6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise

The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.

7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant

Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather an audience or catalogue the important. For its own survival, it must balance what readers know they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In short, it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. The effectiveness of a piece of journalism is measured both by how much a work engages its audience and enlightens it. This means journalists must continually ask what information has most value to citizens and in what form. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional

Keeping news in proportion and not leaving important things out are also cornerstones of truthfulness. Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map. The map also should include news of all our communities, not just those with attractive demographics. This is best achieved by newsrooms with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. The map is only an analogy; proportion and comprehensiveness are subjective, yet their elusiveness does not lessen their significance.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

Every journalist must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility--a moral compass. Each of us must be willing, if fairness and accuracy require, to voice differences with our colleagues, whether in the newsroom or the executive suite. News organizations do well to nurture this independence by encouraging individuals to speak their minds. This stimulates the intellectual diversity necessary to understand and accurately cover an increasingly diverse society. It is this diversity of minds and voices, not just numbers, that matters.

In your case, much of your criticism comes from a distinct ideological perspective. That's fine, but surely you must appreciate that not everyone acts with your degree of ideological motivation.

Translation: You are willing to say that an apple is an apple, and ask others who call an apple an orange why they are calling an apple an orange. This means you are "ideological" and do not understand the proper function of journalism, which is to promote politics as a spectator sport free of the sort of "ideological" assertions outlined above. Not everyone acts with your degree of regard for what is true and not true.

Xenophon said (it's dangerous to over quote, we may later find out we quoted some person that was seen scratching 'um'de-Self in broad daylight in DC while naked)....

...In sum, all doe-eases need to be combated so the characteristics of the diseases go away (hint)....slackening what is tight and tightening (we all should be honest about the neo-con's now) and tightening what is slack; for that is the only way afflictions can be alleviated, and this, in my view, is a cure. This is a cure, omho, and thanks. inhale, and don't forget to exhale. We will go into a delirium and blame the wrong "We People." WE people want honesty.

Glenn,

Once again, nice work. I'd like to believe Mr. Harris and take him at face value,

but then he ends his second response by saying

"I consider the Drudge Report a successful aggregator—one a lot of people use

to direct themselves to interesting articles published elsewhere."

That answer is deeply disturbing. Either Harris is too coy by half, trying to avoid the

admission that Drudge is a partisan rumor mongerer and right wing spin purveyor, or he

is completely delusional. Which is it ?

Ralph

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/03/time-to-admit-oversight.php#more

Re: NO (that's apparently zero, zip, nada) coverage of Gonezopurge in TIME this week.

Link (favorably) cites GG

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/montaigne-essays-1.html#II.

"I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better" - Montaigne

N/T

Part of the problem with journalism these days is that journalists are taught they have to be "objective". They can't express an opinion themselves, even when the facts of the situation are beyond doubt. This is even expanded to exclude any analysis. This is how journalism is taught. Which leads to the situation we have now, journalism as stenography. It ends up in a he said she said reliance on official sources. Not the reporters assessment of what folks are saying, just WHAT they say. Leaving it up to readers to try and make sense of it, often with little understanding of the context.

Reliance on official sources. It didn't matter that hundreds of thousands of US citizens KNEW Bush's case for war was bogus. No one in Congress was saying it and so nothing appeared in print.

The problem is not that reporters are partisan. They are human and have opinions. I want more opinionated journalism. The real problem is that while it is totally subjective, the MSM maintains the facade of objectivity. The illusion of objectivity.

Mark Hertzgaard formerly of the NY Times wrote a very illuminating treatment of this subject. "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency". Some fifteen years old but still very timely

I resent taking the time to write what I consider to be a well-crafted letter concerning one of Glenn's thought-provoking columns -- only to have my letter instantly relegated to page 10 of 20 (eg) because some inconsiderate jackass decided to bury it beneath multiple pages of third-party material cut and pasted ad nauseum. While I generally enjoy the letters of my fellow readers, please remember that your particular posts are not the reason I am here.

1. If you can't make your point in three or four concise paragraphs (at most), then perhaps your thinking is not as clear (or as entertaining) as you imagine it to be.

2. A link and/or short quote from a third-party source is sufficient. If I want to read more, I will follow your link. But multiple pages cut and pasted is very annoying.

Look, I realize Glenn's blog serves as a de facto chat room and surrogate life for a small group of his pre-Salon audience which posts to and for each other all day long (literally); but can't you guys and gals allow Salon's general audience some little space in which to have a serious discussion before you take over and start running the letter tallies into the multiple hundreds with the stuff that is of interest (if at all) only to you?