And they led with stories based on their importance to the public, not on the ratings. The greed thing is where she really nails it. In those days, Anna Nicole, if she was mentioned at all, would get 20 seconds at the end of the broadcast, not the lede and newspapers offered more than two paragraphs cribbed from the wires that are repeated in every McPaper in America. They actually spent money on investigative journalism back then and wrote with a point of view – which by the way is not the same as bias.

I blame media consolidation. I think if we rolled back the rules that allowed the mega-corps to form in the first place, we could save the medium.

I think these days, because of the incredibly vast and virtually free exchange of information, we’re more skeptical of traditional news sources.

The filter of the establishment, like the NYT, the big three or even CNN, has been exposed for what it is. A filter. By necessity it’s a filter that bows to big corporate interests that they require for survival and profits.

While I don’t think Americans have become smarter due to this increase in information and viewpoints, I think we’ve at least come to realize that there is no such thing as an unbiased source.

Did Joe Pulitzer or William Randolph Hearst build their newspaper empires on straight news? That ain’t the way I heard it.