Or a Personal Quest for Journalistic Quality
I've always been fascinated by history and current events (which is simply "live" history), seeking out knowledge wherever I could. This dates to the stone age before the Web, back when we had to read newspapers, magazines, books, and watch Walter Cronkite on the
CBS Evening News. Eventually, as cable finally made its way into our family life, there was the news addict's dream made real by CNN and then the quick fix provided by CNN Headline News. Heady (or headliney) times, it couldn't get better than this!
Of course, it wasn't easy to get some of the quality newspapers as
The New York Times and
The Washington Post were only available at the library. But I did have a subscription to Newsweek for a couple of years that I treasured. That fell by the wayside due to a lack of money brought on by disability, but in the early 1990's I purchased my first computer, a Packard Bell 486SX-25 with a 2400 baud modem in it. After perusing bulletin boards on dial-up, I received one of those unavoidable America Online floppies in the mail. I joined the service and began to find news in virtual print once again.
Watching Less, Reading More
In the meantime, various cable news networks had popped up and while available on satellite TV, I felt there had been a decay in quality slowly becoming evident. By the mid-90s, format changes were making it all feel more tabloid like, more entertainment and personality driven. Cable news hit its zenith during 1991 when covering Operation Desert Storm and never quite hit that level again. I watched it less and less.
So I turned toward content I could find online, though it wasn't easy or convenient to find. The Web came into being and I dipped my toe in the water via AOL's built in browser. As internet service became available locally, I signed up to the very primitive connectivity in my rural area. After giving up on it and returning to AOL, the service finally became reliable and I signed up again using OS/2 Warp's Web Explorer to crawl around the new web. I remember that new place called Yahoo just starting up, then Netscape taking the web browser to a whole new level. By that time the OS wars were over and I was stuck with Windows95. At last came a new piece of software that looked like it would fulfill all my dreams of news gathering in one place.
A News Junkie's Dream
That program was called Pointcast and it was wonderful! I could set it up to download the news from all sorts of sources, including
The New York Times and
The Washington Post. It all flowed into the program in the background when I was dialed into the Net and I could read it once disconnected. That was needed, because even a 56k modem in 1996 took awhile to get any content off the copper wires. It was bliss, news nirvana, and I couldn't stop extolling it to others I knew.
Of course,
it didn't last. The infrastructure wasn't there yet for so much data being downloaded at once, it was overloading servers in business environments which were the main users of Pointcast. Missed opportunities and the rise of Yahoo killed the endeavor within a few years. I mourned that software's passing almost as much as OS/2 Warp's.
Signs of the Times
Thankfully, the newspapers and news cable stations had discovered the value of the Internet by then. It meant I had to read while online, but the content was still there. However, I started to see the same symptoms of rot that I'd seen with news TV.
The New York Times in particular was becoming less a journalistic bastion of integrity than a source of polemics. By 2003, the Jayson Blair scandal broke and I wasn't surprised, as my trips to their website had gone from multiple times a day to once daily. The rot had become visible. At that point, it was a slow road to infrequently visiting the once venerable institution. These days, articles are written the same way as editorials and there really is no difference.
At least
The Washington Post kept it's integrity, I told others. For the most part, it did until the 2004 election drove it over the edge. While not going into the absolute free fall that has turned the Grey Lady into a very bad joke, it did become more openly partisan. Of course it was always a left wing newspaper, but a very respectable one. After John Kerry's loss in the Presidential race, the paper began to go down the same road as it's New York rival.
This was unpleasant to recognize, because I didn't feel like I had much in the way of alternatives. Oh there was the rising blogosphere, but that wasn't developed enough at the time. Talk radio never appealed, because it is primarily personality driven with a penchant for theatrics. NPR is possibly the best antidote for insomnia, between its nonstop leftist slant and gray drones speaking in the academic cadences of those who've never really lived life.
Signal Degradation
What of cable news? Infotainment at best, rarely any journalism present these days. Sensationalism is the main content, with talk radio style theatrics thrown in. Not a surprise as many shows are hosted by talk radio hosts. Most cable news networks are far left, with MSNBC on the lunatic fringe side of the spectrum and CNN catering to the left base. Fox News is still tabloid in style, which I despise. At least they report the stories the other networks refuse to, since that is where the ratings and eyeballs are. I feel as if I am praising Fox with faint damning's. The other networks are more concerned with being an active component of the Democratic Party than in being journalists. That includes the tattered remnants of the once proud broadcast network news shows.
A New Media: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?
These days, the blogs are where to find information that the left wing media suppresses. Still, there is a huge amount of emotionalism to this new media and one has to sift them to get good information. It reminds me very much of the yellow journalism days of the 1800's. The idea of journalistic integrity is a late 20th Century idea and I often wonder if there ever has been such a thing. But trying to obtain that illusion at least keeps things more grounded in reality and honesty.
Currently, society in the United States is fragmenting rather than uniting. The rise of blogs is a good indication of that, with the constant wars fought between even those claiming to be on the same side. Just search for LGF or LittleGreenFootballs along with the word 'banning' to see the kind of wars that get fought, as that blog goes further left. Of course, that is an exaggerated example as that blog has turned into an intolerant, totalitarian cult-like place. Once upon a time it was in my links on this blog, but hasn't been for some time now.
Looking Across the Pond
So where to find the news? I suggest reading the full links from various blogs, getting the original articles in case things have been misinterpreted or spun. You have to work to find out the truth, don't expect anyone to deliver it to you on a platter. For traditional news that hasn't totally degraded, check out newspapers from the United Kingdom, such as
The Telegraph and
The Times. It was a
link on Drudge that inspired me to write this post, as I discovered I was part of a trend. Imagine that, me being trendy!
It appears that there are more than a few of us American news junkies reading the newspapers of Great Britain to get news about our own country we don't get in print here. What a sad and alarming thing statement that is! I don't think our newspapers are dying due to a lack of an audience, but due to becoming completely out of touch with the majority of Americans.
The Death of an Independent Media?
Now there is talk of the government bailing out the liberal newspapers, consolidating the leftist message by turning them into possessions of the government. Because the majority of the federal government is made up by bureaucrats, it doesn't matter which party is in possession of the Oval Office. Those faceless feds tend to be very liberal, which means the papers will be semi-official organs of big government no matter what.
Pravda anyone?
Sadly, that question won't mean a thing to many too young to remember the Soviet Union. When a government controls the news, there can be no freedom. It is up to us, the American people, to prevent this from happening. Do we have enough people willing to fight for their freedom in this fragmented society? It isn't enough to defend the Constitution, we must make sure that a vibrant and independent media exists, otherwise the First Amendment is just words.
Me, I'm wondering if I'll have to keep searching for honest journalism in the future. The fact I'm looking to British newspapers for news isn't good.
