News industry suffers from self-inflicted wounds

[Ptarmigan]

News industry suffers from self-inflicted wounds
http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/388947-news-industry-suffers-from-self-inflicted-wounds

Doing journalism is difficult work. News organizations make countless decisions each day that affect the nation’s news agenda and subsequent civic discussions. Today’s technology-driven world means those decisions are made quickly. Every second provides a new deadline. Having acknowledged the challenge, however, doing solid journalism shouldn’t be impossible. That is what it seems like these days, as the news industry continues to stumble with self-inflicted mistakes and colossal errors in judgment.

News media blunders over the past several weeks dishearten even the most ardent defenders of journalism. The damage done at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner will take years to undo. The vulgar display by a so-called comedian was only part of what ails this overblown tribute to journalists’ self-importance. That our nation’s top journalists and news executives want to hob-nob with the powerful politicians, corporate fat cats and entertainers who should be the subjects of news coverage is the real mistake. This event demonstrates that the news industry is firmly entrenched in the elite establishment, living in an alternative universe disconnected from real people.

The WHCA defends the event as a scholarship fundraiser and tribute to the First Amendment. Then have a First Amendment scholar address the crowd, not a crass comedian. It is hard to build credibility for the news industry when its leaders promote a keynote speaker to tell off-color jokes. Here’s betting the American Medical Association won’t have a crude podium performance at its upcoming national meeting.

The legacy media is a very closed off world. It is one giant echo chamber. No surprise there.

It is all self-inflicted.

[SVPete]

News media blunders over the past several weeks dishearten even the most ardent defenders of journalism.

Actually, the grossly obvious blatant MSM falsehoods have been going on for nearly three years. One need only compare the MSM's outrage claims about what the MSM claimed Trump said to what Trump actually said to see this. I did that in late 2015; equally important, NO MSM outlet called out MSM deceit regarding Trump. Whether herd instinct, tribalism, or conspiracy, ALL MSM outlets were part of this deceit.

That said, the MSM's self-inflicted wounds of partisan bias go back decades, into the 1970s. Until MSM give up their, "We want to change the world," vision of their profession that underlies their partisan lies and selectivity, they cannot stanch their "blood flow" of readers, listeners, and viewers.