Worse: News Quality or Readers' efforts to seek it out?

~ Back by popular demand... bodypaint girls...

We came across a Commentary in the Guardian UK's business section that we found interesting though we disagreed almost 100% in the writer's conclusions.

The topic was how the quality of journalism and news has dramatically deteriorated and that even those most content is now free, we're all 'paying' for shoddy news in one way or another... pun pun..

We are most appreciative to have something non-Cyprus to write about--- as if how many ways can one warn people that Cyprus is merely a testing ground for worse to come to southern Europe, if not beyond, and to Wakey-Wakey!

To try to peel the proverbial 'onion' to understand why corporate media journalism is overall so horrible, it will require the reader to be open-minded in understanding it is not one specific simple reason, nor did we get to this point in a day or a year...

Not to pick on the Guardian UK commenter because he definitely stimulated the 'little tiny corpuscles' as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot would say, but to explain clearly why journalism is rotten to the core, we need to refute the writer's premises.

A link to the original commentary can be found HERE-- simply click...

The first contention he makes is that the available amount of free information on the internet for someone to access, is 'picking the inventory clean'.  He lumps bloggers into the mix, labeling them as semi-pros at best..

How flattering.. cough..cough..

So let's really understand this-- why is there so much free information out there to pick from.   Answer: Because all the news agencies and outlets pretty much use the Same information, thus its not valuable enough to protect in the first place!

Example:  Let's say the Dow drops 1000 pts because of concerns Martians may soon invade Earth...  

So rather than every media outlet-- newspaper, TV station, etc hiring their own beat reporter to track this story down, they hire news agencies to provide the news content.  Associated Press and Reuters will hire the journalists, they will write and the info is provided in aggregate.

Let's get more specific... Ace reporter Amy Aames writes 3000 words on the event... she does a couple interviews, gets a few quotes, fills the rest of the story with background and after an editor checks for content and spelling/grammatical errors, its approved for distribution.

Some newspapers will only publish the first 250 words...  Others will need 6-7 paragraphs to perfectly fill in the space around the daily Macy's 'sale' advertisement..  

As long as the paper does not literally re-write the content or alter who gets credit for writing, they can alter the placement and take out whatever content as they wish.

Let's say Aames writes in paragraph 10 something construed as harshly anti-Democrat, liberal media outlets will likely cut the passage completely out while conservative-leaning media will likely keep the paragraph in its entirety.  

Now this same information is sent to every TV network across the globe who pays a subscription from the major nightly news channels to cable news to the local news one watches at 5:30p.   The content is edited down, usually into 2-3 sentences, where perfect-looking people will get paid 6-8 figures/yr to read it off a teleprompter.

That's the vast majority of the news we receive.  Its mass produced, cheap to use, cheaper to distribute and thus is not deserving of the expectation that others would pay to acquire it!

For most news outlets, the only journalists they'll keep on the payroll is those covering the local sports teams, and perhaps 'cat stuck in tree' human interest stories...  

Even publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, half the news content minimum comes from AP or Reuters, and they have the audacity to firewall their information...

Going back to the Guardian UK commentary, the writer then talks about lack of advertising and how it forces news outlets to create pretend articles that are really advertisements under the cloak of journalism, etc..

Ultimately its everyone else's fault- namely the general public as to why news quality has eroded..

Not true. 

We the general public deserve a portion of the blame but not all..  We may want to be catered to but someone else must join in the dance and do the catering...  Takes two to tango...

For instance, most people are narrow minded.  They believe their world view is the correct one and don't wish to take any time to really read or listen to contradictory opinion.  This is why news is fractured.

We all know Fox is politically conservative even though they keep saying 'Fair and Balanced' which by now is a tongue in cheek nod to the fact they know no one believes this.   And yet they're constantly the #1 cable news network on TV ratings-wise.

Their success forced a once bland MSNBC to take a severe turn to the far left and they do an excellent job covering the news from their very biased and limited point of view; the perfect point-counterpoint to the limited worldview of Fox.. This change from being unbiased to unabashed Blue State, has been a money-maker for them too.

Ironically their sister station CNBC is Extremely conservative... perhaps even more so than Fox News. Of course we mean fiscally conservative as in its alright to make as much profit as humanly possible without worrying about silly things like one's conscious, the struggles of the bottom 99% or the greater good of the nation...

Now CNN, finding themselves in last place has been desperate to find a niche.  They've tried being objective and fair..  To many its come across as boring and dull.   They used to have a show on years back called 'Crossfire' where Dems and Reps yelled and pretended to hate one another.. then the show was yanked and now the whole network is still in the proverbial desert trying to find itself...

As for network news, who knows.. we honestly don't bother watching any of it.  Most of the anchors are liberal which in itself doesn't matter..  How much of their worldview seeps into the content of the news they report--  let others debate that but it does seep...

To be fair, don't let anyone convince you of the lie that news used to be sincerely fair and politically balanced... It has rarely ever been.  

Back in the 19th and early 20th century before the advent of television and internet, many newspapers would compete in each city for readership.   And besides the papers called 'Times', 'Inquirer' and 'Enquirer', they'd be called 'Democrat' and 'Republican'... every page of those papers seeped in the juices of their publisher's personal biases.

A final point the Guardian UK writer makes is a potshot at bloggers in particular that our content is worthless because there's no editorial oversight so we can just write and print as we wish, whereas mainstream news prides itself on thoroughness.

Interesting...  and complete bollocks, to coin a British word...

Editorial powers have a double-edge to its 'sword'...  Here at 'Ants and Grasshoppers', if we feel a specific person or entity is deserving of a most thorough thrashing, then as long as nothing written is libelous or crosses any lines into criminality, we're free to write as we wish and let the reader decide if he/she is in agreement...

However, if we wished to skewer a soft drink company or a brand of computer, we can do so Freely because we take in Zero ad dollars.. we don't seek advertisements.. we don't want them.   That's how our readership knows we aren't exploiting their patronage for personal gain.

When ABC News reported a few years ago on all the faulty tires Firestone was manufacturing and the recalls, one after another, both Firestone and Ford, who used Firestone tires on their new vehicles, threatened to pull all their ad revenue from the network if the reports did not stop...

The coverage ceased immediately, the ads stayed in place and what more does one need to glean as to who wins in the corporate media 'war' of content vs ad dollars?

If you want to truly be informed and most importantly to be able to understand the news from multiple points of view, ultimately its upon you the individual to commit the time and energy..

No person with sincere intelligence ever had knowledge spoon-fed;  He or She had to work to acquire it... That's why there's a massive difference between someone genuinely Intelligent and someone who's merely 'smart'.

Take time to look at news sources from all perspectives.   Watch 30 minutes of Fox News then 30 min of MSNBC...  see how they cover the same events different..  Sift through the sewage and find the truth that's somewhere between the two...

Also expand your horizons.. if you're American, take time to read a newspaper outside the country. Plenty of english-written newspapers.. it can be from Canada, Britain, Australia & NZ... many other nations have english-translated papers...

You can never ever understand the world at large or grasp the complexities or subtleties of what's reported as news if you stay within your comfort zone.  And you don't have to change your beliefs or values in the process..

So ultimately we at A&G disagree that news is terrible, inferior and all that...  Its just become very specialized because generally speaking the masses have gotten lazier and more dumbed down; unwilling to make the effort to look or listen to opinions one differs with. 

There's more information accessible today for free at one's fingertips then in the entire history of time.  Ultimately its not about scapegoating the 'media'.. its about you.. How informed do you wish to be and how willing are you to work the brain muscles like you might be your abs, gluts and pecks?

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