The National Media

The Christian Science Monitor has a story about the media coverage of the Jena 6. I haven't really followed the story that closely because honestly I never had any faith that the national media was getting it right. The thing I found interesting about the Monitor story, though, is this line:

In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism.

I wonder if it occurred to the author that maybe the reason is that it's the first time he's been personally involved in a story that made it to the national media. Katrina was known to be a media disaster. Every piece of technical information in my field I've ever seen reported by the national media has been wrong. A friend of mine who is a lawyer said he sees the same.

If the media gets it wrong whenever you intimately know the facts, why do you assume they get it right when you don't?