Sponsored Content
« CPAC Blogging | Main | CBS Scapegoats Want Management Under Oath »
February 15, 2005

It's Time For Transparency In the Media

Someone who didn't leave their name tips to this good Command Post essay:

It's the currency of exchange for daily life, and mainstream news organizations (at least before the blogs) have been our banks of information: they held the currency, and they distributed it to the populace. And in serving that role, we made a similar investment in the mainstream media: We invested our faith.

Which is where CNN has something to learn from Pep Boys. Publicly traded companies must now begin to provide high levels of transparency if they hope to keep the faith of their investors. The same is now true for MSM news outlets. For ... well, forever, really … they’ve been able to live in a world with no transparency, and make choices about how to handle the investment of faith by others without accountability to the investor.

Not any more. Now The Flow, facilitated by the blogs, are pulling back the covers on our banks of public trust. Dan Rather, Howell Raines, Eason Jordan … they were the CEOs of those information banks. For decades they've made choices of how to handle the consumer’s investment without providing any visibility into direction or intention. They've had their ENRON here and their WorldCom there ... we just never learned of them. Now, the blogs are forcing transparency upon you, and some consumers are rightly finding that their investment hasn’t been treated as well as the like.

Same basic point I made earlier, but from a different angle. The media, because its function is as a gatekeeper of information, has been more successful at hiding its errors and biases and, well, lies than any other industry.

That's changing, and they don't seem to like it. The scrutiny they apply to government and business -- "sunlight is the best disinfectant" and all that -- is now being applied to them, and they're whining about it like truculent children.

Hey-- every other industry and profession has had to deal with outside media scrutiny since the invention of, well, the news itself. Why on earth should the media itself be immune?


digg this
posted by Ace at 05:14 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Duncanthrax: "Did we just go grey? ..."

Ian S.: "And the blog has suddenly gone all grey. ..."

Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden: "We're GRAYS! We're grey..... ..."

trev006: "Right. The WEF types think they can have all the a ..."

garrett: ">>>I propose we make all journalists wear those li ..."

ace: "Lèse-majesté: an offence against the dig ..."

"Perfessor" Squirrel: "I just wanna know if there are nudes out there of ..."

BunkerintheBurbs: "I believe that "CatTurd" has inferred that he is t ..."

Bulgaroctonus : "AOC or Sparkles? ..."

Duncanthrax: "Y'all just want to date her. ..."

fd: ""that's a foolscap (fool's cap)." Huh. It's als ..."

Hadrian the Seventh: " i noodleded Posted by: gnats local 678 at June ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64