Something to ponder:

In center-left blogland, there has been much angst over what is seen as very poor reporting of important stories. One of the best places to go (technically, not a blog) for press criticism is The Daily Howler which has done yeoman work chronicling the errors and lack of seriousness that persists in the media. So, the public is being duped, right?

Not necessarily. Consider this story in the Los Angeles Times:

Subjects Seem Unfazed by a Reporter's Misdeeds
Many people quoted by a New York Times writer accepted his fiction as a fact of life.

Here is the interesting detail:

In a telling sign of how little Americans seem to trust the press, many of the people Blair wrote falsely about in the last seven months shrugged off his mistakes as more examples of sloppy, melodramatic reporting.

and

"There's a general undercurrent out there that we have an uncaring press, not particularly interested in getting everything right and not particularly interested in hearing from people who want to complain," said Bob Haiman, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation that advocates for 1st Amendment rights.

"sloppy, melodramatic reporting" is what most of the Iraq war was full of - expecially with the Jessica Lynch story.

Has the nation finally got a case of "Tabloid Fatigue"?

We hope so.

posted by Quiddity at 5/18/2003 10:54:00 PM