ABC News Admits: We're Irrelevant, Incompetent

Real journalism is hard. Covering stories about runaway brides is easy, but covering complicated stories about war, corruption, and structural problems in society is difficult to do, even if you only do a mediocre job. Some so-called journalists find the task so difficult, in fact, that they are admitting that they aren't even bothering to try anymore.

Consider this from ABC:

Brides gotta run, planes gotta stray, and cable news networks gotta find a way to fill a lot of programming hours as cheaply as possible. (CNBC gets to talk about the booming April retail sales numbers, and the NRA's television network will replay the Secretary of State on Larry King over and over.)

We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering. And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans.

Democrats are so thoroughly spooked by John Kerry's loss —- and Republicans so inspired by their stay-the-course Commander in Chief —- that what is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage. No conflict at home = no coverage.

This isn't some blogger critic of "Mainstream Media" saying that news about the war and the carnage in Iraq won't "break through to American news organizations." This ABC, one of America's largest and oldest news organizations saying this! ABC is admitting that the carnage in Iraq is the biggest news story of the day, but that neither they nor other news organizations will do serious reporting or investigating on it. It's just too hard.

David Sirota explains:

One guy I know at ABC wrote me and said that they weren't actually endorsing this supposed "conventional wisdom" ... he continued on by saying the networks aren't interested in Iraq, in part, "because it's a very hard story to cover these days."

That was about as disheartening as the New York Times top White House reporter telling the public that the reason the media refused to ask the President hard questions before the war was because the reporters wanted to be "very deferential" and that "no one want[s] to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."

For any reporters reading this, here's the deal: As my dad always said, your work is supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it (and granted, some of the no-talent clowns on TV prove, unfortunately, that everyone is doing it). The fact that Iraq is a "hard" story means you need to work extra hard to cover it - not simply ignore the story altogether, and create/justify an insulated Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom that says no one cares.

Sirota calls this situation nauseating, and I agree. When a journalist say that a particular issue the "biggest story every day in the world," but that they won't seriously address it because it's "too hard," then they should simply hand up their tape recorders and find another job more suitable to their intellectual skills. I'd like to come up with some witty suggestions of what sorts of jobs they should consider, but I can't think of any that I wouldn't be insulting by saying these "journalists" would be appropriate candidates for it.

Far from stupid, the American public keenly recognizes that many major media today are simply no longer interested in reporting on anything that might fundamentally challenge the Establishment power structure. For when the media seems more interested in covering what's on the President's Ipod and what the President's dancing habits are than they are the death/maiming of American soldiers in Iraq, well, we've got a serious problem.

A serious problem indeed. Why would ABC even bother to stay in business if they don't care to bother to do real journalism anymore?

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