As always, you provide marvelous food for thought and much I’ll carry with me throughout the day.

I fear that journalism as a profession is dying, if not already dead. What that portends is frightening. Television, in particular, has become a wasteland, with the exception of PBS. Ritchens in his book “After Photography” makes the point we no longer have a common front page, and he’s right. If we have no common source of news, one that is honest and reports stories of significance and meaning, we cannot function as a democracy.

Frankly I despair when I talk to many of the younger generations, those in their 20s, 30s even in their 40s,. So many of them say it is fine the major newspapers are failing. They say it’s no loss because those (all) news organizations were always biased and corrupt. They have a point. However, without those who investigate, report honestly and edit with skill and integrity we as a people have precious little to base our judgments on. How sad that we have the technology to process and disseminate more information than ever before, while at the same time we seem bent on ignoring and destroying those institutions and mechanisms that could help us make sense of it.

Today I have a better sense of it, and would say this: we seem to have come to a time when people matter less than positions, and scoring points is more important than saving people, or reputations, or even a sense of civility.

The recent shenanigans at CNN over the Coast Guard maneuvers on the river are a perfect example of how far journalism has come from the motto that used to be engraved on wire service rulers: “Get it first, but first get it right.”

It’s clear to me that the standards I try to maintain in my own blog are often higher than those of so-called professional journalists. Cherry-picking details to support a particular view of a story is unacceptable. Reporting rumor as fact isn’t praiseworthy. While the plethora of information demands the old “two source” standard might need to be revised upward to three or four sources, it’s often revised downward to one source, or just supposition.

I’ve been involved in a bit of a personal experiment. Each day I listen to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Then, at night, I give the MSNBC lineup a listen. It is an extraordinary experience. The phrase “journalistic whiplash” comes to mind.
Even when I know they’re “reporting” the same event, it’s almost impossible to relate the two accounts to one another.

I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me two of the basic questions that should be asked of any event are: “What happened?”, and “What does it mean?” Until the first question is answered as fully and accurately as possible, it seems impossible to answer the second question.