systemic media failures

Don't miss this withering analysis of The Media's Role In The Financial Crisis, from Dan Gillmor at TPM:

“It's not as if this is the first time a big issue has had too little discussion while there was still time to fix the problem. Journalism has repeatedly failed to warn the public about huge, visible risks. The media's complicity in the Iraq War-mongering and 1990s stock bubble were the most infamous recent examples until the financial bust came along, but the willful blindness to reality was uncannily similar.

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But to say that the press was all over the housing/credit mess before it blew up, as the American Journalism Review argued recently, defies reality. The good journalism was overwhelmed by the happy-face, herd coverage, usually laced with quotes from people who stood to benefit from the bubble's continued inflation.”

The banal truth underlying advertising-funded journalism:

“It's probably no coincidence that most newspapers have weekly real estate pages or sections, the main purpose of which is to collect advertising for property sales.

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The media's collective irresponsibility has ill-served its audience. If journalists want to keep the audience they have, never mind build credibility for the future, they need to become the right kind of activists. More than ever, we need what they do, when they do it well.”

I would only add that they need it even more than we need them. TPM is staffed by people just old enough to actually give a rat's ass (out of nostalgia, I guess) about traditional media outlets. Gillmor nibbles at the edges of the real solution for them with a call for journalistic activism. Of course, they can't budge from their pretext of objectivity as long as they are bought and paid for by corporate PR outfits. But until they do budge, Americans will continue to be spoon-fed "balance" over "accuracy.