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Originally Posted by smooth
I was using this specific example to move to a broader case--that the free press is certainly allowed to report anything it wants in my opinion, but it isn't always prudent do so in the ways in which it chooses (I'm trying to carefully word this because to just say that it isn't always prudent to do so would leave the door open to self-censorship).
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I'll be the last person to argue that no mistakes have been made by journalists. But then you can say that about any profession. Pilots have shown up to fly their planes drunk, but we don't villify all pilots because of the mistakes of the few.
The far bigger problem with journalism today is twofold:
1) massive corporations owning media outlets. Let's say my station is owned by GE (and some are). And now a certain model of GE washing machines has a design flaw that causes it to go into its spin cycle when the lid's up. Several people have already been injured by the washing machines, and GE's trying to cover it up. Right there you have a major conflict of interest. A station general manager who breaks that story is NOT going to be looked upon kindly by the GE corporate brass. That doesn't even get into the fact that megacorporations are generally slanting toward the republican side of the political spectrum because republicans advocate policies which will help them make more money. That means a conflict of interest in any story that involves politics.
2) The public is so busy accusing journalists of bias that the journalists are bending over backward to try and prove that they're not. This means the journalists are no longer reporting facts, they're reporting soundbytes. If bush comes out and says "the sky is purple" you'll see that on the evening news. But you will NOT see a reporter saying "He said the sky is purple, but he's lost it because the sky is blue, here I'll prove it to you." Now in that case the journalist would NOT be displaying a bias. He'd be informing the public that Bush is not telling them the truth.
But if we tried that with a real world scenario - say, a journalist coming out after Colin Powell made his WMD speech to the UN and saying that his evidence didn't add up (which it did not), that journalist would be accused of bias, even though he'd only be reporting the truth.
The mission of journalism is to protect the innocent and hold the powerful accountable for their actions. Speaking personally, I really don't care which party is in power. If they screw up, it's my job to tell that story, and I will do that. But the public has to realize that sometimes that means I will say things which, while true, are things they don't like hearing. The proper reaction to that is to go after the person that did wrong. Shooting the messenger only makes the problem worse.