the truth even when there's a price, and that means some alternatives to media dominated by profit concerns.
'Yellow Journalism' refers to the bad old days when a Hearst could say that he'd bring the country to war with his stories if he wanted to (and he went on to do so).
We don't need that, and we don't need the purely safe media which avoids the controversial but important stories, piling on only following public opinion.
Rants are supposedly better with something constructive, so I'll add something we can do is to support some of the 'truth-telling' media, reading it, buying it, donating to it.
One I like: The Internet News, Views and Culture Magazine Salon
Why, then, is the history of the last six years one in which many big mistakes which are now becoming 'ok' to discuss - even insiders such as Richard Perle are saying that what he thought was the most competent security team since Truman turned out to be among the worst - went largely unreported as such in the mainstream media?
One idea: because if the truth had just been written up and published, resulting in articles very critical of the administration, the sales would have suffered; the public has a large element which would have made strong attacks of 'bias', and the public would have turned away enough that the lost sales would have been catatrophic to their finances. And so, the need for the news to be a profitable product took precedence, and the facts were withheld in large part, if covered at all done ineffectively, such as with 'critics say...' discredting.
The result? The media preserved some better finances, at the expense of not fulfilling its role to inform the public.
Instead, only minor publications wrote the accurate stories; but with much of the public discounting minor publications, this was no substitute for the mainstream media.
This is not a partisan issue - the same pressured could prevent the media from accurately reporting the disasters of a bad democrat if sales would suffer, too.
Worse, the maintream media has a pressure to actively discredit the minor publications telling the truth, lest their lack of reporting become known.
You can see an example of this when reporter Jim Webb wrote major stories in the 90's on the history of the CIA's relationship to cocaine in Central America in a local newspaper, which implicitly showed that the big newspapers had not reported the same important stories; the NY Times and LA Times (the stories largely involved LA, making the LA Times look especially bad) trashed the stories. The national mainstream media attacks led to the paper's retracting the stories.
The stories were shown to generally have been correct a few years later when congressional hearings brought out the history.
So, it would seem that our news media in the US has become broken - too beholden to profitability to tell the public 'hard truths' which will cause a backlash to sales.
This creates a fulfillment of 'ignorance is bliss' - the public isn't disturbed in their view that the government is doing just fine (its opponents can attack it for other things, unaware of these facts); and the media can go on making the money it wants reporting on stories which have no backlash.
The only downside? The good of the nation that an honest press brings, in helping the nation to learn of covered-up problems, is lost; corruption thrives like hidden bacteria.
Things would be much worse if the price of entry had not been so lowered by the internet. Those 'minor publications' have become far more trusted as they have told the stories.
But there's still no substitute for the mainstream media. As the powers that be are ever better-funded and have mass media techniques at their disposal, the public needs more and more a media which will tell the truth even when there's a price, and that means some alternatives to media dominated by profit concerns.
'Yellow Journalism' refers to the bad old days when a Hearst could say that he'd bring the country to war with his stories if he wanted to (and he went on to do so).
We don't need that, and we don't need the purely safe media which avoids the controversial but important stories, piling on only following public opinion.
Rants are supposedly better with something constructive, so I'll add something we can do is to support some of the 'truth-telling' media, reading it, buying it, donating to it.
One I like: The Internet News, Views and Culture Magazine Salon
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