Bad time for newsrooms and democracy
sduford on Jul 23 2008 at 5:27 pm | Filed under: Media, Politics
Those of you who have followed this blog for a while know that I’ve been pretty vocal about the media’s general ineptitude and increasing innefficiency in providing us with actual news. Well on that same theme, here’s an excellent article by one of the best journalists of the last 20 years.
Bad days for newsrooms, and democracy too.
Here’s an excerpt if you don’t have the time to read the whole thing:
A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.
It helps to read more than one language. For example I prefer to read important news in at least German and English. If it’s something concerning Latin America I do read about the same topic in Spanish as well. Obviously not everybody can do that but those who can certainly get the benefit of multiple angles of view onto the same issue.
Very good point Stephan! I also read news in both French and English (and soon hopefully in Spanish).
Having different sources of news, whether based on language of geography, is always a good thing. For example, the American mass media outlets have been completely inadequate in covering the actions of their government since 9/11. But news outlets in Canada and Europe, not being hampered by partisan or commercial interests and a fear of being viewed as “unpatriotic”, did a much better job of reporting the facts.