I have grown increasingly distrustful of American media outlets. As a teenager I saw the demise of the only Washington newspaper that seemed to fairly present the news, The Washington Star. As I followed the news over my college years, early career years, marriage, middle-age and up to now, I have seen a continual decline in the quality and honesty of the American media.
FOX News brought some encouragement, but I believe it also led to the mixing of serious journalism with opinion. FOX News maintains a clear separation between its serious news slots and its opinion slots, but the fact that both are available from the same source and that the opinion shows have developed huge followings has apparently prompted the other news networks to mix opinion with news, something they were already doing with a bit more subtlety than they do now.
An October 24, 2008, column by Michael S. Malone, directly addresses this issue. One of the things he has to say is:
If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
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