A Glimmer of Hope for the News Media

Thanks to Joe Gandelman at TMV for noting this item from the NYT

AS domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda. Bush mentioned the terrorist group 27 times in a recent speech on Iraq.

The NYT piece is by their new “Public Editor” Clark Hoyt.

The Times in recent weeks… has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

There is plenty of evidence that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is but one of the challenges facing the United States military and that overemphasizing it distorts the true picture of what is happening there. While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the
accuracy of his statements.

This is very good news. The news media is starting to question its uncritical reporting of administration factoids. Why should the media, a for-profit business that relies on credibility and integrity as key selling points, follow this president-who has no credibility left-on his relentless downward slide?

I guess we can’t personally take credit for it, but I believe the blogosphere, with a growing cadre of citizen journalists, is helping to blast the mainstream media out of its complacency. It’s an amazing thing to behold, when everyday citizens show more curiosity, more critical thought, and more determination to get to the real story than those in the news media itself. Of course, the business of media includes owners dictating
coverage and an unwholesome sensitivity to advertiser issues.

In any case, it was certainly not the MSM that started questioning this Al Qaeda mantra. It was we-the-people. The online world has the power to reshape the media. As more people turn to online sources including blogs, You Tube and other online sources for news they aren’t getting on TV, the mainstream media will increasingly find its shortcomings exposed. Plus, viral videos are becoming a powerful, inexpensive new way to do political advertising, and this too threatens the bottom line of the mainstream media. Now, I’m not getting delusional here. The MSM has lots of power, and lots of viewers, but millions of people are finding that current events reporting online is often more credible, investigative, interactive and fun.