American media reporting and what to think

Wretchard at the Belmont Club blog has an Iraq post about “is the glass half full or half empty”. It prompts this post.

As always, wretchard makes us think. Thank you.

First the emotional vent stuff about Iraq reporting. Any reporter using a trip with a general as his reference is getting points at home, and losing respect with me. People like me know the higher up the chain of command you go, the less you know about what is really going on, and the slower you know it. The report of the general’s opinion is the only news. I am not trying to be sarcastic. Any reporter who uses the usual green zone photo report spots for TV reporting is also suspect to me as to credibility. I assume many use local stringers who we already know are suspect as to credibility. Last any reporter using another reporter is probably doing what I call reverberation reporting…just bouncing around the same old report to fill a hole/make a report/keep themselves safe.

Let’s move from Iraq back to the USA. Let’s skip BBC and Reuters and their staged news problems.

People at this blog are good. We do a lot of reading and research, and are well educated in the historic sense. Our judgment as to the source and credibility of media reports is a relatively new requirement, I suggest.

So I offer questions, more than ideas, about American media as you read and think.

Like in a Hillary Clinton analogy, is there was some vast XXXX conspiracy to do political and agenda reporting?

Is the 24/7 news cycle on TV skewing the whole profession to do timely investigative reporting with two sources?

If old fashioned investigative reporting can’t make money, is it time for government funded news?

Has the education system that teaches journalism as a profession missing the point that reporters should know something about which they report? The idea is to ask the correct question, and know when something is BS or smells wrong. It helps to know things like the difference between a Major and a Major General, as a simple example.

Is American media just one more symptom of the dumbing down of America?

While I want to bite on the “half empty half full” question, I won’t just yet. I need to read more and sniff more, and now and then listen more. All the while I will use the source and credibility criteria mentioned in this post.