I like the Black Eyed Peas' new song, Where Is the Love, except for the fact that for a song against prejudice, it says something pretty prejudiced in it. "Wrong information always shown by the media..." they sing at one point. People often forget, when they blame "the media," two important facts: 1. It's often the media who are protecting you by being the only folks to be pressing for the truth when everything and everyone else is funded and controlled by the government (duh), and 2. "The media" consists of thousands and thousands of often-young, idealistic people who got out of college and took a low salary so that they could learn about government and what's going on in the world and write about it -- and they can't all be grouped into one category. For every Jayson Blair, there are 1,000 cub reporters doggedly hanging around a City Council meeting holding a politician's feet to the fire on why he gave his cousin a $1 million accounting contract. Let's think about the "duct tape" controversy. What happened there was that the government had raised its terror alert, no one really knew how to react, they kept pressing for more information or something they could do, so the media asked gov't officials and found someone who suggested buying duct tape. That had nothing to do with the media wanting to "create" fear or a scandal; it was a media reacting to the public's lack of information and trying to find something when the gov't was being less than forthcoming. The media doesn't try to create bad news. Anyone who works at a newspaper will tell you that it's 10 times easier to write a feature on granny's 100th birthday than to keep calling someone who doesn't want to talk to you about an investigative piece. When you blame the media, consider how many people you're blaming, and how much they do for you every day whether you know about it or not.

The only scary thing is how many newspapers are being joined and condensed these days. Every time we lose a newspaper, we lose a little bit of pressure on our gov't to be honest. The loss of dailies has strengthened weeklies (like the chain I edit), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have plenty of both. Unfortunately, some newspapers lose money, and they can't exactly get government grants like maybe your business does.

One more thing I'd like to say is that the media doesn't focus on "bad" news, as the Black Eyed Peas imply by saying that we show the same images over and over. We show evocative images, sure. But the more we wake people up, the more we can prevent tragedies from happening again. If you'd like us to start reporting every safe landing of an airline so that when one crashes you'll know it's a rare thing -- rather than just focusing on the crash and why it happened and how to stop it from happening again -- you just let us know. I don't think the media should spend its few resources covering every safe landing at the airport.

UPDATE: Faithful blog reader Brad writes:
You defend the media and its eager cub reporters so much, but you fail to mention that the media is a business, and like so many businesses, it boils down to money. As Robin Quivers says, "Anger and fear sells". So the media prints shock-value headlines (some media outlets are worse than others) in order to tempt people to buy the paper and see their advertisements. They don't lie outright, but they certainly color the facts for a particular agenda (whether economic or political). Your paper isn't affected by this concept because it's free. For proof of this concept, see the movie "The Insider" with Al Pacino.

It's true that SOME media outlets print shock headlines, but that's my point. They don't ALL do so. If you judge "the media" by what SOME of them do, then that's unfair. I e-mailed Brad and told him that, and he still said there are people at the top who want power and money, and they make decisions like "Hire Jayson Blair." True. But when criticizing the media, remember all the good they do. And most of the Times reporters are doing the best they can with what they have. As for "The Insider," the journalist did his best to expose big tobacca. Nobody else did. And such a story being squelched is the exception rather than the norm -- which is why it's in a movie. Where is the love?