Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

Reductionist portraits and crude shorthand

Highly relevant if convoluted New Yorker peice on the mass media provides a textbook example from the "cutting one's own throat" school of journalism:

"Conservatives feel estranged because they feel excluded. They do not always see themselves portrayed in the mainstream press as three-dimensional humans, and they don't see their ideas taken seriously or treated respectfully. This is something I've long felt we should correct, not to pander to red-state readers but because it's bad journalism to caricature anyone with reductionist portraits and crude shorthand..."

And "red-state readers" avoids being a reductionist caricature how? The article concludes

"Journalism that is inquisitive and intellectually honest, that surprises and unsettles, didn't always exist. There is no law saying that it must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn't exist and that have worked hard to undermine it. This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don't believe in us, don't want us, anymore".

The writer seems torn between craving the "values" of media executives who dictate editorial policy, or the notion of independant and forthright writing, and spends considerable effort taking cover behind the barricades of perceptions of an uninformed public to take aim at "quasi-journalistic pleasures that lie outside the boundaries" - weblogs and independant newswires whose agenda is not set by business or political imperatives, that is.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 11:43 am ::