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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

From the article (quoting Philip Seib):

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Comparing it with the American networks "is like comparing The Economist to Newsweek."

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That's how I see it pretty much. I had accidentally stumbled on Al Jazeera English while channel surfing. Somehow I had always thought they were some shady, terrorist supported news outlet. I very much surprised at the quality of reporting and investigative journalism. They covered issues that actually matter in the world as opposed to "Tiger Woods has been thinking about a public apology" type crap or "Be afraid of killer fungus from outer space that eats your children" type stuff.

At the same time I don't know why CNN and other American network report junk. Don't they simply report what American public wants to see and hear? Isn't that a commentary on the quality of American viewers? They are in the business of selling the audience to the advertisers.

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> They covered issues that actually matter in the world as opposed to "Tiger Woods has been thinking about a public apology" type crap or "Be afraid of killer fungus from outer space that eats your children" type stuff.

Some one once said that the 24 hour news cycle was the worst thing that ever happened to reporting. I think Al Jazeera works partly because it's unabashedly about the world for the world. They don't need as much filler because there actually is news happening 24/7 if you have a wide enough scope, and they can't use as many country specific celebrity general interest stories because they're even more irrelevant outside the specific country.

Also Al Jazeera is just better, but I think some of that is inherent in their mission statement.

CNN started out this way. 24 hour news coverage of international events. Overtime it became more US-centric until it was the same 1 hour news reported 24 times per day.

CNN International is still fantastic. I watched it while in Singapore and was floored by the integrity of the journalists. Then I got back to the US and it was the same fluff pieces from the week before I left.

> At the same time I don't know why CNN and other American network report junk. Don't they simply report what American public wants to see and hear? Isn't that a commentary on the quality of American viewers? They are in the business of selling the audience to the advertisers.

That's the problem journalism is facing - funding. Maybe more fundamentally, the divide between the social value of journalism and the monetary value.

I think everyone understands the first part of the problem - without money, a lot of journalism just goes away. You can't afford investigations, foreign bureaus, thorough research, etc. Even simple beat reporting gets worse when there aren't enough beat reporters to go around.

What worries me is the relatively unacknowledged second part of the problem: Journalists end up doing MORE of the things that cost less money, or are more profitable, even if they aren't really good journalism. Talking heads, sensationalist stories, reprinted press releases, etc. There's also the more subtle corruption of PR agencies and political operatives that want to "help" journalists "understand" what just happened - even if the journalist is savvy enough to fight back, it still takes time (which is money!) to do that. The less resources the journalist has, the easier they are to manipulate.

The social value of journalism is accurate information. But ever since Craigslist punched a hole in the bottom of the classifieds market and let out all the profit, journalists can only make MONEY by getting a lot of eyeballs in a short time. And everyone who's compared Reddit with HN knows what happens when information delivery turns into a short-term popularity contest for the public at large.

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