Their Media

There has been a lot of talk, of late, about the death of the newspaper.  These ancient paper contraptions can’t even keep up with yesterday’s news.  They’re going broke and some are even looking for government money.

Democracy, they claim, cannot survive without them.  And the blogosphere lacks resources, credibility and trained professionals able to get to the bottom of a story.

It’s more or less true.  The blogosphere does lack these things.

But, was I the only person alive during the run up to the invasion of Iraq?  With all of their resources and professionals, the mainstream media still failed to call bullshit on the WMDs, to look at Bush like a war criminal and inform the pubic.

During that period of time, I listened, watched and read, scouring the media for one valid argument explaining why that war should happen.  I never heard one.  All I heard was the beating of the war drums.  They covered it like a sports match.

Okay, everyone makes mistakes.

But just last year, the New York Times completely misrepresented the Russia-Georgia conflict, got basic facts wrong and almost started the march into a war.  They later apologized. Very quietly.  So quietly you might not have heard it.

That’s credibility?

With their track record, it’s a bit rich to hear them talking about credible news and acting like the defenders of democracy.  The Maple Leafs might as well talk about how great it is to win a Stanley Cup.  How would they know?

In reality, the major media outlets mainly do the same thing that I or any blogger can do.  They report off wire services like Reuters.  Occasionally, they send a reporter into the shit to get the story.  Well, on the Internet, any blogger with a functioning computer who happens to live in the shit, can serve that function.

And they serve it better.

During the one of the mideast conflicts, my friend Melly, was on the ground.  She blogged from it and her coverage was better and more realistic than any of the television channels.  It was her home under attack.  She wasn’t talking about what the government said was happening, she talked about what she saw happening.

That’s reporting.

It’s a sickening conceit to think that a professional can better report on an area because they have a degree in journalism than someone who lives there, knows the area, is literate and actually has something invested other than their high-ranking contacts in the military.  A professional who can go home is not better than the person who can go nowhere because they are home.

Just as I never heard one valid argument in favour of going to war with Iraq, I’m not now hearing one valid argument in favour of the mainstream media.

Anything they can do, we can do better.  Even bias and lying.

And we can do it without a government handout.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.