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Our Media Sucks
Posted by tgirsch

[Or: Beating A Dead Horse]

Glenn Greenwald:

This is without question one of the most significant problems in how our establishment media functions. They refuse to subject claims — particularly claims from the GOP power structure and the right-wing noise machine which they fear — to any critical scrutiny.

For various reasons, they simply will not investigate such claims and, when warranted, identify such claims as false. The most they are willing to do is simply write down each side’s claims and treat them equally, even when one side is blatantly lying. GOP operatives know that this is how the press functions and thus know that they can easily get away with spewing lies, and can even recruit the media into helpfully spreading them (using the predominant “he-said/she-said” template). That’s the same process that led us into Iraq, kept us there for so long, protected endless presidential lawbreaking and enabled all sorts of fact-free smears.

…snip…

It isn’t actually that complicated. When a government official or candidate makes a factually false statement, the role of the reporter is not merely to pass it on, nor is it simply to note that “some” dispute the false statement. The role of the reporter is to state the actual facts, which means stating clearly when someone lies or otherwise makes a false statement.

It’s staggering that this most elementary principle of journalism is not merely violated by so many of our establishment journalists, but is explicitly rejected by them. That’s the principal reason why our political discourse is so infected with outright falsehoods. The media has largely abdicated their primary responsibility of stating basic facts. One can see how damaging that really is in those all-too-rare instances, such as Cooper’s article this morning, when a real reporter fulfills the core function of journalism.

November 30th, 2007 Media | 2 comments