LBS makes a good point by focusing on what John Harris said about "interesting and worthwhile stories." This can be expanded by noting a much more general phraseology, which one can often hear if one proposes that the media investigate something they really don't want to: Tthat's not a story."

Harris, at least, has added some detail that one can get one's arms around. The more general case is far more elusive.

How can you possibly respond when someone tells you--oh so knowingly, "That's not a story"?

"Oh, and shark attacks are, when they're not statistically more common than they've been for years?"

Good luck with that.

"That's not a story" is simply a pseudo-objective way of saying, "Like hell I'm going to write about that."

Harris, at least, has given us a big more specific detail.

"Intersting and worthwhile stories." Interesting and worthwhile to/for whom? And why?

Insiders, of course. The same sorts of people who are his sources. And, of course, insider wannabees.

In short: Versailles.

This reveals the real function and purpose of such journalism: it is gossip, pure and simple. It is all about who's in, what the pecking order is, who got away with what.

This is its ideology, and it is starkly opposed to journalism in the public interest, journalism that talks about issues that affect the common good--in short, what used to simply be called "journalism."

So, when Harris & Co. object that we have an ideology, we should say, "Damn right, we have an ideology: the public interest matters. It's a hell of a lot better than your ideology, which is: the public be damned."

TRenee,

Well, I'm not just a local journalist, I write for an alternative biweekly. We certainly didn't get sucked up into all that BS.

But how many folks do people like you and I reach compared to the local broadcasters who totally DO want to be like their Beltway brethern?

Glenn:

El Cid:

Again, I find it remarkable that there is such a remarkable degree of consistency in how the US' primarily corporate news media fall so evenly on the side of power and the hawks whenever hawkish foreign policies are proposed, and seem to only come out with hard skepticism & genuine criticism once those policies have gone bad.

The problem with speaking at this level of generality -- "find it remarkable that there is such a remarkable degree of consistency in how the US' primarily corporate news media fall so evenly on the side of power and the hawks " -- is that it's impossible to prove or disprove. If I list 50 different prominent people in the "corporate media" who, for instance, currently oppose militarism against Iran or who favor withdrawal from Iraq, are going to say that those are just a handful of examples and/or they are just there to give an illusion of balance?

Actually, you don't have to do that, Glenn. Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (fair.org) has done this sort of analysis repeatedly over the years, by taking a limited time frame, a limited number of elite forums, and simply counting who's allowed to show up. Often--though not always--the disribution of views expressed is compared to the distribution of views in the public at large. While one could certainly improve on Fair's methodology (as I tried to do when heading up a local Fair group analyzing KCRW's pre-Gulf War coverage back in 1990), it is already quite sufficient to support El Cid's observation about the consistency of hawkishness when the chips are down.

I think you're quite right to question the tendency toward sloppy think that can follow from El Cid's remarks. But the fact of the matter is, there is already a good deal of data to back him (?--el) up.

Of course it's a good deal more complicated to try to discuss motivations. But when we just look at media product, the questions are much easier to operationalize, and thus to answer. And, after all, isn't that what matters most: what the media actually does?

I think that grand unified theories are both necessary (in order to make sense of things and generate useful hypotheses) and problematic (given people's tendencies to get lazy, stop testing theories, and use a single theory to explain everything). And I think that deep down, Glenn would probably agree--though he would tend to see the problematic side much more than the necessary one.

This is fairly understandable, given where he's coming from, and I tend to think it's more valuable to have him disagreeing with me--and thus making me prove my case--than it would be to have him agree with me.

But most important of all, I think we all benefit from being more conscious of how express ourselves. It's in the nature of comments to be more informal than the posts they're attached to. But there are times to tighten up, when called upon.

Just as there are times for the very purest of snark.