As I noticed many years ago, it's
easy to notice that journalism
commonly, correction, nearly always,
is a long way short of
the commonly taught high school
term paper writing standards of
using primary sources, identifying
sources, quoting accurately, etc.

So, we can ask, why is that? Journalism
has too few college graduates
who majored in the humanities and
wrote stacks of term papers? Nope.

So, why? Sure: "Follow the money".
The media is ad supported. They are
in the ad business. For that they
want smelly bait for the ad hook.

Okay, how to get lots of smelly bait,
easily? Sure: Have one newspaper
write a smelly story, and then do
two things:

First, have other newspapers
write much the same story with
much the same smelly content and,
for credibility, maybe quoting
the first newspaper.

Second, with such a good thing, so
much smelly bait all on just one or
two days, of course, sure, keep it
going! So, write more such stories.
Then with so many stories, maybe
the readers will conclude that with
so much smoke there has to be
at least a little fire in there
somewhere. So, all the media
just does a gang up, pile on,
get on the band wagon, have a case of
some implicit collusion,
get on the big wave and ride it,
and, better to fit in with the
gang and, thus, get the security
from being one of the gang,
don't tell the truth, contradict,
or rock the boat and, instead,
just to along with the gang
-- mob.

So, create lots of smelly bait
across lots of newspapers for
lots of days.

Now that
ad revenue is really adding up.
All from a seed of nothing,
zip, zilch, zero, nichts, nil,
nada. Easy money!

There is a lot in common between
the OP and the movie
Absence of Malice (1981)
written by knowledgeable
newspaper guy Kurt Luedtke.
To paraphrase from the movie,
"If we only published stuff
we really knew, then we'd publish
monthly" and nearly all of that
would less important than
Mrs. Murphy's cat Fluffy
crying high in an oak tree.

There really is a lot of important
information the newspapers
could publish, but they won't consider
doing that, apparently because it
is just not part of their traditions.
Or, really, in the grand new standards
of intellectual safety, efficacy, and
relevance of the ascent of man
from mathematics and science,
the newspapers are still back in the
days of superstition, phlogiston,
Chaucer, and the techniques of formula fiction.

E.g., what is the definition of GDP?
Okay, now, to be more relevant, how is
it actually measured? Are there
some critiques of that measurement
technique? If we are going to pay
any attention at all to GDP, then
we at least should discuss how the
heck it gets measured.

Yesterday Hillary claimed that
some of the best paid 25 hedge
fund guys pay a lower tax rate
than kindergarten teachers.
Okay, address that issue:
Give us some solid answers.
True or false? If true,
then how do they do that?
I.e., what parts of the tax
law are they using?

I can toss off such questions
faster than I can type, and so
can nearly anyone interested in
government, but
such will nearly never be addressed in
the mainstream media.

One of the points in common in the OP
and the movie
is the defense by the newspaper
that "We have no evidence that the
story is false". Of course,
neither did they have any
"evidence" the story was true!

It's old stuff, e.g., back at
least to the movie Citizen Kane.

That's just what the newsies --
newspapers, news magazines,
TV news, news Web sites, etc. --
do. It's a very old story.

Greenwald's point is solid:
Can't believe what you read in
the newspapers.
Indeed, that remark is so
common and so readily believed
by the public that it is in
an old Andy Hardy movie from
the 1930s. Did I mention
"old"?

Some years ago,
I really, really wanted
to be a well informed citizen
and subscribed to more and
more news publications
trying to know more.
One day I added up I
was receiving 22 publications
a month. Earlier, I spent
a summer with my parents
in DC and each day read
The Washington Post
fairly carefully. Net,
I finally concluded I wasn't
learning much. Now I subscribe
to nothing on paper and very little
on the Internet.

I still want to be informed,
but the media is junk. Maybe
I'd take The New York Times,
but I (A) have no dead fish
trimmings to wrap,
(B) need no packing materials
(besides, all that ink creates
a mess), (C) have no need for
kitty litter, (D) for my
fireplace already have plenty
of fire starter paper from
all the phone books that are left,
etc.

So, media? Sure, light entertainment
following the rules of formula
fiction with good guys, a problem,
bad guys, etc. Any connection
with actual reality is
thin and incidental.

The media
would be less harmful if
people would just ignore it,
and I'm getting good at that.