"At the end of a long and mostly innocuous article in the New Yorker about the ups and downs of NBC's Today show, Ken Auletta relates a "late lunch" he had with Katie Couric. Couric was "worried" that hard news didn't appeal to viewers. During a brief chicken-and-egg discussion between Auletta and Couric ("are we giving people what they want?" "Or are people watching what we give them?"). Couric then forthrightly declared, "I always felt it was our responsibility as journalists to explore issues and talk about subjects and have serious stories that people need to know about to be informed citizens." Admirably put, I thought. Then Couric recounted a story of which she was especially "proud," a "terrific story" that was "honest and very well produced."
In this year of endless blood flowing in Iraq, of Rovegate, of the ongoing venality of an administration with almost no constraint on its dishonesty, what was the story in question? You guessed it – Couric's exclusive interview with Jennifer Wilbanks, aka, the "runaway bride.""
http://gadflyer.com/flytrap/index.php?Week=200534#2113
And one wonders why this country is falling apart? Instead of doing their job to present the nation the facts of the day, so people can analyze/question the actions government and leaders make, the mainstream media instead are either swallowed by the right-wingnut echo chamber, or dumb down the nation with stories like this.
It never fails to amaze me that despite all the advancements in communcation technology in the digital age, how truly uninformed and unresponsive people are. Perhaps this is a reason. I truly believe there is large percentage of the population that has tuned out just about everything important as a result.
