Oregon Media Insiders

Is this a surprise? It shouldn't be.
Large corporations only exist for their own good; that would apply to all local media owners at least in television. So there is no "responsibility" to the public good in their eyes.
Try renting a documentary called THE CORPORATION. It basically points out that a corporation is a sociopath, only interested in it's own welfare. It's pretty disturbing.

I didn't say "all corporations are evil", I'm just stating the facts.

Excerpt from the article:

The only Oregon television station with a full-time Capitol presence is Portland-based KATU-TV, which had shut down its Capitol bureau but reopened it full time in 2000.

Roberta Altstadt, executive producer at the network, said viewers might be turned off by the word ?politics,? but they are keenly interested in the decisions made by politicians, such as funding schools, protecting air quality and regulating payday loan businesses.

Although Altstadt likes to air exclusive stories from Salem, the public would benefit if all news outlets took a bigger interest in government, she said.

?It would be better for every Oregonian if all the news organizations were down there showcasing what politicians are doing or not doing,? she said.

Anyone see any connection between the comment above and the KATU News item posted earlier today?

I hope someone gives us the low down and maybe an interview with Roberta Altstadt. I'm going to see if I can find a copy of the documentary The Corporation.
Remember Willie Weak, Big O, and the rest do not damage the good-will of advertisers. Truth is always secondary to money.
Guess why Telly news is only about human failings?

TV quit covering government and poltics years ago. Radio was first, then TV and don't look now but your newspaper (The O) is getting pretty short on coverage too.

Senator Trent Lott just left a White House meeting with the President, according to MSNBC.

Reporters asked him if they talked about the war in Iraq.

Lott said no, nobody at The White House or in America really cares about that.

While Bob Woodward's new book points out there is an attack on US soldiers in Iraq every fifteen minutes.

Bye arm! So long leg. Face? Where my face?

MSM=DOA on biggest story of their entire lives.

In todays media world, a lot of people consume media to reaffirm, not inform. Anyone doing real solid objective reporting today will get slapped with ignorance bias labels that will hurt their overall audience.

There is a lot of bad news and nobody wants it.

Better to keep coverage light, jump on the occasional big story and add lots of politically neutral material of interest. Bland appeals to everyone.

Temporary profits vs. real journalism and long-term service to the community. We all understand. They've been signing their own death warrants for a long time now. When their profit center dries up, perhaps they'll change.
As long as corporations run things, it will just get worse. I don't know anybody who relies on local news for their information. I doubt if you do, either.
People who post here pathetically complain about the age of "graphics packages" while their audiences go down the drain.
It's not only state politics that doesn't get covered. There is absolutely no arts coverage on local news, and to look at the folks doing the reporting, I'm sure they have a cultural frame of reference of about twenty minutes.

I'm not from the Portland area, but everytime I pick up an Oregonian or one of the indie papers I see arts coverage. Same with NPR, I usually hear something artsy.
You must be talking about T.V. I have no opinion there since I canceled cable and Seaside does not get the networks.

A more ON-topic note: I agree with the column by the Bulletin guy. It's nice to hear a paper guy calling out his peers on getting their acts together.

Yes, the media have done a lousy job with government/political coverage but in this age of Internet, cable TV, political books, documentaries, etc. there is just no excuse for citizens to be so uninformed and misinformed. Yes, the signal to noise ratio is lousy, but if you gather information from enough sources and have an open mind, you can begin to get a accurate picture.

It is truly alarming when 31% of people polled today still believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20060919_poll_results...

This is not the fault of The Oregonian, The Wall Street Journal, KATU or NBC Nightly news.

If anything, the people in this country have abdicated the responsibility to be informed.

Shouldn't it be "Have the Media Abdicated on Political Coverage?" instead of "Has the Media Abdicated on Political Coverage?"?

"Have" instead of "Has" since "Media" is a plural noun, in other words...

No offense intended.

Rick