The sickening collapse of professional journalism

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In a comment on my previous post, the prolific contributor "Anonymous" raised a point that I consider central to any understanding of our current (i.e., since 1979) epoch: the utter failure of professional journalism to do its job. I've had a hard time writing clearly and concisely about this topic due to the enormity of the development, which unfolded before my eyes at the same time I was learning and practicing the fundamentals of journalism as a simple country editor and, later, a graduate journalism student.

The failure of professional journalism has been even more pernicious than the plague of Reaganomics and modern Republicanism --- even though it is largely a product of same. A robust, independent journalism sector could have informed (and outraged) the public about the rapid and unprecedented "acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex." But didn't. It still doesn't. Journalism failed all of us by becoming part of the problem. Professional, independent journalism is central to the nation's ability to self-govern because it is supposed to "have our backs" and sound an early warning to massive abuses of political and economic power. I think this idea was in Jefferson's mind when he wrote:

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

I am revisiting the issue this afternoon after reading this column, As Seen On Eschaton, in which Washington Post reporter Chris Mooney does a gentlemanly job of laying into George Will's global warming denial nonsense as a vehicle for a valuable, concise critique professional journalism. Mooney politely chastises his profession for failing to applying sufficient critical rigor in analyzing the pseudo-scientific claims of ideological bullshit artists who run political and media interference for entrenched interests. Hooray for Mooney!