Yesterday’s paper contained “The old mainstream media: Don’t read ‘em and weep,” a column in which Kathleen Parker mourns the demise of newspapers and other forms of “old media.” “But most painful — perhaps odd is a better word — has been the celebration in some quarters,” she writes:
Are papers sometimes wrong? Do some reporters embarrass the rest? Is bias a problem? Yes, yes and yes, of course… Even so, only the old, maligned MSM provide the lion’s share of information necessary to the government oversight vital to freedom.
Hmm. I’ve seen two great responses to such a claim lately. The first is an article I learned of over at Semicolon, Orson Scott Card’s “Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?”
The second is this newspaper that my 7-year-old took it upon herself to create during her free time yesterday. It reflects her notion of what newspapers are, based on what she sees from looking at them as my husband and I read them at the breakfast table. Consider (probably not for the first time) what it suggests about journalistic objectivity and “freedom”:
You can click on it for an enlarged view. Note that there’s only one headline: “Wrecked castle: Robbers burned a castle in Indiana.”
Other than that, it’s entirely ads.
*Disclaimer: the creative spellings aren’t intended as a commentary on newspaper editing…
My husband picked up a Washington Post this past weekend for the first time in quite some time. He noted to me, “It has gone downhill.” When I asked him what made him think that he said it was chock full of ads and not much content.
My grad school director said that newspapers were owned by big corporations and thus no longer trustworthy or objective; they were motivated by representing their owners/selling things, not by a desire to expose truth. I’m not sure if my daughter’s perception of papers shows that exactly, but I think about that comment anyway…
My husband and I had a good laugh at her advertising copy.