Internet is least of woes at major newspapers

After softening up the readership with a couple of harmless, campy columns about nothing in particular, I decided that this was the week to hit them with serious political issues. Thus, I give you this week's column:

Revenue at the NY Times disappearing. Circulation at the LA Times way down. TimeWarner subpoenaed. Trust in media at disturbing lows. Were it any other industry, the press would be covering an astounding viability hemorrhage, but we in the media don’t care much for being the news.

While major newspapers may not be reporting the story, they are frantically trying to diagnose the source of the bleeding. And, of course, the culprit du jour is the internet.

But is it?

In a 2003 poll, only 26 percent of Americans intimated that major media was providing fair and accurate coverage of events and public figures.

That was before CNN chief Eason Jordan and Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley accused American troops of murdering journalists; before CBS ran a hatchet job on the president using fake evidence; before Newsday grossly overstated circulation; and before Newsweek ran an unsubstantiated, error-riddled story, causing fatal riots in Afghanistan.

Did I mention the grossly inaccurate coverage of hurricane Katrina’s aftermath?

Major newspapers have become little more than outlets for vendettas and political advocacy. They have abandoned what little sense of fair play they may have ever had.

There are myriad examples. The NYT splashed Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days. At the same time, it is all but impossible to find positive news from Iraq in their pages despite the milestones reached on a daily basis.

Consider this: On Oct. 25, Iraq passed a constitution by a 79 percent margin, with a voter turnout that puts ours to shame. This event transcended milestone and jumped straight to “out of this world historical significance.” Rather than highlight this watershed moment though, the Washington Post led with “Military Has Lost 2,000 in Iraq,” as if 2,000 is somehow significant where 1,982 was not.

The Post did run an Iraq constitution story buried on page 13A. It was called, “Sunnis Failed to Defeat Iraq Constitution.” If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought the Post was disappointed.

Our own Star Tribune is certainly no exception to this rule. Their shameless over-coverage of Morgan Grams in 2000 was anything but subtle. More recently, a Trib columnist conducted personal attacks against the authors of Power Line, who came to prominence after helping expose CBS for not properly vetting memos so obviously fake it had become an established fact within 10 minutes of their use.

Often, agendas are hidden behind claims of neutrality, such as in Chicago, where the Tribune refuses to refer to people who blow up children on purpose as terrorists. Editor Don Wycliff explains the policy: “We won’t call someone a terrorist simply because today’s terrorist sometimes turns out to be tomorrow’s statesman.”

Isn’t that special? Heaven forbid they alienate a potential future source with bad press.

Given the evidence, and this is but a fraction, can it be any wonder that Goldman Sachs calls 2005 the worst year in four for newspapers?

Despite all of this, don’t look for major newspapers to view this problem introspectively anytime soon. Rather, expect the blame for woes to fall on the internet or, better yet, the lack of interest in news by a distracted generation.

And, unless they have an epiphany in the next year or two, expect the debate to simply die away altogether.

There will be too few readers left to care.