The American media is suffering from financial pressure, but more worrisome is that its quality has gone downhill.  The major news organizations are failing in their coverage of the big stories.  More people turn to sources like Wikipedia and blogs.

I’m not the only one who says so.  Ryan Chittum, writing on the Columbia Journalism Review‘s blog, pointed out that thin coverage and the back-paging of front page-worthy stories is a real problem for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal:

The Journal, which scored recently by bringing David Reilly back into the fold after a stint at Bloomberg, posts a Reilly news article looking at the culpability of Lehman auditor Ernst & Young. The paper dumps it on C7. The NYT has on the same angle—a very good one to examine closely—and slides it inside on B2.

Somehow the Times thought more people would care about Sorkin’s scoop on a $3 billion deal for Tommy Hilfiger or that it was more important than an auditor approving accounting fraud. They don’t and it’s not.

Look, I know that Lehman collapsed a year and a half ago, but this is a major story—one that finally gets awfully close to putting the crimes in the crisis. I’ll go ahead and say it: If you’ve wanted to know about the Valukas report and its implications, you’ve been better served by reading Zero Hedge and Naked Capitalism than you have The Wall Street Journal or New York Times. This on the biggest financial news story of the week—and one of the biggest of the year. These papers have hundreds of journalists at their disposal. The blogs have one non-professional writer and a handful of sometime non-pro-journalist contributors.

Chittum, from his perch at the CJR, points to several Lehman stories that blogs broke that should have been broken by the big outlets if they had just…read the Lehman report.

I’m not crowing about this: it’s terrible.  Blogs can never replace a professional journalism class; much of Wikipedia would never be written without top-shelf news organizations like the Times or the Journal.  Don’t forget the low standards at Huffington Post.

More evidence of the news organizations failing  jumped out at me in this Washington Post story about a persuasive healthcare speech President Obama gave today in Ohio.  Reportedly, some Republicans voters were swayed enough by the President to give it a try:

Still, not everyone has a firm opinion, and many admit they have a limited understanding of the details. Voters often say they are not sure whom to believe, offering a version of a comment by Patrick O’Toole, Mary Jo’s husband: “You hear this from one side and that from the other side, and you don’t know what’s right.”

Overlooking Obama’s shortcoming for not not hammering out these speeches much earlier and more often, Patrick O’Toole points to a media failure.  Too many media outlets are following the Fox News approach, which is to have no standards for who they put before your eyes.  There is weak critical analysis of what is said, so the news story is ultimately the talking point barked, when the story should be the talking point supported or debunked.  The consequence is an electorate exemplified by Mr. O’Toole.

Standards have eroded across the board; two months after Betsy “Death Panel” McCaughey was shown on Jon Stewart to have no basis for what was dubbed Lie of the Year, she wrote another column about the healthcare bill for the Wall Street Journal.  It was not accompanied by an editors note cautioning, “This woman can’t find her facts in the bill she is writing about, she just believes they exist.”

Image:  Travis Ruse.

George Will must be turning over in his grave.  Buckley, too.  Once a hallowed voice of conservative thought, the Wall Street Journal has been Fox Newsified as everyone feared would happen when News Corp. bought it in 2007.  Exhibit A:

A special committee was established to oversee The Journal’s editorial integrity. But after the managing editor, Marcus Brauchli resigned on April 22, 2008, the committee said that he resigned under pressure, and that News Corporation had violated its agreement by not notifying the committee earlier.  Brauchli said that he thought it was reasonable that new owners would appoint their own editor.

However, a June 5 Journal news story quoted charges that Murdoch had made and broken similar promises in the past. One large shareholder commented that Murdoch has long “expressed his personal, political and business biases through his newspapers and television stations.” Journalist Fred Emery, formerly of the British newspaper The Times, recounted an incident when Murdoch was reminded of his own earlier promises not to fire The Times’ editors without independent directors’ approval and allegedly responded, “God, you don’t take all that seriously, do you?”

Exhibit B:  Of all discredited people to opine about what the health care reform bill says, they chose Betsy “Death Panel” McCaughey (photo, above right).  She’s hardly Grade A conservative thought about one of our country’s most pressing issues; more former prom queen than Dow policy analyst.  What, were all the fellows at the American Enterprise Institute tied up?

McCaughey – a laughing stock after she continually couldn’t find her facts in the bill on The Daily Show — is now a regular Wall Street Journal columnist about health care reform.  She seems like a sweet lady, but this spectacle must make her children blush (video below):

McCaughey’s turn to be questioned was embarrassing as she kept flipping through the bill, unable to find the facts she was basing her arguments upon.  Women everywhere cringed.

She is the one who started the death panel rumor, the topic in the clip above that she couldn’t support.  McCaughey (pronounced “McCoy”) is a follower of faith-based facts; she is of a new class that discuss facts that can’t be evidenced.  It only takes a belief that the fact is there, even when it’s not.  Just like when someone believes the Earth is only 2,000 years old.  On the WSJ editorial page, they now feature the flat earthers of our national discourse.  Bravo, Journal.

A former insitution is officially Fox Newsified.

Stephen Moore is an economist who sits on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and founded the Club for Growth.  More importantly, he is a cartoon fiscal conservative, who champions all the policies–less regulation, trickle down economics, the Laffer Curve–that are largely responsible for the mess that the country is in (along with the money we blow on wars).

What’s the Laffer Curve?  That the less you tax, the more money the government will take in.  Make sense?  Back in 2005 Stephen Moore crowed about its success:

Once again, tax rate cuts have created a virtuous chain reaction of higher economic growth, more jobs, higher corporate profits, and finally more tax receipts.

Don’t you feel the success of the Bush tax cuts?  Are you spending all the extra money on college, since those are now run as international businesses that you can no longer afford, instead of as institutions for social improvement?

Back in 2006 Alan Miller of The Huffington Post and I attended a New York Times Talk that Louis Uchitelle moderated between Moore, Barbara Ehrenreich and John Edwards.  Moore continually talked about how our conspicuous consumption was evidence of how great our economy was doing.

At the Times discussion, I stood up and told Moore that everything he cites as examples of our success are really examples of our  decadence and decline.  He mentioned how many American homes have a television in the bathroom as evidence of our gonzo growth; I responded that it’s a waste of money to purchase a television just for your bathroom, and perhaps those dollars would be better spent on a doctor if one really needs to spend that much time on the toilet.  Having resources–such as money–isn’t a sign of prosperity.  It’s what you do with it.  Look at Nigeria:

“The Niger Delta holds some of the world’s richest oil, yet Nigerians living there are poorer than ever.”

Having resources, and using them efficiently and productively, are two separate things.  My comments received approval from the audience.

Afterward, I approach Moore for his current Wikipedia portrait.  He was not that pleased to see me after the event.  This was back when I had my small, 2.6 mexapixel Fuji camera, long before my Olympus DLSR.

Well, who should show up on The Colbert Report on November 13, but…Stephen Moore!  He’s trying to sell his new book.  Is it really something you want to read, a justification for all the policies that have created an increasingly disastrous disparity of wealth and the corporate welfare state we now live in?   With Moore’s book, you can buy the past–today!

By the way, compare my sourpuss portrait of him from two years ago with how he looks on Colbert; the dude is not aging well.  Maybe spend less time watching TV on the toilet, Stephen, and more time at the cosmeceutical counter at Bergdorf’s.  Srsly.

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