Letters to the Editor
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Audience a part, too
Audience is also an issue. As Glenn has noted, often, there's rarely (if ever) one over-arching unified theory that explains the collapse of a system in a simple sentence or two, and so part of it is the insular (non) vision of the media insiders, but I wonder if a part of it is also the audience (and any number of other factors I haven't been able to figure out, as well).
If the sales are there (and perhaps they're not; from what I understand newspaper sales are suffering heavily, but perhaps it's not the case in other media outlets), then the output of content and form continues, because it's a breadwinner.
Rush Limbaugh, for all his distortions and outright lies, remains on the air (he's not a news source, though many people probably turn to him for "news") because he's generating dollars for the networks.
For whatever reason, it appears to be serving CNNs shareholders, or bottom line, or whatever, to devote inordinate amount of attention to the death of a celebrity with paternity issues, rather than focusing more on abuses by the administration, and so forth.
I don't want to argue against people enjoying and having access to the media content and news they want (celebrity gossip or weather or geopolitical reporting or what-have-you). But it seems to me that the national audience, as a whole, plays a role in what gets distributed.
Now, the other counter-problem to this (one other one, anyway), is that if the audience at-large does not recognize that what is being disseminated is, in fact, false, or at least against their best interest, then it's tough to fix, because how do you use the media that is trusted to explain to those trusting the media that the media can't be trusted?
No kings,
Robert