I've been wondering about whether or not part of the problems in this country might have something to do with the Fourth Estate not being the investigative crusaders for truth like they might have been once perceived.
When I was a kid, I used to respect and idolize reporters for pulling out all the stops and taking some great risks just to get the story to the public. I remember All the President's Men, the story of Woodward and Bernstein who worked tirelessly on a story no one else wanted, pored through mountains of evidence, interviewed countless people, and even risked their lives with late-night garage encounters with Deep Throat.
Unlike what appears to be the case for today's reporters, they didn't rely on press secretaries to spoon feed them information; they were skeptical and didn't take what was being said at face value. They investigated, even if it meant looking into places they're not supposed to look.
Nowadays, journalists seem more passive and apathetic, just sitting around waiting for someone to post a video or tell them something. A lot of the major news stories and scandals in recent times were the result of ordinary citizens posting videos (such as with George Floyd's death) or posting their stories online that the media pick up on. They don't seem to do much investigating anymore. If not for the video of Floyd's death going viral, the media might very easily would have missed this one, too. In the past, they would typically blindly accept whatever the police were telling them and leave it at that. (#Metoo is another example; the sexual abuse by Weinstein and others went on for decades, while the media were ostensibly asleep and unaware of it the whole time.)
It makes me think that if the media had been more diligent and proactive, they might have found out and reported a lot of things sooner. How many questionable acts by the police and government have been buried or minimized because of media passivity? It's only been in the past couple of months that anyone in media has addressed qualified immunity of police officers in court; they were totally silent on that for decades, when they should have been aggressively reporting on and attacking that doctrine all along. Things like this just make you go "hmmm..."
Even the investigations against Trump have been mostly led by official agencies, with media simply repeating what they're told by the government. They had to depend on a whistleblower, rather than doing their own investigating. It was the same thing with Snowden's allegations. The media ignored the NSA for decades, even though books like The Puzzle Palace came out a long time ago, so the media should have been checking and investigating all along. They should have known what Snowden knew long before it came out.
Various media outlets have been strongly criticized for "fake news," suggesting that they may have an agenda which doesn't include properly informing the public of things they have a right to know. But it's not just in what they report, but also what they don't report. Or things might come out about events from years or decades ago which should have been reported a long time ago, but somehow the media missed it. Groups like Project Censored have outlined important stories which have been missed or largely ignored by the mainstream media.
I've heard some people in media lament the fact that they're losing readers (and profits) due to so many bloggers and alternative news sites out there. Just the same, it appears that there is a great hunger for information among the general public - information they're apparently not getting from the mainstream media.
Do the media serve the public's interests anymore? Or have they all sold out to become propaganda outlets for the major political parties and/or Corporate America?
When I was a kid, I used to respect and idolize reporters for pulling out all the stops and taking some great risks just to get the story to the public. I remember All the President's Men, the story of Woodward and Bernstein who worked tirelessly on a story no one else wanted, pored through mountains of evidence, interviewed countless people, and even risked their lives with late-night garage encounters with Deep Throat.
Unlike what appears to be the case for today's reporters, they didn't rely on press secretaries to spoon feed them information; they were skeptical and didn't take what was being said at face value. They investigated, even if it meant looking into places they're not supposed to look.
Nowadays, journalists seem more passive and apathetic, just sitting around waiting for someone to post a video or tell them something. A lot of the major news stories and scandals in recent times were the result of ordinary citizens posting videos (such as with George Floyd's death) or posting their stories online that the media pick up on. They don't seem to do much investigating anymore. If not for the video of Floyd's death going viral, the media might very easily would have missed this one, too. In the past, they would typically blindly accept whatever the police were telling them and leave it at that. (#Metoo is another example; the sexual abuse by Weinstein and others went on for decades, while the media were ostensibly asleep and unaware of it the whole time.)
It makes me think that if the media had been more diligent and proactive, they might have found out and reported a lot of things sooner. How many questionable acts by the police and government have been buried or minimized because of media passivity? It's only been in the past couple of months that anyone in media has addressed qualified immunity of police officers in court; they were totally silent on that for decades, when they should have been aggressively reporting on and attacking that doctrine all along. Things like this just make you go "hmmm..."
Even the investigations against Trump have been mostly led by official agencies, with media simply repeating what they're told by the government. They had to depend on a whistleblower, rather than doing their own investigating. It was the same thing with Snowden's allegations. The media ignored the NSA for decades, even though books like The Puzzle Palace came out a long time ago, so the media should have been checking and investigating all along. They should have known what Snowden knew long before it came out.
Various media outlets have been strongly criticized for "fake news," suggesting that they may have an agenda which doesn't include properly informing the public of things they have a right to know. But it's not just in what they report, but also what they don't report. Or things might come out about events from years or decades ago which should have been reported a long time ago, but somehow the media missed it. Groups like Project Censored have outlined important stories which have been missed or largely ignored by the mainstream media.
I've heard some people in media lament the fact that they're losing readers (and profits) due to so many bloggers and alternative news sites out there. Just the same, it appears that there is a great hunger for information among the general public - information they're apparently not getting from the mainstream media.
Do the media serve the public's interests anymore? Or have they all sold out to become propaganda outlets for the major political parties and/or Corporate America?
