volinbham
VN GURU
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- Oct 21, 2004
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Forgive me for starting another media thread but:
I was watching the Sunday morning shows and was struck by the dual role of so many journalists.
For example on the Chris Matthews show, Andrea Mitchell was discussing Rudi Guiliani and how his ties to Bernie Kerik was likely to become a much bigger story. She's right and she can make it a much bigger story!
This isn't a liberal/conservative issue - it is an issue of journalists having working hypotheses and essentially creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Obviously, if there is nothing to the Bernie Kerik story it won't have "legs" but the extent of the legs can clearly be directly influenced by the amount of media attention devoted to the issue.
The dual role of being commentator/prognosticator as well as journalist raises some interesting issues...
I was watching the Sunday morning shows and was struck by the dual role of so many journalists.
For example on the Chris Matthews show, Andrea Mitchell was discussing Rudi Guiliani and how his ties to Bernie Kerik was likely to become a much bigger story. She's right and she can make it a much bigger story!
This isn't a liberal/conservative issue - it is an issue of journalists having working hypotheses and essentially creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Obviously, if there is nothing to the Bernie Kerik story it won't have "legs" but the extent of the legs can clearly be directly influenced by the amount of media attention devoted to the issue.
The dual role of being commentator/prognosticator as well as journalist raises some interesting issues...