Back, I Think

I've been taking a break for the last couple of weeks, partly because nothing particularly earthshattering was happening and partly because I was so freaking sick of the inanity that was being printed, spoken, spouted, shouted, and driveled about it. The news media in this country have become completely useless. There is no news unless someone tells them something, godforbid they should investigate anything more complicated than a menu, and the punditry should be shot en masse. When Tim Russert is a RESPECTED newsman, it's an indication that the system has broken down completely.

One of the biggest problems (someday, I'll post about how the videocamera caused the downfall of the news biz....) is the rise of 24 hour news. Everything is immediate and everything is equally important (provided we have PICTURES!!!!!) A bomb in Iraq that kills fifty and Britney's latest twat sighting are granted equal time, and if not, then Britney's twat wins.

This is equally true in campaign coverage. Coverage of McCain's latest abortion of an economic plan is granted equal time with coverage of the statement made by Obama's sister's dogwalker's aunt's hairdresser's brother's ex-gay lover about something Obama said during recess in 3rd grade about the premier of West Freakoutistan's sexual proclivities. There is no balance between the important and the trivial, the urgent and the available..... There's a very good post up at TPM about this problem. Neither the author nor I have any solutions, but he does make a good suggestion at the end.

Update: In a marginally related post, Matt Yglesias, discussing the media's reaction to everyone else's reaction to last night's abortion of debate moderation, talks about the decline of the media.

On an unrelated note, I've been in about a million conversations navel-gazing conversations about the decline of "old media" like newspapers, magazines, and network television and never once has anyone suggested that declining audience might be in any way related to the quality of the product. Everyone knows that it's the public's duty to read newspapers, whether they find them useful and informative or not.

The comments are good too.