[IP] more on Why the Press Failed
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dave Wilson <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 18, 2004 10:33:07 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Why the Press Failed
Dean Schell's analysis is certainly insightful, but I would argue that
he places too much of the blame on the current administration. The
truth is, journalists nearly always play key roles in the hype machine,
whoever happens to be in the White House. Journalists flogged the
dot-com bubble, Journalists failed to point out the hazards of junk
bonds in the eighties. Heck, the New York Times withheld the advance
information it had about the disasterous Bay of Pigs invasion at the
specific request of the Kennedy White House.
Rather than illustrate the nefarious and well-organized efforts of a
political group, I would say that the current crop of analytical
failures merely underscores the limitations of journalism. In the movie
version of All the President's Men, the Woodward and Bernstein
characters are whinning to an editor character about how they just want
to print the truth, and the editor snarls something like: We don't
print the truth! We print what people tell us!
Disclaimer: I was a journalist for 20 years and still commit
journalism on occasion.
-dave
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