Here's an AP article on the fact that both campaigns tend to stretch the truth in places.
If we, as a country, could agree on the facts of a situation then we probably still wouldn't agree on how to address that situation, but we could at least understand the other side's point of view.
As it is we just think the other side is crazy, because they actually believe what they've been told by their media.
I don't know how to fix this. I don't want a single media entity deciding what is and isn't true, but having divergent media outlets appears to have resulted in divergent views of reality.
Does anyone out there have a suggestion? How can we find out what's true?
It seems like organizations like FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting - are good in theory, but I look at their site and it seems to be more critical of McCain than of Obama.
Is this because McCain's campaign is more worthy of criticism? Or is FAIR biased?
FAIR watches the watchmen, but who makes sure FAIR is fair?
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Okay, speaking as a journalist -- and, if I may say so, a darn good one -- there's no simple answer to this problem.
The public trusts journalists just a hair more than it trusts lawyers, according to most polls, so there's a huge hill to climb before the country at large deems the news they get is trustworthy.
It doesn't help, either, that the two major political parties are on the sidelines screaming about either the "East Coast liberal media elite" or the "conservative, corporate-controlled media." And they are frequently saying those things about EXACTLY THE SAME MEDIA OUTLETS! Seriously, The New York Times in any given week will be lambasted by the GOP as to liberal and the Democrats as too conservative.
On top of this you have the very, very unfortunate situation where opinionizers -- pundits, columnists, what-have-you -- are now being presented by media organizations, and accepted by huge swaths of the public, as news sources. Frankly, this is the biggest problem. People who have clear agendas regarding one party or the other who present their opinions as solid fact and their viewpoints as objective. Folks, that's not news. That's an editorial, an opinion. But these people have become, to what is probably the majority of the politically active, voting public, "the media." And the parties have encouraged this -- especially the Republican Party, because the right wing is far more effective at this than the left.
The upshot? Editorializing is now accepted as reporting. Vitriol is now accepted as analysis. Bias is now accepted as objectivity. This is far more prevalent on the internet, TV (especially cable) and radio than in print, but then those are the media that are growing.
And don't get me started on the blogosphere, where anyone with an internet provider and an opinion can put themselves forth as a "journalist."
What needs to be done? Well, I'm not sure if it's fixable anymore, short of a revolution of sorts. There needs to be some broad movement to bring even-handedness to journalism. We need an entire generation of journalism school graduates to take the tough road and hew to thorough reporting and unflinching honesty, and break news consumers' bad habits of looking to the punditocracy for guidance. Sadly, I see no such movement materializing anytime soon.
And that is, in part, because a j-school grad will make much, MUCH more money going into PR or advertising than they will going into journalism. Thousands and thousands of dollars more. And the worst part is, much like rural schools, rural newspapers are getting the worst of this because nobody wants to work there, far from city lights and cultural centers, so many of those papers are shutting down or being bought by big chains (like the one that bought my paper and ultimately dumbed it down), which are often idealogically aligned with one party or another (more often the GOP, since chains are in it to make big profits).
Sound bites and video clips have replaced in-depth reporting, and the people of this nation are the poorer for it. Newspapers are failing and readership is falling, and the people are poorer for it. I am doing what I can as a freelance journalist right now to uphold the standards of my profession -- "Seek truth and report it," the Society of Professional Journalists demands -- but it ain't much.
Journalism needs a messiah. I don't know that they'll get it before the craft is dead and buried.
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