Its not only conservatives vs. liberals
The U.S. is now straddled with a lazy, shallow print and broadcast media. They think that "balanced" news reporting is to simply have conservative and liberal "suits" debate an issue. What has happened to a once-proud journalism profession in America? What we have now is intellectual emptiness coupled with manipulated capitalism masquerading as journalism. This is now lack of back story wedded to advertising.
Like America's reputation generally and America's journalism specifically, we have fallen a long way from distinction and quality. Graduates from our schools of journalism have no clue what it means to be a professional journalist. Getting the background story and historical backdrop are absent. We still have a cadre of older men and women who know what a professional journalist is, but they are limited in what they can do and say. Their experience is harnessed to get a quick, often fictionalized, story. It is not the deadlines that cause this, it is the laziness or advertising requirements by today's reporters and editors. Sad.
What to do? I listen each night to the BBC Worldwide Service. I hear stories reported that are not reported at all in U.S. media. Some nights I hear about wars in Angola that are still simmering, or upheavels in Yeman that are not even covered at all in the U.S. media. And the BBC has on-site reporters in most areas of the globe. No U.S. service does this. Why? Can't giants like CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. afford this, but the BBC can? Huh?
"Self-government will be more secure if the editorial page recovers the vigor and stature it had before the businessman took over from the editor as top man in journalism." -Herbert Brucker
