On Thu, 21 Jun 2012, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Alex Hutton <highspeeddub@gmail.com> wrote:
But independent media is hardly dieing. It is stronger than ever thanks to the internet. Anyone can easily access a seemingly endless array of opinions on any topic he might choose.
Opinions, yes indeed. Careful, time-consuming, investigative reporting? That's more the purview of professional journalists, precisely because it requires knowledge, time and effective fact-finding skills.
Those who legitimately worry about the decline of traditional news organizations, the print media especially, are concerned about the high-quality end of journalism where investigations are carried out and truth disclosed in the public interest.
There is a lot of low quality journalism out there. Consider all the journalists who think that they are supposed to give equal balance to all sides. The most blatant example of this is news about climate change. The science is quite clear and it all points one way, the news articles should note the fact that there is almost unanimous agreement among qualified scientists and disagreement from geologists paid by mining companies. Then there's tabloid news about things like road deaths. With a moderate amount of effort someone could do some investigation about the facts relating to a car crash and write a news article about relevant issues such as budgets for road repair, car safety features, etc. But instead every day there is a value-free "news" report about someone dying on the roads with no reasonable mention of how the road toll might be reduced. As for opinions, a careful search of blogs will turn up honest opinions of intelligent people who have skills relevant to the topics that they offer opinions on. Newspapers have "opinion" and "editorial" pieces and a very large portion of the supposed news is actually the opinions of the owners. Murdoch has been operating as a right-wing PR organisation for decades. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/