Media industry in crisis as standards decline

[Guest High Plains Drifter]

Looks like it may be an interesting book -

 

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

 

Broadcast: 27/08/2008

 

Reporter: Kerry O'Brien

 

Part of the interview -

 

Kerry O’Brien speaks with investigative journalist and author Nick Davies about his new book, Flat Earth News. Davies argues that journalistic standards are declining the world over as cost cutting and government pressures take toll on the industry.

 

KERRY O'BRIEN: Do you see anything good in the internet and its impact on journalism?

 

NICK DAVIES: So the internet helps individual journalists. So you can get far more information sitting at your desk. You can reach far more people.

 

The story that I write today doesn't die 24 hours later in the old paper version - it's there people can keep picking it up forever. That's great.

 

But I do not subscribe to the view that we will be saved by the operation of citizen journalists and bloggers. I think there is a lot of cockeyed naivete about that. And that an awful lot of what bloggers put out is false, is crazy ideas and crazy facts, to the extent that bloggers have reliable information very often that's because they're feeding off the small extent to which the mainstream media are coming up with reliable information. If the mainstream are going to carry on getting weaker, as I fear, then the proportion of reliable information which the bloggers come up with will also decline.

 

More at -

 

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2348362.htm

 

 

[poteroo]

Interesting interview. A bit surreal that 2 journos can discuss declining standards without either expressing any real concern, or proposing any solutions. The major influence seems to be the flood of so-called 'press releases' from government and business - making life ever so easy for a lazy journo. Investigative journalism appears all but dead.

 

happy days,

 

 

[facthunter]

Journalistic ramifications.

 

The free press is so important an element in a functioning society which needs to be informed and have an input into how it is governed. How quickly we are losing this essential check to our freedoms to the need to make a profit above all else. Nev..