Tuesday, August 04, 2009

I give up!

Walhydra knows she must have been a journalist in a previous incarnation, because bad journalism infuriates her so much.

She knows how absolutely essential responsible, professional, investigative journalism is to the growth and survival of real democracy.

So...this New York Times blog piece by Paul Krugman, whom Walhydra considers to be both a superb economist and an excellent journalist, makes her almost want to give up on the media altogether.

Here it is, in it's entirety:

Shape of planet blogging

Long ago I said that if liberals said the Earth was round, while conservatives said it was flat, the news headlines would read “Shape of the planet: both sides have a point.” But I encountered a new wrinkle today.

I was tentatively scheduled to be on a broadcast dealing with — well, I won’t embarrass them. But first they had to find someone to take the opposite view. And it turned out that they couldn’t — which led to canceling the whole segment.

In a way this goes beyond my original point, which was the unwillingness of the news media to referee a controversy by actually reporting the facts. Now it seems that a fact isn’t worth reporting unless someone is prepared to deny it.
Information isn't information unless the media can turn it into controversy?!