This was bound to happen. Newspapers have been losing readers ever since the invention of television. Slowly readership has eroded as people "don't have enough time" to read the news when they can just watch it on tv. But something else has happened as well.
Investigative reporting has fallen by the wayside. Not one reporter bothered to investigate the claims made against Iraq by the Bush administration. And even if they had, no editor would publish it. Even though they turned out to be lies, the newspapers reported them as truth.
And if the papers reported the truth, I'm sure the readership would go up as well. I know I'm not going to buy the local news as I know firsthand how ill-informed they are and how much they work as propagandists for the government.
Recently it has been revealed that the government has been writing articles they paid newspapers to print. Nothing wrong with pro-American propaganda says the media. Which shows you what idiots are working in the field of journalism today. Somewhere, someone on the board has figured out that it's more cost effective to have the government pay them to run propaganda pieces than it is to pay a reporter to investigate a story.
This comes to no surprise to those of us who read the blogs. That's why we read them, why we write them, to get the truth out, not to make money. (I know I make nothing from this, am I doing something wrong?) And that's why I get my news here.
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You're not doing a thing wrong, Lew. And you are absolutely right. Watch Amy Goodman's Documentary as she really outlines the status of the media in a very clear and concise manner. I am a big fan of hers, of course.
She says that while we do not have 'state run media', she asks what would be the difference if we did?
Here, our papers filter even Letters to the Editor. They edit, they shorten, they alter...I have written probably hundreds of letters in my relatively short lifetime, many printed, always I signed my name and stood by my positions publicly. I have even had personal attacks by name from US Senators twice, in response. It is NOT easy to put oneself out there but that is a journalists JOB. We expect a doctor to have ethics in practice, a teacher, a lawyer...and yet we see news and reporting as a simple money making venture and not as a profession. They are spoon fed by those in power, and that is why we MUST do all we can to talk about truth, debate truth, work on truth, write about truth, whether we make money or not.
Personally, I think we often lose alot. The costs personally can be high, and I have been there. But I cannot whore my soul for any government ,society, or cause that i deem as unjust as what we have before us.
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