LAT: Study Warns of Junk-News Diet

[Catchawave]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=716&e=27&u=/latimests/20050314/ts_latimes/studywarnsofjunknewsdiet


American consumers confront an ever-broader river of news from myriad sources, but the standard for gathering and presenting the information tends to be "faster, looser and cheaper" than in the past, according to a survey of the news business to be released today by a media watchdog group.


Internet blogs and cable TV programs have led the trend toward a "journalism of assertion" that relies less on reporting than personal opinion, reported the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is affiliated with Columbia University.


That trend makes it more important for journalists "to document the reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it," the organization concluded in its annual report.


On two of the top media stories of 2004, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet merited a mixed verdict, the study found.

more.....

[rooboy]

1. Ewwwww.... a mouthful of Gannon - that's what I call a bad diet. n/t

[Clark2008]

2. They're blaming bloggers???

Bloggers provide more background information and more links to the sources of this information than most journalists now. Maybe Free Republic doesn't, but the liberal blogs do.

We should write this paper about this.

[bpilgrim]

3. that's what the M$MW offer up... need to SWITCH to DU

if you want to be the most informed person in your workplace :evilgrin:


http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[tsuki]

4. Coverage on blogs will only get worse. Imagine you are a

business and woke up one morning to realize...49% of your customers shop elsewhere.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. They continue to lump all bloggers together

there's a big difference between the liberal bloggers and the freepers.

The folks on DU and the bloggers seek the truth. We verify our information. We stomp on rumors, rather then spread them. This is where the real investigative journalism is taking place. People like Paul Thompson and his 9-11 Timeline to TIA and all his stats. How many times have I seen a story on DU, that the freepers claim is tinfoil hat stuff, only to see that story in the CCM weeks later because it turned out to be true? Yet in the meantime the CCM continues to try to ignore us as much as possible. But when they can't, they insist on painting us with the same brush as creeps like Gannon.

It's time to educate the public about the big differences between us and them. It's time to take back the truth.

[rpannier]

6. I see

This never went on until bloggers appeared. Fox News existed after the bloggers? I find that interesting since they report to have been on the air since 1995.

[FlyByNight]

7. "Faster, looser and cheaper" is exactly what...

mainstream media sources have been doing for the past few years.

Mainstream media sources have no one to blame but themselves in a very bottom-line oriented corporate environment. In addition, this is just more hand-wringing over drops in viewership, subscriptions, etc.

:eyes:

[Gyre]

8. Our FCC tax dollars NOT at work.

Why does the government "watchdog" agency refuse to enforce their own regulations re: misleading use of public resources (network frequencies) to deceive the public? Oh yeah, Michael Powell.

They pay "us" for the licence to broadcast misleading information to us. That's great.

Gyre

[applegrove]

9. yeah - get your news from many, many sources.