"Lousy Media Coverage" Hurting our Country says Pulitzer-winning journalist

I think of this video because of the coverage of the Occupy Movement and the continued abdication of the "mainstream" media of its role in informing the US electorate about important issues. While critical discussions around deficit, taxes and health care are playing out in our politics, the corporate media is focused on "who is winning," and "what does that say about this politician or that." There is no attempt to even try to make these important issues approachable in a serious way. Let alone give voice to viewpoints outside the extreme right wing to a little right of center.

more from David Cay Johnston via Media Matters:

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston offers a scathing indictment of contemporary journalism:

[W]e are failing in our core mission of providing people with the knowledge they need for our democracy to function.

...Increasingly what I see are news reports evidencing a basic lack of knowledge about government. And this isn’t happening just with beat reporters but with the assignment and copy editors who are supposed to review stories before they get into print or on the air.

…Far too much of journalism consists of quoting what police, prosecutors, politicians and publicists say—and this is especially the case with beat reporters. It’s news on the cheap and most of it isn’t worth the time it takes to read, hear or watch.

…Much of what passes for reporting about government these days is not only information that is useless, it is laughable nonsense, and I have the coffee stains on my robe to prove it. Every morning I read “Beat the Press” on the Center for Economic and Policy Research website, which is liberal economist Dean Baker’s critique of the economic theory, policy and “facts” he finds on the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media outlets. Baker routinely picks apart articles that are as far from reality as a weather story that says the sun rose in the West.

Sometimes I send these criticisms on to the ombudsman or top editors of the offending publications. I have even put together packages showing from the newspaper’s own clips that what was printed is utterly false. But I rarely see any corrections made nor any insistence that writers actually know what they are writing about when it comes to government policy, economic policy, taxes or treaties.

There’s more, and it’s well worth a read.