Can We Get Some Real News, Please?

I get the LA Times on the weekends. It's kind of a leftover legacy of old media for me, and every time I think about cancelling it, I remember some attack by the wingnutosphere on the dreaded MSM, and I reconsider.

I just looked at today's front page, and I might not reconsider anymore.

Below is a list of the six stories on the front page of today's paper. Now, mind you this is summer, but it's one of the busier summer news weeks that I can remember, at least over the last decade. You know, with the wars and the vetos and it being 4 months from midterm elections and such. Look at these six stories:

At the top of the page is team coverage of the crisis in Lebanon and the personal stories of those who've had to flee. Very nice. We're off to a good start.

Then there's an article about the uproar in the New Orleans medical community over the arrest of a doctor and two nurses in the deaths of many hospital patients during Katrina. It's an interesting story. Fine.

Here's the rest of the FRONT PAGE in one of the more respected papers in this country.

Criminals are robbing LA restaurants. Um, OK. Maybe that leads off the local news, I don't get why that's on the front page of my paper.

There's a crazy party in San Diego every year, and people might be naked. NAKED!

Hollywood executives get fired in nutty ways. And this article is clearly a PR piece for a book on the same subject by Annabelle Gurwitch, who's quoted therein.

Christian retail stores. Yeah, get this, Christians buy stuff.

Ok, soooo.... what the fuck?

I expect the local news to revel in trash. I expect the cable nets to give me the juiciest and most pointless stories of the day. When the LA FREAKIN' TIMES devotes 60% of their front-page real estate to speculative "if it bleeds it leads" stories and total fluff, we need to be worried about the state of the media in this country.

A lot of the talk about the media on this and other sites is how they are biased, how they buy into standard narratives that they simply can't shake, how they strive for balance even if there is none. And I agree with pretty much all of that. But the tragedy is not what's covered, it's what's NOT covered. An independent press is so vital to keep a citizenry well-informed, and this sorry excuse for a front page is a perfect example of why so many of are fellow citizens couldn't name their Senators or pick out Iraq on a map. I respect ignorance more than stupidity: ignorance can be changed through learning and inquiry. But we're not getting that from the nation's predominant media.

Journalism is a for-profit enterprise, and one of the most persistent narratives in the newsrooms with which I'm familiar is that "we're just giving the people what they want." Sex sells, fluff is ratings gold, and the free market drives the content. This is complete nonsense. And the rise of blogs, is a testament to that.

If the media isn't shoveling fear down our throats it's doing its darndest to distract with the meaningless. I know newspapers are getting worried because they're losing market share, and particularly in the case of the LA Times, their parent company is talking about job cuts again. So they're desperate to increase readership, and they think that somehow becoming some bizarre hybrid of Maxim and US Weekly will bring them back to prominence. It's a push for the youth audience or something.

What this discounts is that anyone who wants to read a newspaper doesn't give a rat's ass about any of this stuff. Or at least, it's not the kind of material they turn to a newspaper to provide. Certainly not on the front page. The amount of news junkies in this country has not dwindled, they just migrated when their primary news sources weren't delivering, and technology showed them another way.

If the LA Times wants to be a tabloid, if they think that's a good business plan, then go ahead and be a tabloid. But don't expect me to renew.