Tuesday, June 06, 2006

MSM ADD

An admission of a certain lack of seriousness on the part of the MSM, from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:
Ogden, Utah: Yesterday the Web site of the WP led with a story of 56 Iraqis who had been rounded up, seemingly at random, by people dressed in Iraqi military uniforms. Today I see not a word of follow-up -- is anyone looking for those people? Is the U.S. military involved? The FBI? CIA? NSA? Anyone? Nope, today it is congressional travel and worries about gay marriage. Is the news media in this country no longer able to cover a story longer than 24 hours?
Eugene Robinson: Good questions, all of them. I think the reason you're not seeing follow-ups on those kidnappings in Baghdad is that nobody knows much more than we knew yesterday. But it's true that the U.S. media seems to suffer from ADD in the worst way. More news, real and fake, flies at us every day, and we tend to get, well, distracted.
Increasingly, it seems, the MSM would prefer that news comes to them rather than making the effort to go out and find it themselves. (Via Romenesko)

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