The exposure of the short-lived Washington Post “conservative” blogger reveals a greater malaise within US corporate media:
The entire event seems a misguided attempt to placate the Bush administration, which the Washington Post is tasked with covering objectively. The notion that valid criticism and investigative journalism must be balanced with partisan puff pieces played out to its inevitable conclusion in the Ben Domenech affair. Have lessons been learned? Perhaps. It is doubtful that anyone with Domenech’s lack of experience will follow him, or that a blogger hired to present a conservative viewpoint will be plucked from a pool of established Bush administration cronies.
If we’ve reached the stages that corporate news organisations feel they must “placate” state power in order to ensure access and “sanctioned leaks”, the industry is in serious trouble.
It seems a foregone conclusion that we are way past that stage.
Er, yes. I know. But the exposure of such corruption still needs work. Until the wider public becomes truly aware of this, corporate media will still be massively consumed.