The Death of Journalism

[Smartmarzipan]

The strange, sad death of journalism
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03534.html

But a visit to the Newseum is a reminder that what is passing is not only a business but also a profession -- the journalistic tradition of nonpartisan objectivity. Journalists, God knows, didn't always live up to that tradition. But they generally accepted it, and they felt shamed when their biases or inaccuracies were exposed. The profession had rules about facts and sources and editors who enforced standards. At its best, the profession of journalism has involved a spirit of public service and adventure -- reporting from a bomber during a raid in World War II, or exposing the suffering of Sudan or Appalachia, or rushing to the site of the World Trade Center moments after the buildings fell.

By these standards, the changes we see in the media are also a decline. Most cable news networks have forsaken objectivity entirely and produce little actual news, since makeup for guests is cheaper than reporting. Most Internet sites display an endless hunger to comment and little appetite for verification. Free markets, it turns out, often make poor fact-checkers, instead feeding the fantasies of conspiracy theorists from "birthers" to Sept. 11, 2001, "truthers." Bloggers in repressive countries often show great courage, but few American bloggers have the resources or inclination to report from war zones, famines and genocides.

The democratization of the media -- really its fragmentation -- has encouraged ideological polarization. Princeton University professor Paul Starr traced this process recently in the Columbia Journalism Review. After the captive audience for network news was released by cable, many Americans did not turn to other sources of news. They turned to entertainment. The viewers who remained were more political and more partisan. "As Walter Cronkite prospered in the old environment," says Starr, "Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann thrive in the new one. As the diminished public for journalism becomes more partisan, journalism itself is likely to shift further in that direction."

Cable and the Internet now allow Americans, if they choose, to get their information entirely from sources that agree with them -- sources that reinforce and exaggerate their political predispositions.

An interesting essay on the decline of real journalism.

[billhilly]

I disagree with him.  Yes, you can cocoon yourself with only opinions you agree with if you want but it sounds to me like a guy pissed at those damned blogger kids on his lawn.  Big news is an obsolete business model.  The "objective" main stream media was only a brief episode and now it's coming to a close.  There were partisan papers in every town at one time and now they're just being replaced by internet sources.

The same thing is happening to the big record companies and book publishers.  With the tech we have now days, we no longer need gate keepers to create and distribute media.  Sure there's a lot of shitty music, books, and news being published but there is also a much greater variety and much of it is really good.

[Solitary]

My sister-in-law was a journalist and got so sick of what it became she quit. It's sensationalism now.  :(  Solitary

[Smartmarzipan]

I disagree with him.  Yes, you can cocoon yourself with only opinions you agree with if you want but it sounds to me like a guy pissed at those damned blogger kids on his lawn.  Big news is an obsolete business model.  The "objective" main stream media was only a brief episode and now it's coming to a close.  There were partisan papers in every town at one time and now they're just being replaced by internet sources.

The same thing is happening to the big record companies and book publishers.  With the tech we have now days, we no longer need gate keepers to create and distribute media.  Sure there's a lot of shitty music, books, and news being published but there is also a much greater variety and much of it is really good.

The problem lies with the fact that so much sensationalism is being sold under the guise of unbiased journalism by companies that once had integrity. Misinformation and bias for ratings is no longer a fringe thing, they are norm.

[billhilly]

I'm not sure how much integrity they all had in the good old days.  How was the reporting on the Japanese internment for example?  What about the 1917 espionage act?  I'm not saying the news doesn't suck now but it's not like it used to be suck free either.  

In any case, the business model is changing and there's no use in longing for the way things used to be.  Vinyl and tape sound better on a good system than cd's and mp3's but them days is gone as well.

[billhilly]

Here's a case in point....

New York Times Co. (NYT), which is accepting bids for the Boston Globe today, is likely to fetch a price that's about a 10th of what it paid in 1993, a sign of the industry's deterioration over the past two decades.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-2 ... chase.html

[Shiranu]

Investigative Journalism is dead is for the most part, and the few remaining either find themselves dead (by natural causes, of course...) or harassed by the government and other "journalists" (commentators and hosts) saying that they are "aiding and abating the enemy".

[Nonsensei]

I disagree with him.  Yes, you can cocoon yourself with only opinions you agree with if you want but it sounds to me like a guy pissed at those damned blogger kids on his lawn.  Big news is an obsolete business model.  The "objective" main stream media was only a brief episode and now it's coming to a close.  There were partisan papers in every town at one time and now they're just being replaced by internet sources.

The same thing is happening to the big record companies and book publishers.  With the tech we have now days, we no longer need gate keepers to create and distribute media.  Sure there's a lot of shitty music, books, and news being published but there is also a much greater variety and much of it is really good.

But is any of it ACCURATE?

[Hydra009]

I'm not sure how much integrity they all had in the good old days.  How was the reporting on the Japanese internment for example?  What about the 1917 espionage act?  I'm not saying the news doesn't suck now but it's not like it used to be suck free either.  

Old journalism had some pretty huge failings, but at least there used to be some standards.  They used to do investigative journalism, fact-checking, at least an attempt a neutral tone.  All that is gone now.  Now it's reposts, celebrity gossip, and infotainment (with the info part suspiciously absent) as far as the eye can see.  When was the last time you turned on the TV or read a newspaper and actually got some in-depth information about something going on the world that actually matters?  Not sound bites.  Not horse race politics.  Not the sensationalist story of the day.  Not celebrity gossip.  But actual news.  I can't even remember.

In terms of media fail, I think new journalism is giving old journalism one hell of a fight.

[Solitary]

I'm not sure how much integrity they all had in the good old days.  How was the reporting on the Japanese internment for example?  What about the 1917 espionage act?  I'm not saying the news doesn't suck now but it's not like it used to be suck free either.  

In any case, the business model is changing and there's no use in longing for the way things used to be.  Vinyl and tape sound better on a good system than cd's and mp3's but them days is gone as well.

Here was how journalism was then:
Internment was popular among many white farmers who resented the Japanese American farmers. "White American farmers admitted that their self-interest required removal of the Japanese." These individuals saw internment as a convenient means of uprooting their Japanese American competitors. Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the Saturday Evening Post in 1942:

"I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don't mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands... Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them."
Other California newspapers also embraced this view. According to a Los Angeles Times editorial,

To protect and serve: The "guard dog" function of journalism in coverage of the Japanese-American internment

To present basic facts, the titles of WCCA camp newspapers and their duration of publication were as follows:
Fresno Center News (renamed Fresno Grapevine from the second issue dated May 27) (California): May 23 - October 17, 1942
Manzanar Free Press (California): April 11 - May 29, 1942
Marysville Arbo-Gram (California): May 23 - June 13, 1942
Merced Mercedian (California): June 9 - August 29, 1942
Pinedale Logger (California): May 23 - July 14, 1942
Pomona Center News (California): May 23 - August 15, 1942
Portland Evacuazette (Oregon): May 19 - August 25, 1942
Puyallup Camp Harmony News-Letter (Washington): May 5 - August 14, 1942
Sacramento Walerga Press (renamed Walerga Wasp from the second issue dated May 13) (California): May 9 - June 14, 1942
Salinas Village Crier (California): May 11 - June 28, 1942
Santa Anita Pacemaker (California): April 18 - October 7, 1942
Stockton El Joaquin (California): May 30 - September 28, 1942
Tanforan Totalizer (California): May 15 - September 12, 1942
Tulare News (California): May 6 - August 19, 1942
Turlock Fume (renamed TAC from the second issue dated June 12) (California): June 3 - July 17, 1942
Among the above 15 titles, only the Manzanar Free Press continued publication under the auspices of the WRA.
Newspapers published at the WRA camps and their duration of publication were as follows (excluding Japanese-language sections):
Gila News-Courier (Arizona): January 1, 1943 – September 5, 1945
Granada Pioneer (Colorado): October 28, 1942 – September 15, 1945
Heart Mountain Sentinel (Wyoming): October 24, 1942 – July 28, 1945
Jerome Communiqué (Arkansas): October 23, 1942 – February 26, 1943 (Renamed the Denson Tribune in March 1943)
Jerome Denson Tribune (Arkansas): March 2, 1943 – June 6, 1944
Manzanar Free Press (California): June 2, 1942 – October 19, 1945 (The inaugural issue was published on April 11, 1942 when the camp was still under the WCCA's control.)
Minidoka Irrigator (Idaho): September 10, 1942 – July 28, 1945
Poston Chronicle (Arizona): December 22, 1942 – October 23, 1945
Rohwer Outpost (Arkansas): October 24, 1942 – July 21, 1945
Topaz Times (Utah): September 17, 1942 – March 30, 1945
Tule Lake Tulean Dispatch (California): July 15, 1942 – November 13, 1943
Tule Lake Newell Star (California): March 9, 1944 – January 11, 1946 (The Newell Star replaced the Tulean Dispatch when Tule Lake was transformed into a "segregation center.")

In both WCCA and WRA camps, there existed a variety of smaller, more targeted publications such as school newsletters, church bulletins, literary periodicals, and even clandestine "underground" leaflet-type publications. Discussed in this entry, however, are only the camp-wide, general-interest newspapers listed above. Also excluded are the preliminary official news "bulletins," from which the inmates' newspapers evolved.

Despite its "democratic" appearance, the camp press in reality was hardly a "free" press. All newspapers were subject to some sort of editorial interference, in some cases even overt censorship. After all, the Nikkei were uprooted en masse and put behind barbed wire fences because they were deemed "potentially dangerous enemy aliens" merely on the ground of their racial ancestry. Ipso facto, it should have been rather inconsistent if camp authorities had not limited their press freedom all at.
Solitary