Dave posted a comment shortly after I blogged “Biting the hand that feeds you”, saying I hadn't addressed the broader issue of his essay– that there is no “journalism” any more. Specifically, his suggestion is that there's a gap in the media's (or at least big media's) coverage of issues like the Fritz Hollings Campaign Contribution Protection Act or, for that matter the war in Afghanistan (Dave suggested the first, I suggest the second).

Okay, so does “journalism” still exist? Or did it ever exist in the form Dave calls journalism? And are there stories that the media won't touch because of self-interest?

Let's take on the last question first, and let it answer the others.

Certainly, mainstream (i.e. large corporate) media does ignore important stories. The answer is, abso-friggin-lutely. Let me direct your attention to Project Censored and its work, among others.
All news media journalists fight three foes:a limited newshole, impending deadlines, and the filter of their editor. TV News is the worst–you've got a daily deadline, a news hole maybe 1 minute long if you're lucky, and the rest of the world to fight against to get that slot. If it bleeds, it leads. And if Dan Rather/Tom Brokaw/Peter Jennings/whoever edits Headline News doesn't understand the importance of the story/doesn't think the audience will care/has a predetermined view of the world that the story doesn't fit, then, *poof*, it doesn't even make the web site.

Most newspapers fight the same problems–they have a general audience that they fear won't grasp issues like fair use rights outside the context of the Op/Ed page. So some very important stories never run, or get buried in the Business section as filler under the day's market numbers. And the shrinking staff at most dailies reduces the pool of people who can really go after these topics–those left are steered off them by editors who need to fill the news hole with stuff that they think readers will want to know about.

And, yes, we've seen Michael Eisner is willing to screw with his news division in the past when they've covered Disney. Eisner doesn't respect news as anything more than infotainment, and in the long term, he'll probably turn ABC News into some version of the Howard Beale Show. (An aside–if you've never seen “Network”, go to your local indy video store and get it–it's scarily prescient.)

For stories that fail to fit through the filter, the only way to get in is through the work of someone who adopts them as their own– like Seymour Hirsch has in the New Yorker with the war in Afghanistan. Somebody says, “I smell a rat,” and latches on (or, if they're more cynical, says “I smell a Pulitzer”).

So, every now and then, somebody does some real journalism. And that's when things get shaken up. The big media has to latch onto the story's buzz or lose eyeballs–they can't claim to be the [media format here] of record without covering it. The wires pick it up. Newspapers short on staff pick it up off the wires. And so it goes–every now and then, real journalism happens.

So yes, there are forces within big media that make it ignore important stories–until other media make it impossible to. That's why I never trust the big media to tell me the whole story–just like I don't trust any corporation or government agency to look out for my interests. Does that mean everyone working for big media companies isn't a journalist? Sorry, I'll have to decide that on a case-by-case basis.

More on this later.