Reply #20: Link to her memo... [View All]

[kcass1954]

I watched most of it before I went to work - I was actually a little late. Ms. Garrett was kicking ass and taking names, saying all the things that we've been saying here about the media, but on TV in front of God and everybody!


http://www.c-span.org/journal/lauriegarrett.doc

<snip>

Honesty and tenacity (and for that matter, the working
class) seem to have taken backseats to the sort of
"snappy news", sensationalism, scandal-for-the-sake of
scandal crap that sells. This is not a uniquely Tribune
or even newspaper industry problem: this is true from
the Atlanta mixing rooms of CNN to Sulzberger's offices
in Times Square. Profits: that's what it's all about
now. But you just can't realize annual profit returns
of more than 30 percent by methodically laying out the
truth in a dignified, accessible manner. And it's
damned tough to find that truth every day with a mere
skeleton crew of reporters and editors.

This is terrible for democracy. I have been in 47
states of the USA since 9/11, and I can attest to the
horrible impact the deterioration of journalism has had
on the national psyche. I have found America a place of
great and confused fearfulness, in which cynically
placed bits of misinformation (e.g. Cheney's, "If John
Kerry had been President during the Cold War we would
have had thermonuclear war.") fall on ears that absorb
all, without filtration or fact-checking. Leading
journalists have tried to defend their mission,
pointing to the paucity of accurate, edited coverage
found in blogs, internet sites, Fox-TV and talk radio.
They argue that good old-fashioned newspaper editing is
the key to providing America with credible information,
forming the basis for wise voting and enlightened
governance. But their claims have been undermined by
Jayson Blair's blatant fabrications, Judy Miller's
bogus weapons of mass destruction coverage, the media's
inaccurate and inappropriate convictions of Wen Ho Lee,
Richard Jewell and Steven Hatfill, CBS' failure to
smell a con job regarding Bush's Texas Air Guard career
and, sadly, so on.

<snip>