News should be REASSURING, shouldn't it? SHOULDN'T IT?

I certainly thinks that's part of the problem. People who work in TV news in the US depend on ratings for survival. They will show just about anything (take sweeps month, please) if they think people would watch it.

If people showed a penchant for serious, hard-hitting journalism, there'd be more of it. But what's the popular cable news network now? Fox, which waves the flag and lets us know that everything is fine as long as Bush is in charge.

In other words, I'm afraid we can't just blame the media...

Agree D'art. I only wish that those of us who want the facts (just the facts, ma'am!) could find them in a few corners of the mainstream press...

News is Entertainment.
In the ratings game, most news outlet brag how they are the 'most watched', number 1 station ect never about their fact finding skills.
Talking heads are rarely ugly, or even old. Wisdom is replaced by youth and beauty.
In my home town, an excellent journalist, received the most calls ever to the station, because people didn't like her hair.
So I'm not sure who's to blame, the media outlets pandering to hollywood like ideals or the public for insisting on it.

'Tis a vicious circle, 'tis..

I don't know - I think there's some sort of change going on in certain papers. It seems to me that some of the shine has gone off Bush. For instance, in the Washington Post, the coverage of Bush's press conference is bylined by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen. Now, Bush may think it's good coverage, but there's a tone there, a different use of quotes. The interesting thing to me is that I didn't get this from the Post. It was carried - bold front page cover - in my local paper, which usually means it's gone to other papers too. This is just one political story. But I can't help wondering if maybe a lot of reporters have decided to stop some of their fawning.

Also - there are so many other pubs out there - here's one called the Black Commentator, with a link to some interesting coverage. It's slant is to a particular audience - but the, aren't they all?

http://www.blackcommentator.com/51/51_dlc.html

I'm with mj on this. I think some of your (anyone, not mj specifically) perception of the news is colored by your personal point of view, but beyond that I think it depends on the story, the source, the writer... Some news is fluff and crafted so as to not make waves. Other stories definitely upset someone's applecart, and while you might want that applecart blown to tiny pieces, that doesn't mean the story was designed to be "soft" and easy to digest.

I think any one of us could find examples of both "soft" and "hard" journalism just looking at today's headlines. I don't think our media are perfect, but neither do I think that they are universally flawed. Like most things in life, the news is a mixed bag. You have to sort through to find the stuff you need, want or like.

I will add that I think that growing access to international news sources is a positive "pusher" on US media. They will find it increasingly hard to present a skewed version of events (in those cases where they might wish to do so) as more and more people have access to news sources from outside our borders.

News should present the facts and be unbiased.

Am I remembering wrongly or have you previously argued that all news is biased and anyone complaining about bias is wasting their time? I may be confusing you with someone else. (???)

I don't understand how au's last post and the statement you just posted, Scrat, are mutually exclusive.

I didn't claim that they were. I believe I was asking him if he had made the other comment previously, because the context in which I recall that comment being made was in rebuttal to my contention that the media ought to be unbiased. (See the relationship?) No they are not mutually exclusive, but if he is the one that wrote it before, it was being used as a foil to the very statement he is making now.

But I suspect it was not he who made the earlier statement, which would make my question moot. (au can and I'm sure will put this question to rest for us when he encounters it.)

Good writing, as in good reporting, is clear, concise, orderly, and without obfuscation. It refrains from unnecssary words or phrases, tries to be as accurate as possible without making excuses or apologies. It also tries to be as objective as possible, without the constant pointing to others, unless to quote something to back up a statement.

As an editor for many years (and many of them on technical papers), I know that unless writing is clear and says what it has to, it loses the reader. And if it stays in the personal mode, it also loses the reader.

Scrat
My response answered the question what news should be not what it is. In addition I don't remember making the statement you attribute to me. Is all news biased yes most is it carries the bias of the reporter.

But the British journalist used the word "reassuring," not "biased." That's an important distinction. We tend say "biased" in these discussions when we mean politically biased. "Reassuring" has another connotation which I find revealing and unsettling: we have fallen out of the habit of welcoming the truth.

To have news that's reassuring means that we avoid unpleasantness -- not the worst sin in the world but one which inevitably leads to worse trouble. People used to mock (see Monty Python) the deadpan delivery on BBC-TV. But put it together with the high reputation of the Beeb for accuracy, and you had a very reliable source of information.

Ok - so take CNN. Is that reassuring? They are so repetitious they are boring, which is different from reassuring.

I watched a very interesting PBS documentary on Watergate the other night. And thinking back to it, what I remember is Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post insisting that everything had to be verified by at least three sources. That, I think, is part of reassuring news - to know that what is being reported has been checked and verified. That that Washington source with no name has actually been verified before it got into print. This has long been the reputation of the BBC, and one reason why so many have trusted what the beeb says. Now that's reassuring.

At present in Oz our Minister for Communications is staging a full-scale attack on the Australian Broadcasting Commission because certain current affairs programs published "un-American" reports on the Iraqi war. Seems the ABC's coverage was too negative & not reassuring enough for his liking!

Mamajuana -- I used to argue on Abuzz (and will continue to argue here) that the visual components in contemporary American TV news are in themselves misleading -- deliberately I believe. If you watch CNN or FOX and then make yourself stop listening (or turn off the audio) and watch with a careful eye the presentation of images, you see the way in which news presentation can become wildly dishonest in a way that no transcript of the broadcast (or quote from it) will ever pick up. Which is why I pulled the plug, of course.

Infrablue has posted the transcript -- on the 'Legalizing Drugs" thread -- of an O'Reilly interview with someone defending drug legalization in which you can also see the use of "oops, time's up" to squelch valid arguments from the other side.

Tartarin
Interviews are not news. They are opinion, editorializing and the presentation of ones views which is all they are meant to be.

No they are not, nor did I intend that example to be taken as news, in spite of the fact that O'Reilly himself presents the issue as news.