As regular readers (the both of you) know, I often jump on the Editorial page the of St. Louis Post Dispatch with both feet. But my hat's off to them today, they got it right:
"It is tempting to point out the Bush administration's credibility on Iraq and the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib is also suspect. It is especially tempting after the White House high-handedly told Newsweek "it would help to point . . . out" that military has procedures for respecting the Quran.But trying to shift blame back onto the White House doesn't further the pursuit of the truth. Nothing the White House does or doesn't do absolves the media of responsibility for its errors."
Of course, they did manage to slip in a moment of cluelessness amonst the clarity:
"Journalists must face the fact that the failings of the Times, USA Today, CBS and now Newsweek have made an already skeptical public deeply suspicious of everything they read and see in the mainstream media. Many cynics say they find more truth in the unsubstantiated rantings in the blogosphere than the careful reportage on the front page of the daily newspaper. That breach of trust could prove deadly to journalism and damaging to democracy."
How much careful reportange is there on the front page of the daily newspaper anymore? That's the question, and it's increasingly being answered with very little. How much unsubstantiated rantings in the blogosphere is there? Plenty, but there is plenty on most editorial and op-ed pages too, and there seems to be more careful reportage and substantiated opinion in the blogosphere than in MSM these days.
I long for a paper I can read and trust, but I can't buy one today. The problem is simple -- they've become hollow organizations that just don't have the processes in place to deliver that kind of quality. You will always have mistakes, yes even among American troops in wartime, but what you don't always have are the systems in place to minimize and correct those mistakes. And it seems that most of the people in the business don't even realize there's a problem, let alone what it is. But at least for today the Post Editorial staff gets it.
