BALANCED journalism? Is it just about Marketing?

[iconoclastNYC]

Seems like if you want to sell papers and ads you want to be balanced so you dont shut yourself off to the other side.

But Journalists make it seem like a balanced debate is something more then that, like its sacred or something.

I really wish we could go back to advocacy journalism. I think we'd be happy with more truth.

[punpirate]

1. The greater issue is that "balanced journalism" is...

... a means by which to obscure the truth, a means to avoid saying that the government lied (a word no one in the press uses today).

We have advocacy journalism today--it's advocating for its own corporate profitability. And, it's not about making a profit. It's about making bigger profits for the benefit of its large stockholders. Look at the current situation with Knight-Ridder. It's had a very nice price-to-earnings ratio for years now, but there's a stockholder faction which says that it's not making enough money (for them) and therefore is driving KR to sell to someone else (there may be political reasons for that pressure, too).

Investigative reporting is the most expensive reporting in the news business, and it's the first to get trimmed when the bottom line is valued above the First Amendment mandate.

It won't change until the public forces that change, one way or another.

[fasttense]

2. It is not about BALANCED journalism.

It's about reporting the truth. Journalists today have bought into the repuke mantra that there is no such thing as truth. Truth is what you say it is. Like the repukes say we create our own reality. When the media finally catches on, the repukes throw another one out there and the journalists have to unravel that lie too.

For example there was, at an absolute minimum, a clear effort to prevent democrats and minorities from voting in the 2004 election. Repukes used intimidation (Ohio and Florida), misplaced voting machines (Ohio), obscured voting districts (Ohio and Florida), and redistricting (Texas) to prevent those who would clearly vote against corporate interests from voting. There was a deliberate effort which can be observed in the frequent and substantive lawsuits filed against republicans (and leaked memos). But do you hear about these? NO, what you hear is this repuke filed a lawsuit (though latter the suit is thrown out as frivolous) about minor (in one case a car was scratched) voting problems. Then they report the substantive suit filed by the Dems, or others, as if it held equal footing with the trivial complaints by repukes. At the very least it obstructs the truth and "appears" BALANCED. But is it? When you report a frivolous claim alongside a substantive case are you not elevating the frivolous and denigrating the substantive?

But most people don't look into the stories that well and assume well there was cheating on both sides. So the journalist comes off as looking BALANCED while reporting the repuke mantra. Repukes count on the busy reader and overworked reporter to not notice this subtle manipulation. Thank God liberals like to analyze everything.

[GrpCaptMandrake]

3. I wish we could go back to neutral journalism

By that, I mean that I wish the journalism community would at least consider being as outright hateful and rotten to Bush as it was to our Best Republican President Ever, to-wit, Brother Bill.

[KharmaTrain]

4. The Line Between Information and Entertainment

While we can be passionate about one or many issues, the bottom line comes down that we find keeping up-to-date and involved as "fun"...it sure beats cleaning gutters. It's entertainment...and the more scandalous or provactive the politics (especially when repugnicans are involved), the more fun it is. The "industry" term is "sizzle"...it's what gets your fires burning, it's what keeps you tuned in...and most of all, turned on.

Corporate media operates not to inform...they never have. It's to sell and do to so they've learned entertainment is the way to get into your pockets. You don't want reems of statistics when a couple word shocking headline will do the trick. What you see on television that goes under the title of "News" is News as entertainment. It's personalities and superficial things...more designed to get an emotional response than for any critical thinking.

The real journalism these days is being done by those who've always done it...historians. Sadly, their works are years in the future as the story we live today can't be fully told...yet. Maybe it never will be. However, those who are digging for the truth are caught in the moment and being able to relate that story while keeping ones eyes on it is difficult at best...especially when you have a deliberate distortion machine that has prevented much true investigation.

There's never been a better time for advocacy journalism than now...and that's the problem. It's whose advocating that's created a lot of the messes and credibility problems in the corporate media. I'd just be glad for some 5 Ws and I'll take it from there.

Cheers...

[baldguy]

5. One more: I don't want balance - I want truth.