Others above have clearly identified the central issue -journalists are so hung up on themselves they actually believe they can make the world a better place. What a bunch of stupid, ignorant, arrogant fools.

To select one example of how the MSM could, if they were so inclined, do a better job of helping the public better understand the issues, let’s pick the “record levels and rising” price of gasoline.

Can anyone point to any effort by any outlet of the MSM to explain to the public what the components of gasoline prices are, why they are rising, what tools the goverment has available, if any, to mitigate rises, how such tools have been used in the past and to what effect, and on and on and on in terms one needn’t be an economist, a petro-chemist, or an oil-broker to understand. You’d think some enterprising journalist would at least take the time to go figure out, and use his skills to explain, the potential amount of work that can be gotten from the burning of a gallon of gasoline, how much petroleum is required to make it, and how far that can propel the average sized vehicle. Nope, instead the average John Q. Citizen is still convinced that somewhere there’s a carburetor that will take a gallon of gasoline and somehow make autos travel 3 or 4 times as far on it.

To my knowledge all we’ll ever get from them on this topic is that “the Bush administration isn’t doing anything about it”, doesn’t feel the pain. The general public stumbles along completely uninformed about the issues and the difficulties surrounding it and is left with some idiotic notion that somebody has a magic wand to wave but simply refuses to wave it for some nefarious reason.

It just baffles me that one can’t turn to these bastions of public knowledge and analysis and quickly find out what it costs to pump, transport, and crack oil and then transport and pump gasoline. Surely a team of professional journalists with access to all their resources couldn’t spend a week figuring out why costs more, at least in some places or from some sources, to put a gallon of milk into one’s refrigerator than to put a gallon of gas into one’s automobile.

The American public has spent the last 40 years growing increasingly ignorant party because those who have the best opportunity to discover, learn, and pass along information (teachers and “journalists”) is, instead, engaged in their own idiotic political jihad. The bastards have lost track of what their job is.

Do you know if the dragon recovered from the poisoning? The article says it wasn’t injured while it partook of Bronstein but there may habeen fatal after effects.

Hear, hear. One of the more appalling things I noted during the Enron et al scandals was the results of a survey taken of MBA candidates regarding priority concerns for the CEO. The respondants might as well have said “As CEO, I’d like to teach the world to sing and thereby make it a better place”. For example, providing full, accurate and honest financial information to stockholders and other interested parties came in at a dismal #4 on the list of priorities (and no doubt would have polled even lower in the absence of then current events). And what was #1? Why, creating a diverse workplace, of course (need you even ask?). Followed by environmental concerns and something I can’t remember but which fit quite nicely with the first two (consumer protection perhaps). Notable was the lack of interest in, for example, product/service quality or maximizing profits/minimizing risk. Pitiful.

In a 1902 memorandum, Joseph Pulitzer, wishing to endow Columbia with a School of Journalism, wrote:

My idea is to recognize that journalism is one of the great and intellectual professions; to encourage, elevate and educate in a practical way the present and, still more, future members of that profession. Why not teach things which every right minded journalist must aspire to know…politics, literature, history…and teach if possible the practical side–news

gathering, news editing, news writing…

The sad thing is that journalism could indeed be one of the “great and intellectual professions”, but not as long as 9 out of 10 would-be practioners are frustrated social workers. Those who have as their primary motivation a wish to change the world, or even “make it better”, should seek another profession/trade/craft. They simply are not reliable.

I’m not interested in having a journalist “speak truth to power” or even act as a “check on arrogant power”. All I want is someone who will persue information, dig for it when necessary, and after having discerned the facts to the best of his ability, present them in an evenhanded, objective (I should never be able to guess a reporter’s ideology) manner. Give me a factual rendition of events observed and accurate, in-context quotes. And give me opinion and analysis separately please and based on fact or otherwise it is worthless.

A fully and accurately informed public is all the “check on arrogant power” required. Why, it could even change the world.

I think both men are somewhat correct. Posner is right about lower costs feeding the growth of the New Media, but he vastly understates the importance of deregulation. Keller has available some strong arguments that the NYT’s left-leaning approach is not in its economic self-interest (at least in its home market), but he doesn’t use them.

http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2005/08/21/the-painful-and-confusing-experience-of-losing-market-share/

Thanks,

Jack Risko

Just a question, but why is that L.A. and New York, for so many years, have had only one paper (for all intents and purposes)? You have to go all the way down to the third largest city, Chicago, to see this kind of monopoly end. Go NYSun!

(Full disclosure: I delivered the Washington Star for the three years prior to its death.)

yama

Yama

Roger is right, the ridiculous biases at the NYT are, in part, a business decision. Since the paper truly went national, it has cultivated the Upper West Side liberal niche consumer in each local market around the country. Which is why the paper is scarcely recognizable any more as a New York paper.

Read the Sun online!

Well, thatís because people almost always obey the dictates of the ìmarket.î It is very rare when they donít. They often, however, are not consciously aware of how their behavior has changed due to these ever changing demands. Human beings normally react on a gut level and not by point by point rational evaluation. Economist call this phenomenon, price- signaling. Neither Ludwig Von Mises nor Friedrich Hayek fell into the error of believing that so-called market determinism is limited to financial rewards. It is well understood that people are also motivated by fame, being part of an in-crowd, etc. This is probably why a Pinch Schultzberg seems relatively unconcerned about his paperís declining stock price. He is adored by those within his own social circle. That is sufficient remuneration for him.