Just the Facts, Please!

There are a couple don't-miss passages in this New York Times piece on bloggers and the media.

For instance, there's the former network news producer, Danny Schechter, who asserts that some media criticism is actually "partisanship": "This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Why do I have the gut feeling he thinks Mary Mapes' National Guard story was good journalism? :)

Then there's CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre, who says, "I don't worry so much anymore about finding out every little detail five minutes before someone else. It's more important that we take that information and tell you what it means."

There's the MSM in a nutshell: they are no longer interested in giving their viewers or readers the facts; they want to tell us what we should think about the facts.