Xanthippa's Chamberpot

Long gone are the days of the investigative reporter.

Now, we have ‘journalists’ and ‘commentators’.

Much of their time is spent going over press releases and spinning these into politically correct stories that promote their corporate owners’ messaging.  At least, that is what it seems like!

Sure, there are a some very bright exceptions – but these are few and far between.  Still, most journalists these days are more interested in presenting their credential at cocktail parties and at snap poetry readings than they are at actually doing investigative reporting or writing unpopular truths.

At the same time, the Corporations that own the Media – as well as many ‘champagne journalists’ – are complaining that the blogosphere often cites them as sources of stories and links back to them.  They call this ‘stealing their material’ – and claim this is why their business model is dying:  because they pay journalists to write a story, then bloggers will summarize it in their posts so nobody will pay for their newspapers…

Except that – the ‘blogosphere’ convention is to link back to the source – thus driving traffic to the source site, which translates into advertizing revenue!  So it is hardly the ‘poaching’ that the Corporate Media makes it out to be…

Now, the situation is reversed: National Post, one of the major Corporate Media newspapers, has lifted a story that was first broken (a week earlier) by SassyWire and spread by BlazingCatFur, who actually went and did a few follow-ups .  Except that, unlike bloggers – who cite their source and list the relevant links – National Post and its Journalist Bell did not even mention that it was not their crack Journalist Bell who broke the story, but a blogger!  No mention, not link-backs, no nothing:  leaving its readers under the impression that it was they who did the work!!!

My, my – naughty, naughty!!!

And more than a little dishonest…