The inexorable decline of the newspaper industry continues unabated. The Rocky Mountain News will print its last edition today. They are not the first large city daily to close, nor will they be the last. In addition, The San Francisco Chronicle has announced it will close its doors if it cannot locate an interested buyer. The problem is, no one is interested in buying a newspaper these days, in the internet age, they are wasting assets.
In Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle, opinion columnist Debra Saunders takes to task those who are filled with glee over her paper's demise. Saunder's analysis is part factual, part wishful thinking. Saunders writes that,
As for those who only read their news online, here's a news flash: News stories do not sprout up like Jack's bean stalk on the Internet. To produce news, you need professionals who understand the standards needed to research, report and write on what happened. If newspapers die, reliable information dries up.
When Saunders asserts that solid news reporting isn't accomplished cost-free, I think her position is unassailable. Yet, she fails to acknowledge that for decades, mainstream newspapers abused their roles of gatekeepers, failing to report stories that were, or may have been, inimical to their ideological preferences. Thus, the death of newspapers doesn't necessarily mean the death of reliable information. When newspapers were thriving, there was always a death of reliable information in the sense that they deliberately failed to report or publish stories that would be injurious to their ideological world-view.
But Sauders enters the realm of pure fantasy when she claims that,
Newspapers are the public's referees as to which information is credible. You can go online and read no end of fiction and smear about public figures. But when you read content in a newspaper, you consistently can rely on it.
As every conservative pundit knows, there is a special credibility that comes with being able to say, "as the New York Times reported," or "as the Washington Post reported." Even "as The Chronicle reported."
Does she count the Jayson Blair affair as an example of reliable and credible information? How about The New York Times' scandalous story on John McCain's "mistress." Surely, she remembers the time when The Boston Globe, no doubt employing assiduously all of their fact-checking and "reliability" standards, rushed to publish on its front page, pictures of American troops "raping" Iraqi women which later were shown to be fraudulent. The Globe incident is a good example of newspaper editors, by virtue of their ineradicable left-wing bias, publishing a story as true simply because they fervently wished it to be so. Where were Saunders cherished journalistic "standards" in these instances? Were these examples of newspapers disseminating reliable and credible information?
The cherished "credibility" of information and reporting to which Saunders' ascribes as a unique and exclusive province of newspapers is an asset they have consistently squandered over the past ten years, as many have engaged in the practice of agenda journalism. The erosion of the mainstream newspapers credibility hit rock bottom this past election as they completely abrogated their resopnsiblity to inform the public about one of the candidates, Barack Obama, and instead, chose to act as his spokesman and advocate. As such, does Saunders' seriously believe newspapers acted as public watchdogs during the election campaign?
Then there is the pronounced liberal bias that seeps into both the front as well as the editorial pages, The San Francisco Chronicle being one of the most egregious examples of a newspaper disseminating to its readers only that which the editors deem worthy for their edification. Perhaps too, the readers of the Chronicle couldn't stomach another over-the-top column by Saunders' colleague, Mark Morford, extolling the mystical virtues of Obama, the "Lightworker."
Saunders engages in some rather self-serving pronouncements on the adverse ramifications of the newspaper industry's woes. She appears oblivious to the fact that their failure to abide by the very journalistic standards she alleges they embody is one of the main reasons that readers have gone elsewhere for their news.
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