The media be damned

Just as I was beginning to despair that no one feels about the media as I do, when I chanced upon an article in Playboy that decries the current state of the media. (And when I say, "I chanced upon," I mean that by chance I was in the bathroom and picked up our subscription copy.) It is the January 2006 edition, in the Playboy Forum, listed as Stepford Nation by Frederick Barthelme. The paragraph I love best is below:

Something is wrong with all this. There was a time, I think, though I don't quite remember it, when reporting was reporting, and it was reasonably measured, trustworthy, honest, decent, thoughtful and (occasionally) brave. My memory of Vietnam reporting, for example, is that reporters did not go loking for the most ghoulish and gruesome scenes, though they often found them. TV reporting then was not quite given over completely to the sensational. What we have now is a sideshow. Anything that can be made into a sideshow will be. Maybe reporters have learned that starring in a tragedy is the fast lane. Maybe producers are jsut feeding our insatiable desire.

Now go read you some sense.