I've long been a huge fan of the Redford/Pakula movie 'All the President's Men'. I've just watched the new release of this movie which contains a second disc of documentaries and features. One of these, 'Woodward and Bernstein: Lighting the Fire' contains some really interesting comments from journalists and people involved in media studies about how important this type of journalism is to a functioning democracy and how its presence is waning due to:
- Large corporate ownership of newspapers
- The tv news media
- The requirement to make money, not defend democracy
- The abuse of power in the government (putting people in prison for not disclosing sources)
- The ability of politicians to spin stories and to set the media agenda
The documentary also mentioned blogging and discussed what would be different about Watergate if it had occurred in this new age. It is clear that good, deep journalism requires institutions with the right power, intent and freedoms to pay journalists to do their job; cf. Rubel's post 'Most Bloggers are not Reporters'.
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