Comments on: Bailouts for Newspapers?

By: Michael Merritt

Michael Merritt — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:30:22 +0000

Interested: I’m know there are bias problems, but this article was not talking about self-created biases. I meant “accused” as in people say one publication or another is biased some way, not accused as in pointing something out without evidence.

Orson: The legislator was actually a state rep, not a Congressman. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

By: The U.S. Media Bailout | KnowProSE.com

The U.S. Media Bailout | KnowProSE.com — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:00:12 +0000

[...] HotAir.com has similar sentiments, as does PoliGazette. [...]

By: Orson Buggeigh

Orson Buggeigh — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:59:18 +0000

Good Work, Michael. I was going to post on this, but I think I’ll just follow up. As I said in my response to your follow up to my post on the Iseman suit, the media has serious credibility problems. A bail out just compounds them. Interested’s comment above isn’t quite fair, because at one time, say 20 years ago, most of the major media did try to hew to some kind of objectivity, and did make a distinct separation of the news (factual reporting) and the opinions on the editorial page. You never had to guess who the Portland Oregonian was supporting – it was plain on the editorial page – but the news reporting was pretty much the facts. mam, just the facts. I think this all began to change following Watergate, and the film “All The President’s Men,” which cast Woodward and Bernstein as heroic champions of truth and justice. The movie, unlike the book, really didn’t emphasize that there were editors who actually held reporters to some sort of journalistic standards.

The fact is, as you and Morrissey both say, honest and honorable people regardless of political party should be outraged over the suggestion that a government media would be created. The fact that they are not, and that a serious proposal has been made by a congressman to bail out the media, shows how far the rot has gone.

Business is in a period of change, and the media need to change with it. Newspapers are not competitive with instant on-line updates. This is a blessing if you have fast-breaking news, but the reality is that most news is not that fast moving, and in a way, people have traded the sort of writing and editorial review process that was possible for a newspaper for speed. In some ways it works, but not always. A longer news cycle, even over night, allowed the editorial process to refine news coverage to weed out the worst sensationalism, bias, and error. With the instant updates, that doesn’t happen. It also means we see the same rather unimportant bulletin several times an hour when really, nothing needs to be said until the next morning. Some of that may be due to the cable news phenomenon, with constant updates, which the public came to really like after the Challenger launch accident, the Columbia break up, and especially, the September 11, 2001 attacks. Instant updates are, perhaps, one reason the old overnight newspaper just isn’t able to compete in the current market.

Regardless, the media needs to change, and not be kept on life support by the public.

By: Interested

Interested — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:44:25 +0000

first off they haven’t been accused of being biased – they are biased. They finally admitted as much and have been catering to one party or another for quite some time now. In this Morrissey is wrong – they have not had political credibility to begin with.

In either case, it’s a business and business’s require people to care enough about their product to choose to spend money on it. Bailouts force people to do that. Pure economics tell you that Newspapers are deemed to be of not enough value than the money it costs to purchase it.

As such they need to refine their way of doing business as you mention(like perhaps actually report news) or fail.

As it sits, I fully support newspapers failing by refusing to buy.

God I love the free market.