Paul Dirks:

I was a little kid when the Big Three went from 15 minute to half hour nightly news programs. Thirty minutes allows only for serious coverage of grave matters, and not continuing drama about: bug-eyed runaway brides, missing white girls in Aruba, breathless waiting for the DNA tests telling us who is daddy to Anna Nicole's baby and who takes under her will & etc.

"News" is now everywhere on cable, 24/7, and must be entertaining to keep ratings. That is only part of the explanation, but it is a significant part. As libertarian as I am and allergic to such accusations, I'd almost call it a market failure.

Glenn G. writes, "Chris Matthews came right out and said that he cannot fathom how anyone could dislike George Bush and regards anyone who does as a 'real whack-job on the left.' Just imagine the uproar among our journalist class, the screeches of protest in Howard Kurtz's column, if a 'news anchor' had said: 'Everybody dislikes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the right.' Would anyone think that a 'news anchor' could make a statement like that and retain a claim of credibility as an anchor?"

Allow me to be the first to point out that, given Bush-Cheney's shameful poll numbers, any news anchor who dared report that "everybody dislikes the president except for the real wack-jobs on the right" would essentially be telling the truth. Whereas Matthews's gushing man-crush praise for Junior Bush was very far from true, then and now.

It ruined healthcare. It's ruining journalism. Some things are too important and necessary to be left to the vagaries of the market.

"I'd almost call it a market failure."

Almost? Would you like to set up a spinach stand across the street from a chocolate stand? Sometimes the feedback loop that informs market decisions are disconnected or too attentuated to function properly.

Glenn--

Have you communicated the substance of this post to AP and asked for a comment. I'd like to hear how they respond.

is the condescension which the "media" treat others that arent't on the cable networks or don't write for a major paper. Any questioning or critique of them, by anyone other than their colleagues, is taken as being venomous and partisan. No one else's opinion seems to matter.

"Aravosis can clear it up."

That sounds fair.

Glenn

Aravosis says:

"[S]ome people say are you left, some people say are you right. I think are you fair."

Note that it's "are you fair" and not "you are fair". I think your comment about Aravosis contrasting Hume with Kurtz would be accurate if it was the latter, but as the transcript reads I understood it to be a continuation of the preceding thought -- he's setting up "third way", neither left nor right but fair.

...Of course they are threatened by Keith Olbermann because, simply put, he is more intelligent than they are.

I'm no genius myself but I am smart enough to realize America's MSM is made up of little more than a bunch of obnoxious dumbasses.

Olbermann, however, is an exception.

Olbermann is intelligent in the classic sense; he's not a shallow fake, an air-head whore (like, for instance, Hume).

So my point is when Olbermann articulates the obvious in an honest manner, it scares the hell out of the worthless soap opera zombies who currently make up America's MSM.

and yet... something about simply denying this conflation of Olbermann with O'Reilly bothers me.

I love Olberman and cannot abide O'Reilly... but perhaps it's time for Olbermann simply to ignore O'Reilly, instead of so often naming him the "Worst Person in the World." Even though I may agree with KO about whatever point he is making about O'Reilly each time, he does allow himself-- with this ongoing rivalry-- to be placed in opposition to O'Reilly.

And that is unfortunate, because what the work each do (and how they do it) is so completely and entirely different. Really! --giving any notice at all to O'Reilly should be beneath Olbermann. And wouldn't being ignored just make O'Reilly act that much crazier?

Free markets in America have made us the best in virtually every aspect of medical innovation and care, including pharmaceutical discoveries. The problem is in the access to the modern miracles, not market failure. The state of modern medicine in the U.S. is the exact opposite of our news in terms of quality.

The reason the news sucks is because people want the crap the news stations and papers peddle. It isn't a real "failure" if success is defined at giving people what they want, but it is a failure if success is defined as giving them what they need to be good citizens.

When Rupert Murdoch buys the Wall Street Journal we know that journalism is bound to improve!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/business/media/07carr.html?8dpc

Rupert Murdoch, the thrill-ride version of the modern media mogul, delivered a particularly head-snapping jolt last week when the News Corporation said it intended to buy The Wall Street Journal and the rest of Dow Jones & Company for $5 billion. Now that some of the commotion has eased, it might be worth a few minutes to examine the proposal bearing in mind Mr. Murdoch’s unique business DNA.

¶ First, the deal will be made at some point, regardless of what the Bancroft family said last week. Brute-force capital, like flood waters, always finds a way to break through.

¶ Despite his allaying words to the contrary, Mr. Murdoch would operate The Journal, including its editorial operations, as he sees fit. As Mr. Murdoch himself has said throughout his relentlessly acquisitive career, he buys things to run things.

¶ There is business synergy in the deal — between the News Corporation’s proposed Fox Business cable TV channel and The Journal, for example. But far more important is Mr. Murdoch’s own version of synergy, which puts business, media and government all in a single vertical. Owning The Journal would give him a powerful leverage in all three.

We're going to be sliding into an alternate universe if this media deregulation doesn't stop. I'm thinking massive campaign to get the Democrats to focus on the FCC and stopping this run-away media consolidation. It is deadly dangerous to democracy.

Fox News already deserves large amount of credit for helping the administration lie the American public into war with IRaq ... with this kind of leverage who knows what Murdoch and News Corp will be able to do.