By Eric Boehlert,
Media Matters for America
Posted on February 12, 2009, Printed on February 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/126536/
What happens when media monitors mangle journalism in ways far more severe than the work they're supposed to be appraising? What happens when press critics, instead of calling out newsroom missteps, simply propagate their own blunders in the name of analysis? When they weigh down their critiques with blatant misinformation?
It's a constant quandary when it comes to right-wing critiques of the press, which are typically filed by ideologues who, rather than trying to improve journalism, want to eradicate it, which pretty much sums up the painfully (purposefully?) unserious work done at Brent Bozell's NewsBusters outpost.
But the question becomes more problematic when those kinds of factually challenged critiques are embraced and presented by the mainstream media themselves. (Yes, it's ironic and sad that the traditional media often provide a forum for dishonest media criticism.) It's troubling when a phony, partisan attack on the press gets dressed up as a thoughtful examination and is hosted by one of the country's largest newspapers, the way Jonah Goldberg's anti-press piece was last week by USA Today.
Even for Goldberg, who makes his living casually smearing liberals as fascists, his USA Today media critique was an embarrassment. (For the paper as well as the writer.) It only highlighted what a mockery writers like him have made of the conservative media criticism genre. Poorly sourced and constructed around lazy, clichéd writing -- and in a couple of cases, outright falsehoods -- Goldberg's piece simply illustrated how, rather than illuminating shortfalls of the press, conservatives often just create more work for the rest of us. Because now I have to critique Goldberg's god-awful critique.
(More here.)
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