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more on Why the Press Failed
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 11:03:30 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Dave Wilson <dave () wilson net> Date: July 18, 2004 10:33:07 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] Why the Press FailedDean 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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- more on Why the Press Failed David Farber (Jul 18)