I personally think that reality has been taking a beating for some time, between the newspapers, cable news and the internet.

Commentary and opinion have become a commodity to be marketed, and now everyone has one. Just like the quote “We will all be famous for 15 minutes”, it’s now “We will all have important opinions for 15 minutes” seems to apply to everyone, in or out of the media. There seems to be no ability of the majority of the people to discern when someone may have something intelligent to say (maybe on C-Span) and the relentless idiocy that occurs on MSNBC, CNN and elsewhere. The repetitive nature of the same themes eventually bleeds into the heads of everyone that continues to watch.

ESPN is almost a living parody of this stuff, where so-called sports experts
regurgitate a just shown sporting event to explain what happened, because the fans couldn’t quite figure out who just won or lost, or what it meant. Create the need, then fill it.
So the newpapers have, to a large extent, let “opinion” dicate the form of the way the present news (and which news gets reported), they have lost a goodly amount of the readership, as even we unwashed in fly over country can smell the inherent dishonesty in the form and nature of even news reporting. And the rise of the internet gave a place where advertisers could go directly to the people, and bypass the printed page.

I think I crossed the Rubicon in the ’80′s during the Iran-Contra hearings, or the Ollie North Inquisistion. I had a day job, but my VCR recorded the hearings being televised on C-SPAN during the day. And weirdly enough, I would watch some of this at night (fast forward!). The gap between what I saw with my own lyin’ eyes and the way the hearing were summarized by Dan “Courage” Rather on CBS, brought me to a new level of awareness. It’s not that I lionize Ollie North, but the cupidity and vacuousness of the hearings, and the trivial nature of the questioning to illuminate obscure points brought home just what a circus it all was.
Then the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Then the way the Gulf War was covered in 1990-91.

The overall lack of integrity, disohonesty and naked partisan nature of the networks and major daily papers has dug a hole from which the will not recover. And cable news is not far behind.

The alternative? It may be born on the ashes of the this bonfire of the inanities, when and where these major papers die. Need and market may spur the revival of local papers’ dedicated to do local reporting, and rebuilding the old-fashioned business model of how papers were supposed to work.