Weblog
03/14/05 06:16 PM: Study Warns of Junk-News Diet
From YAHOO NEWS:
Study Warns of Junk-News Diet
American consumers confront an ever-broader river of news from myriad sources, but the standard for gathering and presenting the information tends to be “faster, looser and cheaper” than in the past, according to a survey of the news business to be released today by a media watchdog group.
Internet blogs and cable TV programs have led the trend toward a “journalism of assertion” that relies less on reporting than personal opinion, reported the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is affiliated with Columbia University.
That trend makes it more important for journalists “to document the reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it,” the organization concluded in its annual report.
On two of the top media stories of 2004, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet merited a mixed verdict, the study found.
On one hand, the study’s review of 250 randomly selected stories buttressed the complaint that President Bush got worse coverage than Sen. John F. Kerry in the 2004 presidential race. Coverage of the war in Iraq, on the other hand, tended to be far more neutral than some critics had charged
