The Murder of Quality Journalism

The limited run ad attacking Obama over Landstuhl perfectly demonstrated a growing tendency among professional journalists to ignore the truth. As Greg Sargent pointed out Monday morning, nearly all of the original coverage of the attack ad presented the information without any regard to its authenticity. The initial stories from CNN, NY Times, the AP and the WaPo reported on the response from the Obama campaign, but never did any real homework on the story. Four days later most of the responsible media outlets have spoken up about the complete fabrication. It's too little too late. For a minimal investment, running the ad in only three cities and only a few times, the McCain campaign used the media to spread their lies.

The major problem with a lot of current reporting doesn't involve just the objectivity of the journalists, although in many cases their objectivity can easily be questioned. The larger problem involves the intelligence applied to reporting a story. In the case of Dana Milbank quoting Barack out of context to frame him as presumptuous, the report lacks both objectivity and intelligence. Sarah Wheaton's work, however, usually carries weight as highly professional and unbiased.

When Ms. Wheaton reported on the Landstuhl story she fell into a carefully laid trap, one that had been arranged from the beginning by the McCain campaign. She wrote:

But it appears to be what he didn’t do – meeting with wounded soldiers, as he had originally planned – at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, that is continuing to reverberate after Mr. Obama’s trip.

The problem with that sentence should be painfully obvious at this stage. The only reverberations were from lies told in an attack ad, which got picked up by some of the more easily duped members of the journalistic community. Andrea Mitchell displayed far more maturity and savvy in dealing with this story than many highly acclaimed journalists, and she could hardly be considered objective or pro-Obama.

Many professional print and broadcast journalists have unfortunately dismissed Internet writers and bloggers as unworthy of recognition. That hasn't stopped online writers from exposing untruths and bias in the world of commercial media. There are only so many stories Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez can bring honestly to the world every day. Likewise with PBS and NPR, the volume of reported truth just can't match the untruths reported by cable news outlets and the growing army of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda soldiers. Writers on the Internet provide the best solution to countering the mountain of lies told by the less reputable members of the journalistic community. Bloggers, by sheer weight of numbers, can make a stand against shoddy journalism and come away victorious.

High quality journalism does not require credentials, elite education or expertise. When somebody writes an article that is unbiased, highly intelligent and well written, where they have written it should have nothing to do with how it is judged. Writers like Dana Milbank perhaps don't deserve to rest on their laurels. It could very well be their laurels, their high opinions of themselves, that lead them to write articles worthy of being converted to confetti.

Just to make myself very clear, I am not a journalist. I am just a writer. That doesn't preclude me from being able to spot crap when I see it.