more on Why the Press Failed

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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 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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