Mark Bowden’s lament about the changing news business in the latest Atlantic decries the declining role of disinterested reporting and the growing influence of bloggers:
I would describe their approach as post-journalistic. It sees
democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle. The blogger?s
role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of
judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a
little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out
a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain
they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the
cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning
is way more important than being right. Power is the highest
achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to
mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism,
leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all
?news? is unapologetically propaganda.
Bowden’s comments reminded me of Dan Henninger’s comments about a “Gresham’s Law of Information” during his presentation at a 2008 John Locke Foundation Headliner luncheon.
