Category: Media

A study published in the September issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine has received a great deal of media attention this week. The Stanford University research examined the nutritional value of organic and conventionally grown foods. The manner in which different media outlets have framed the findings of the study has generated varied reader comments, rebuke from the organic movement and discussion on the motivation for the research.

There are two recent trends in journalism that I find increasingly annoying. I dislike most first-person reporting. Sure, when a journalist has a connection to his or her story there is a legitimate reason for an occasional “I,” “we” or “us,” but for the vast majority of cases, I’m interested in what journalists have to report, rather than learning about their connection to or interest in the topic. (And I say this with the full knowledge that I have started my own book review in this issue with a first-person example! Sigh…)The second trend that irks me is that of National Public Radio, which since early this century has been increasingly fixated on music.

One of the most repeated pieces of conventional wisdom about the lead up to the war in Iraq is that the press served as a cheerleader for the invasion, buying into the Bush administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction and connections between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. This view is embraced so fervently in academia that it seldom is questioned.

The joke’s on us might be the plaint of those who voted for Barack Obama believing they were electing the anti-Bush, a long-awaited liberal peace monger who would restore the nation’s standing in the world as a paragon of rational diplomacy — who would eschew the might-makes-right unilateralism of the Bush administration.

Mark Vittert, who may be the richest, most influential journalist in St. Louis, won’t answer journalists’ questions. As a result,……