My previous blog entry praising Belmont Club was the product of several email threads (I loved Brock's comment on that article - The 4th estate has become the 5th column).  In one of the threads with a different friend, he asked me to clarify what I considered the role of the press to be & offered up his position -

At the heart of this whole debate is what you think the purpose of the press is. The reason I beleive the press exists (or should exist) is to continuously and relentlessly challenge the power of the government by exposing its workings and dealings. I want my press "anti" party in power regardless of what party is in charge. The president has the weight of his office, unlimited TV time and millions of dollars to spend on propoganda tailored to his message. To a lesser degree Kerry has some of the same ability. The press should undermine this ability, as best as possible by presenting fact. Al Jazeera as much as we hate it, doesn't "make stuff up." It presents facts in a specific way so that their audience will interpret it more than they should.

For me, it's a somewhat different proposition --> I like to think of it as "what the accounting dept is to a business; the press should be to govt."  As someone with a biz / finance background, I possibly have a different spin on the role of accounting and quote one of my intro/Accounting profs who defined it as "providing information to make decisions".

That means both good and bad info.  And context.

For example, a business may pursue project X which will generate 100 units of "Good" for 10 units of "Bad".   OR, it could pursue project Y will generate 10 units of "Good" for 2 units of "Bad".  A proper accounting dept will argue for project X because it has the higher rate of return.   Unfortunately, our press drones today only focus on one side of the ledger.  At best, they would argue for project Y (fewer Bad points!) and at worst would only report on the 2 units of bad that even stemmed from "Y"  (God knows out here in Calif, for example, they've interviewed everyone whose pet project was hit by Schwarzenegger's budget cuts!)

I think that most of our press-droids focus on this both out of Good Intentions and because so many of them axiomatically subscribe to the second, more subtle point in my interlocutor's note - that Power is the absolute enemy of the Truth.  Hence, the best way to demonstrate that you aren't corrupted by the Power is to report against it.  Few things demo better creds to your status hierarchy.  I addressed this somewhat in a previous blog entry on Romanticism vs. Post modernism. 

While I agree with the spirit of being critical of the of the party in power, it doesn't mean that the party in power is always supposed to be presented in the most negative way possible and that opposition groups with no power in the best light. When N.Korea says "this is in response to Bush" - it's regurgitated directly by our press corp. When Bush says "no more aid for N. Korea" - there's always a followup about the hunger, famine it will create and then some arg about N.Korea starting up it's nuke plants and how it's America's fault to begin with. 

The majority of young men and women who enter journalism do so not because they want to report the news but because they want to make a difference in society. In other words, they want to report certain kinds of news. They do not want to convey facts or explain processes; they want to shine spotlights on abuse. In some cases they are motivated by idealism; in others, by the hope that some of the light will reflect back on them.

I had a few friends in the Jounalism biz and saw this big time - they (personally) really wanted to be the Cause of Something. Implicitly, this meant "in a top down manner emphasizing Govt as a critical actor". I take pains to point out that they aren't evil in any way - just implicitly / systemically biased towards a certain means to achieving a certain ends both of which are "Liberal" (e.g. "Govt to achieve Social Justice" rather than "Freedom for Avg Joe" --> hell, in one case, my friend went into the presscorp to specifically avoid being an avg joe!)

Perhaps the most pervasive way in which journalists are different from normal people is that journalists live in a world dominated by government, and they reflexively see government action as the default way to approach any problem. Journalists' world is dominated by government because it's so easy to cover: Public agencies' meetings take place on a regular schedule and, with rare exceptions, have to admit journalists. As a result, participants in the meetings play to the press, inside and outside the meeting room, and the result is the elaborate dance of symbolic actions - gaffes, denials, sham indignation, press conferences, inquests and endless process - that dominates our news pages and means next to nothing in the long run.

 

Journalists tend to give private enterprise short shrift because it's harder to cover: The meetings are private, aren't announced in advance, and reporters aren't invited. Unlike politicians, most businesspeople aren't required to interact with the press, and many avoid doing so when possible - the downside is usually greater than the upside. As a result, journalists are generally reduced to covering what businesspeople do more than what they say. This is more work, so less of it gets done.

 

It's no accident that for the most part, the news is dominated by people whose value is largely driven by how much publicity they receive: politicians, athletes and entertainers. The people who actually make the world work - people in private industry, rank-and-file government employees and conscientious parents - are largely invisible in the news, except when they're unlucky enough to make one of the rare mistakes that reporters manage to find out about.