Andrew Hagen

It looks like I paced Glenn Harlan Reynolds by a month and a half. Reynolds observes that the media’s swoon for John Kerry is likely to destroy the credibility of the media. (*) I made the same observation a while back. (†)

Reynolds adds a superfluous point on the new Internet “competition” for the old media barons. In fact, the primary news sources are the same on the net as on TV and in print. The media’s real problem is that when their credibility lies in ruins, demand for their product will dry up. People will be less willing to pay to read it, and advertisers will see less value in ad placements.

Building new media brands would be a costly investment.

To avoid disaster, the liberal media should just take the masks off and admit their biases, like Fox News or AM talk radio. Credibility comes from honesty and fairness, not feigned objectivity. The big media would temporariliy lose some of their audience, but they would be protecting their credibility for the long run.

Of course, NPR and PBS as government-sponsored media don’t have that option.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2004 at 15:42 and is filed under Election 2004, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.