Journalism: Worst of all worlds

Instapundit lays out his concerns:

As I've said before, I don't know what worries me more -- the thought that the standards of journalism have been slipping recently, or the thought that, maybe, it's been this bad all along and we just couldn't tell before. . . .?

How's this for bleak-it's been bad for a long-time, it's getting worse, and it won't change soon?

Prestopundit relates an experience many of us can identify with:

Well, if you were on the inside anywhere in America when Big Media came to town to report on things, you always knew. When I was younger and living in Richland WA, CBS News or a big city paper would report on the happenings at the Hanford Nuclear Site. My dad was an insider, my neighbors were insiders. CBS News and the big papers always got the story wrong, in ways big and small.

Taking only CBS, before Rathergate there was the fantasy "expose" of the demon-possessed Audi 5000. Only someone completely clueless about cars could have produced that piece of ignorant sensationalism. Before the Audi story, there was The Uncounted Enemy: another muckraking piece that only the willfully misinformed could have put together. And don't get me started on the coverage of farming/farm programs or guns and gun control.

At the heart of journalism lies this problem: reporters have to write stories on subjects about which they are woefully ignorant. This is not a slam, just reality. Almost everyone would be in the same boat if they had to cover the beat of the typical reporter. The genius polymath who could do it is not going to work for what the average journalist earns.

What has changed is that too many reporters now substitute knowingness for curiosity and class solidarity for critical thinking.

They know the SBVT are lying and everyone they know knows the SBVT are lying. Doug Brinkley said so. QED. The charges are debunked. Who needs facts or analysis? Who even needs to read Unfit for Command?

That's how we get the situation Prestopundit describes:

What explains the poor performance of the press? Bias played a big part. But the biggest problem was a profound lack of background understanding. Almost always the storyline was pre-written, and this directed reporters away from getting the background understanding which would help them avoid errors and get the story right. In other words, pre-existing assumptions wrote the story in advance, and this pre-defined story prevented big media reporters from doing their job -- investigating and finding out what the real story was. Bias also played another role. Reporters were biased against those involved -- and this prevented reporters from making use of those with expert knowledge or solid local knowledge on the ground. That is, reporters were self-cocooned -- within their pre-written story and hermetically sealed against the penetration of any outside expertise or local knowledge.