This is NOT political, but a suprisingly honest self assessment
 

I found this commentary, written by a CBS editor, that is one of the most sincere self reflection pieces I have ever read.

Commentary: The unbearable smugness of the press - CBS News

I have tried to get the press involved with my 224 613 Project since 1993. Unless there is something in it for them-- like when the Scientologists called me around 2003 wanting to do an article about the abuse of psychiatry- usually I just have been ignored or have argued with some of them. Except for the Memorial Day 2007 article by Gary Corsair of The Villages Daily Sun about me and my work trying to get the Florida Victim Services Directory linked to the web-sites of the Lake, Sumter and Marion public library systems. Mr. Corsair Googled me and found some e-mails I sent Snopes.com back in the early 2000s. They had put these in their Tin Foil Hat section so that anyone could make fun of them but the e-mailer of the stuff to Snopes could not defend him or herself. A real nasty thing to do and grossly unfair.

My relations with the press now in 2014-2016 seem much better but it took the obvious help of some very influential people to get them even to pay attention.

I did send hundreds of thousands of e-mails to the press in 1999-2005. So I just over did it a great deal. I keep wondering when these e-mails and where they will re-surface. They do resurface --the ones to newspapers and the like-- every so often. Even if I sent them a decade or more before. There was one from the Student Newspaper at Brandeis-- The Justice-- from 2003 that came back up in 2011 that had a huge impact. It has disappeared again. But people could see it for a year or so right around the 2012 Presidential Elections.


So much now of the press seems to be about entertainment rather than anything else. I have no control over those hundreds of thousands of e-mails I sent from 1999-2005. None went to Anthony Weiner, I assure you.

Thanks for posting this. It seems to me that journalists used to be relatively impartial reporters of the news, other than those specifically noted as columnists or commentators. Now it seems that most political "news" is shadowed by the agendas of either the reporter or the news service he or she works for. It's part of what leads to the divisiveness we see pervading the country. Add to that the small soundbites and impersonal conversations on social media, and it's a perfect storm of misunderstanding and lack of objective discourse.

Sadly, I gave up on the press a long time ago. I honestly prefer "just the facts". I can make my own analysis and decisions from those facts, if honestly and fully reported. Instead, we get sound bites and opinions intermeshed with the facts. I'll happily read columnists and listen to commentators with the understanding they will slant the news to their viewpoint. I resent reading a reporter who only gives the facts which agree with his point of view.

:agree:

First we must separate real journalist from the many talking heads who look pretty and read what is written for them. with few exceptions journalist are no longer professional and ignore their code of ethical conduct when reporting. It seems far too many of the work from a confirmation bias fitting their reporting of facts to fit their belief (opinion) and not the true facts

:ohdear: Boy- oh- boy! Someone is going to get some P.M.s Hang on tight John W

:agree:

Thanks Outlaw - for a very interesting CBS article.

A good read; something that most of us have known all along about the press.

I could not have articulated this response as well as you did.

No wonder the Press has such a low approval rating.

It has been many years since the media reported the news. Back maybe 30 years ago, newspapers reported news and had an editorial page where they reported opinion. Television news had the news and then a commentary at the end for their opinion.

Then they started placing their opinion in the news stories and putting their twist and opinion on almost everything they reported. The readership and the ratings on most newspapers and TV news shows started to drop and have continued to drop every year. They tried to blame the internet, the education of the public and everything else except taking a good look at their smug biased reporting.

I would like to think that the recent failure of their just not even getting it close would be a wakeup call for them and that they would take steps to separate news and opinion back to the way true reporting should be done. But somehow I think they will just find something else to blame for their failure. As BHO said in his first days in office, "elections have consequences" and we will soon see if the media goes on the defence or makes some fundamental much needed changes and goes back to actual reporting.

I wouldn't hold your breath. :)