(iverson's) currentbuzz: U.S. media have lost the will to dig deep

Following up on a previous post about the morphing of American reporting into transcription:

In the L.A. Times, Greg Palast discusses his story that painstakingly demonstrates how election fraud was perpetrated in Florida by Katherine Harris where the names of black voters were purged from voter rolls through underhanded tricks like ignoring middle initials. I felt like the 2 reporters in the Moyer's documentary about the vote fraud. It was true. It was documented. But no news organizations would talk about it. Was I being paranoid? No, I was being victimized by the slide of journalism into self-censorship as corporations gobbled up our various independent news organizations and became one with them. If money is talking, we know what is walking...

I know some of the reasons why investigative reporting is on the decline. To begin with, investigations take time and money. A producer from "60 Minutes," watching my team's work on another voter purge list, said: "My God! You'd have to make hundreds of calls to make this case." In America's cash-short, instant-deadline world, there's not much room for that.
Are there still aggressive, talented investigative reporters in the U.S.? There are hundreds. I'll mention two: Seymour Hersh, formerly of the New York Times, and Robert Parry, formerly of the Associated Press, who uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. The operative word here is "formerly." Parry tells me that he can no longer do this kind of investigative work within the confines of a U.S. daily newsroom.

Source: latimes.com

But Palast isn't the only one with follow-ups to "Buying the War." David Sirota brings us "After Moyers Iraq Documentary, DC Reporters in Damage-Control Mode" where Sirota says,"

Moyers piece is important not just because it has exposed the entire sham that was pre-war Beltway journalism, but also because he has finally exacted a price -- in this case, humiliation -- from the reporters whose power-worshiping, must-stay-on-the-cocktail-party-circuit tendencies led them to aggressively push this country into war. And we can hope that fear of future humiliation will help prevent another gross abdication of responsibility next time around.

Source: alternet.org

As someone who has consciously avoided viewing television news for some 20+ years in favor of reading news in print and online and using NPR and BBC radio feeds as sources of news, I have been belittled by colleagues and political types for not following the Washington reporters and the way they "cover" the White House and national issues. I often felt that I lived in a different world from many people. A world where news stories had some depth and nuance and where there was more than what a talking head, be it the Pres or one of his minions, said. If the Washington press corp still has any integrity, I hope this public mirror held up to their vanity and impotence in the face of money, power, and class will jerk them back to the roots of American journalism where it was a source of pride to speak truth to power and question even near-regal authority closely about the facts of all of our lives.