The American Press on Suicide Watch, By FRANK RICH

[jefferson_dem]

The American Press on Suicide Watch
By FRANK RICH

IF you wanted to pick the moment when the American news business went on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. That’s when Stephen Colbert, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, delivered a monologue accusing his hosts of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the Bush White House get away with murder (or at least the war in Iraq). To prove the point, the partying journalists in the Washington Hilton ballroom could be seen (courtesy of C-Span) fawning over government potentates — in some cases the very “sources” who had fed all those fictional sightings of Saddam Hussein’s W.M.D.

Colbert’s routine did not kill. The Washington Post reported that it “fell flat.” The Times initially did not even mention it. But to the Beltway’s bafflement, Colbert’s riff went viral overnight, ultimately to have a marathon run as the most popular video on iTunes. The cultural disconnect between the journalism establishment and the public it aspires to serve could not have been more vividly dramatized.

The bad news about the news business has accelerated ever since. Newspaper circulations and revenues are in free fall. Legendary brands from The Los Angeles Times to The Philadelphia Inquirer are teetering. The New York Times Company threatened to close The Boston Globe if its employees didn’t make substantial sacrifices in salaries and benefits. Other papers have died. The reporting ranks on network and local news alike are shriveling. You know it’s bad when the Senate is moved, as it was last week, to weigh in with hearings on “The Future of Journalism.”

Not all is bleak on the Titanic, however. The White House correspondents’ bacchanal was on tap for this weekend. And this time no one could accuse the revelers of failing to get down with the Colbert-iTunes-Facebook young folk: hip big-time journalists now stroke their fans with 140-character messages on Twitter. Or did. No sooner did boldface Washington media personalities ostentatiously embrace Twitter than Nielsen reported that more than 60 percent of Twitter users abandon it after a single month.

The causes of journalism’s downfall — some self-inflicted, some beyond anyone’s control (a worldwide economic meltdown) — are well known. To time-travel back to the dawn of the technological strand of the disaster, search YouTube for “1981 primitive Internet report on KRON.” What you’ll find is a 28-year-old local television news piece from San Francisco about a “far-fetched,” pre-Web experiment by the city’s two papers, The Chronicle and The Examiner, to distribute their wares to readers with home computers via primitive phone modems. Though there were at most 3,000 people in the Bay Area with PCs then, some 500 mailed in coupons for the service to The Chronicle alone. But, as the anchorwoman assures us at the end, with a two-hour download time (at $5 an hour), “the new telepaper won’t be much competition for the 20-cent street edition.”

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/opinion/10rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[MichiganVote]

1. Colbert was brilliant and the press doesn't even recognize stupid...so what anyone expect.

[polichick]

2. The Internet is the great equalizer - along with all the garbage comes unfiltered info...

...like clips on YouTube where you hear politicians and other newsmakers without corporate media editorializing.

Colbert was right ~ lots of "reporters" are just stenographers. Some newspapers deserve to go out of business.

Funny about people abandoning Twitter as soon as the talking heads infiltrated!

[Triana]

3. the journalism establishment/news mediea does *not* aspire to serve the public...

...it aspires to serve its corprat taskmasters who aspire to serve their bottom lines. Funny too, our government does the same. We all - and our every institution EXIST to serve the corprat bottom line - and little else.

NO ONE in the "news" media "aspires to serve the public". That is a very wrong statement Rich wrote. Wrong.

THAT is why we don't get news that we NEED to know. We get junk, trash, infotainment, partial stories, inaccurate stories and statements and positions on critical issues that are so SLANTED you can cross-country ski down them.

NEWS? What's THAT? We don't get that here. Except from a few comedians such as Colbert, Maher, and then some serious reporters/ranters like Olbermann, Maddow and a VERY few others.

Those are the crumbs we've been tossed. Not bad crumbs but crumbs nonetheless, compared to the entirety of the rest of the media that is pretentiously called "news" media. Pfft! We don't HAVE a "news" media here - except for the internet. The rest - newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio - could go out of business for all I care. Who needs 'em?

[jeanpalmer]

13. We would be better off

if they went out of business. For the most part, main stream media is nothing more than a megaphone for all the bad elements of government and corporations. They take the Pentagon press releases and read them or print them as the news, without question. The only questioning they do is if someone challenges the government's version. Then that person is belittled and pummeled until he loses his job (Donahue) or he is never invited back on the show again. To get the news from the government, they have to suck up to the government or they'll be cut off. That's the model. The ultimate journalist in this model is someone like Judith Miller. The sharper people have caught on to the scam and are saying no thank you.

[fasttense]

4. The downfall of the Press started with Raygun.

I remember watching Raygun at press conferences when he first became president. The man was an idiot. Hard hitting questions from the press corps frequently ended with Raygun admitting he had gotten his facts all mixed up. The more the Press questioned him the stupider the man looked, kinda of like the bush but without the constant belligerence. So the Press corps decided to back off. Yup, their response to an idiot as President was to not ask him questions, so he looked good.

I remember it well. TV and magazine outlets even took public opinion polls. "Do you like the hard hitting questioning of reporters even when the President looks incompetent?" or some such poll question. Several media outlets announced that because their polls indicated people didn't like to see Raygun squirm, they would no longer point out the Presidents constant errors and mistakes. It only went down hill from there.

[zeemike]

6. All true but if I wee to fix a point it would be when CNN

Was taken away from Ted Turner.
It signaled the end of news and in it's place entertainment.

[hvn_nbr_2]

11. I agree, except on one point.

When CNN was still independent of corpofascist control, it exerted a moderating influence. The rest of them had to at least feign some sort of journalistic integrity or be laughed at. When there was no more independent voice, then they threw away any pretense of being journalists.

I don't agree completely that news changed into entertainment. Rather, it changed into propaganda. Largely, the entertainment aspect is to keep the sheep watching the propaganda.

However, real news was significantly gone even before then. Anyone remember Raygun being called "the Teflon president" because nothing stuck to him. Well, it wasn't that nothing stuck. It was because the press was busily making sure that nothing would stick.

[zeemike]

12. All good points.

But I guess it is hard to find a defining moment in all of this.
It was more like death by a thousand cuts.

[uponit7771]

18. Hmmm, that's one of my main reasons for not trusted our news media today. Bush soft balls, Obama ...

...gets stupid ass'd questions about flag pins

[SpiralHawk]

5. Right-wing propaganda, polluting the airwaves, is a Major Factor

Anyone with any capacity to think critically is revolted by the ugly anti-democratic spin of the right-wing republicon propagandists that pollutes the corporate media airwaves...and so many so-called 'newspapers'

[BeFree]

7. Yep

The media has told us lies for so long the people finally caught on and now are saying they won't pay to be lied to any longer.

[rurallib]

8. I would add the decisions to merge news with entertainmemt divisions

at papers and networks around the country.

[WinkyDink]

9. Destruction, either physically or just in credibility, has been a MAJOR goal of the RW for DECADES.

To have GOVERNMENT REPORTS the ONLY "trusted source".

Fascism.

[uponit7771]

17. +1!

[tomreedtoon]

10. News media don't know and don't want to do their jobs.

Newspapers have given up doing local reporting on issues, documenting the operation of government and local issues, for national articles pulled off the wire. TV news covers car crashes, rapes and store break-ins, not elections or important issues.

I have watched my local paper (the Orlando Sentinel) decline from a full, thick newspaper to a slender thing with few ads and fewer readers. The local "free" weekly newspaper, full of ads for gay massage parlors and drug rehab, is thicker and more interesting.

Nowhere do I see anything that reflects normal daily life in a community. Where are the Scout meetings? Do kids even join the Scouts any more? Kids only appear in the newspaper if they were raped and left for dead in a city park. This is not the way to gain people's respect.

[Supersedeas]

19. they have been convinced that Stenography is their job: printing views no matter how unsubstantial

[BlooInBloo]

14. To hell with idiot journalists and their lies, along with their stuipd business model management.

[gauguin57]

15. But, folks, the "press" isn't only the big papers who lied to us about Iraq. It's your local paper.

These folks are losing their jobs, too, and papers are cutting their investigative reporting staffs to skeleton crews.

I read a lot of different types of media, and NOTHING comes CLOSE to newspapers in the level of investigative reporting they provide. Not blogs, not the Web sites of broadcast sites ... nothing.

I think it would be a dark day for any democratic society if newspapers went out of business (and by that I mean in ALL forms -- i realize newspapers may someday be internet-only). Sometimes, the most important paragraph in the newspaper to you on a given day is the second-to-last bulleted item from a municipal meeting ... the one that tells you what all those bulldozers are doing on the vacant lot next to your house. You won't get that stuff anywhere else.

I will grieve the loss of newspapers -- especially local ones, that give us our local news in depth (in a way local TV news doesn't have time to give us) -- if they all tank. I NEED newspapers.

Don't tar all newspapers -- and all the topics they cover -- with the same brush.

[Dr Fate]

20. My small local paper lied to us about Iraq every single day. n/t

n/t

[Blue_Tires]

16. the suicide watch started with the '96 Telecom act, imo