: Rules of the game…Cry me a river…
Only 44 percent of Americans say they are “confident that U.S. news outlets are presenting the news accurately and completely,” according to a new Gallup Poll.
Without trying to over-simplify the situation, let me suggest two things that could be done to mitigate this state of affairs:
1- Get back to fundamentals and hold them above all other considerations, i.e. journalists should reconnect with the true meaning of objectivity in journalism (a process, not a stance) and operate with a discipline of verification.
2- Fight like hell against the damage being done from outside the profession by those who claim (from the right and left) that journalism places political considerations above professional considerations. And fight like hell the pernicious idea that the press is just another special interest. I consider this one of the most damaging ideas to slither out from under the rotten log of partisanship–made all the worse because of the entertainment imperative that prominently thrusts anti-intellectual flamers into the middle of our most important civic discourse and insists on portraying them as journalists.
Oh, and I’ll add one more thing: Take citizens seriously by, among other things, telling their political stories.
I would add to your list the following: 1) admit your bias (some would say perspective). Jeff Jarvis has a good post on this. Journos need to get away from the “View from Nowhere” and tell us about their personal views. I am more impressed by criticism of GWB by Bill Kristol than I am by David Corn or Josh Marshall. We can’t make an accurate assessment of what journos write if we don’t know where they stand. 2) when journos make an assertion they should prove it and not just assume everyone agrees with the CW as you see it, 3) knock off the attitude - at yesterday’s press conference with Bush/Alawi, David Gregory (or someone else) began a question like this: “Can you understand …” This is how you address retards or three year olds. If journos would address their subjects in a more respectful way, they would possibly get more satisfactory answers. Kerry was also a victim of press perfidy. I don’t blame him for not speaking to the press after the way they framed his comments at the Grand Canyon. And 3) knock off the anonymous sources. We all know that 99.9% of what the “unnamed” tell the press does not reach Pentagon Papers level. It really annoys the “great unwashed” that the unelected press and the (mostly) unelected leakers have the power to frame and push the agenda for the entire country. Just Stop It. Also, 4) stop playing the victim. You whine that we should be talking about Iraq, health care, the ecomony, etc., but what do you publish in your papers and TV shows? You have the power, you don’t have the right to victim status.
Troll alert
Hey, the Mainstream Media has trolls too: Nick Coleman: Blogged down in Web fantasy (Star-Tribune) Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to…