Media Prozac

The New York Times' William Safire has written an Op-Ed piece titled The Depressed Press, on why mainstream media is going to be okay, which includes this questionable point:

On the challenge from bloggers: The "platform" - print, TV, Internet, telepathy, whatever - will change, but the public hunger for reliable information will grow. Blogs will compete with op-ed columns for "views you can use," and the best will morph out of the pajama game to deliver serious analysis and fresh information, someday prospering with ads and subscriptions. The prospect of profit will bring bloggers in from the meanstream to the mainstream center of comment and local news coverage.

On national or global events, however, the news consumer needs trained reporters on the scene to transmit facts and trustworthy editors to judge significance. In crises, large media gathering-places are needed to respond to a need for national community.

However, this only works if the news consumer actually believes that those trained reporters are indeed transmitting facts, and since more and more information is coming out showing just how untrustworthy the mainstream media has proven themselves to be, will news consumers be able to just forgive and forget? Or will they increasingly turn to bloggers, who seem more able to watch the watchdogs, out the mainstream media for their failings and provide legitimate, usable information based in fact and the public's desire for full disclosure of the truth? I believe that by the next election bloggers will have only grown in their appeal and respect to the general public.

Safire also maintains that the media bias (and there definitely is one), is mostly slanted liberal in reponse to a conservative government. But believing this is to assume that most mainstream media is actually keeping a close, critical eye on the government, willing to ask the tough questions that Americans deserve to have asked of their leaders, willing to second guess even the President of the United States. One only has to tune in to Fox News to see that this is largely not the case, or any of the major networks really. Even CNN, the news network that "more Americans trust," on election night was not exactly toeing the line of objective journalism.

The New York Times itself is what we have for the liberal mainstream ... Either mainstream media will have to completely reform and go back to doing the job it was created to do, or it will perish under the weight of its own journalistic failings. Eventually people will demand to know the truth, and there will be more and more outside the mainstream, including bloggers, who are willing to give it to them.