Legal Commentary

Effective Use of the Media

By Jeralyn

Big Tent Democrat wrote earlier on his thoughts about the uselessness of the mainstream media. He ends with:

I used to devour news. Now I find it useless. I do not trust the Media. And I do not think their editorial judgments of what is news is particularly helpful or insightful. (Glenn Greenwald's column today demonstrates why.) So like the Sunday Talk shows, the Media is really becoming NOT part of my life. Is the same thing happening to any of you?

I still find the mainstream media very helpful. I just factcheck it by reading multiple accounts and comparing it to source documents. [More...]

For example, in writing today about the California bill passed last night to cut prison funding and overcrowding, the story to me was not so much that the bill passed, but that the version that passed was a weaker one than originally proposed and one that fails to comply with the federal court order. The tough on crime Republicans in the California legislature won the day.

To get the whole story, it took reading the LA Times, the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News and then the text of the amended passed bill.

The text of the bill alone would not have done it.

Maybe it depends on whether you are looking for commentary and opinion or news and analysis. I pretty much read the mainstream media for news and analysis, not commentary and opinion. And when it comes to analysis, I compare numerous versions. For commentary and opinion, I'm going to read the sources I trust whose views I generally agree with, like the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch.

With everyone on Twitter, finding breaking news and reactions quickly is easier than ever.

I've never watched the Sunday news shows and rarely watch cable news any more (it's not in HD here and they have cut costs to the point where they have the same predictable stable of pundits on night after night, almost all of whom I have no interest in watching.)

The media is changing, which to me doesn't make it useless. It just means I've changed how and when I rely on it. I really regret that so many newspapers are folding and cutting their news staffs. More and more, I just want the news, from which I decide whether to do further research and can draw my own conclusions.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 12, 2009 (boomark / email).