All of a sudden we have a responsible media?

I am increasingly impressed with the calm, mature professionalism of the elite Washington/New York media. Only recently, and for several decades, the WashingtonPostNew YorkTimesCBSNBCABCCNN entities could not resist reporting dramatic national news — even if the information came to them by informal or questionable methods. From the illegally leaked Pentagon Papers three decades ago, to the illegally leaked Pentagon Iraq war plans of last year, the media elite senior editors never spiked an important revelation for mere want of quiet title to the document in question.

They would leave it to red-faced and exasperated senior government officials to express impotent outrage that the sanctity of government secrecy had been breached by enterprising reporters or heroic whistleblowers. Indeed, in the major media's bumptious and irresponsible youth, the Rathers, Bradleys, Bernsteins and Jennings could not completely disguise their prankish glee at the official discomfort their shady methods had caused.

But in the last three weeks, a calm, self-restrained maturity has suddenly swept over what only last month still had been the gangly, youthful, irresponsible Washington/New York media elite. Three vastly embarrassing and newsworthy memos — two from the Senate and one from the Pentagon — came to light. But in each case, the shocking revelations were not revealed in the august pages and electrons of the newly mature media elite.

In the remaining actual news gathering and reporting institutions (The Weekly Standard, the Washington Times, The New York Post, Fox News, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh radio programs, et al.) those three leaked memos were substantively reported on and extensively quoted. For those of you who get your news from the WashingtonPostNewYorkTimesCBSetc., here is a summary of those three now half-famous memos:

huh?

make no mistake, conservatives are right to think that journalism is their opponent. Examples abound so that any conservative must scratch his/her head and ask “Why?” Why do those whose job it is to tell the truth tell it so tendentiously, and even lie? The answer is bound and gagged, and lying on your doorstep in plain sight. The money in the business of journalism is in entertainment, not truth. It is that imperative to entertain which produces the perspective of journalism.
And that journalism does indeed have a perspective is demonstrated every day in what it considers a good news story, and what is no news story at all. Part of that perspective is that news must be new--fresh today--as if the events of every new day were of equal importance with the events of all other days. So journalism is superficial. Journalism is negative as well, because the bad news is best suited to keep the audience from daring to ignore the news. Those two characteristics predominate in the perspective of journalism.
But how is that related to political bias? Since superficiality and negativity are anthema to conservatives there is inherent conflict between journalism and conservatism.. By contrast, and whatever pious intentions the journalist might have, political liberalism simply aligns itself with whatever journalism deems a “good story.” Journalists would have to work to create differences between journalism and liberalism, and simply lack any motive to do so. Indeed, the echo chamber of political “liberalism” aids the journalist--and since liberalism consistently exacerbates the issues it addresses, successful liberal politicians make plenty of bad news to report.

My ongoing study of this problem is found in this thread

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