It is the job of the blogosphere to keep an eye on the blather of the Big Media and correct it from time to time. I'd say we're pretty good at it, as, for instance, the New York Times learned following Judith Miller's paid complicity in the run up to war.
Miller, seems to me, was a fully-conscious shill for the Bushies, trading stories for flattery and easy access to power. No one could argue from the evidence that she is stupid or badly trained or casual about overlooking new directions that a story wants to take. She was on the take.
Others who write news for national consumption - and who are not necessarily shilling for the man - might as well be. When stinky little turds are left lying around important stories and passed off as posies, the quality of news suffers.
A small, but non-trivial example follows:
In an AP story headlined "US Detains 11 Iraqis in Search for GIs," found on Huffington Post, we read about the massive efforts to find three Americans presumed captured by insurgents. The story goes into considerable detail about the search activities and describes the region involved, including some Iraqis' reactions to the wide-ranging American activity there. We are told about the GI's known to have been killed in the ambush that preceded the kidnappings and of Al-qaida's threats of retaliation.
We read of a mortar strike on the Green Zone in which five contractors were injured, but we are told that life and work there go on as usual. Then we get the following:
Under a new government policy limiting media coverage of such tragedies, Iraqi police prevented news photographers and cameramen from filming the scene.
The order, announced over the weekend, is aimed at preventing journalists from inadvertently tampering with evidence, protecting the privacy of the wounded and keeping insurgents and militias from keeping track of their success rate.
Gaaachhh! What is wrong with this picture?
I see two things: for one, why are the Iraqi Police restraining journalists from reporting what happens in the American-controlled Green Zone?
But the other is way more important. No one believes for a minute that the press is being shut down to prevent mischievous reporters from rearranging evidence on the ground following explosions or in order to protect the privacy of the injured. And surely the insurgents already know they've set off a bomb or a mortar shell.
The truth is being withheld for the same old reason as usual: to prevent Americans from keeping track of their failure rate.
So, AP, with your expensive reporters on the ground: why don't you tell us what you - and we - already know? That, curiously enough, is an admirable and useful goal.