shouting from the left and the right as if this were real news and real information

I think media is getting a bigger problem by the day. Electronic media is the worst. Print media is close second.

Much celebrated hero-reporter of "Watergate" scandal Carl Bernstein (played by DUSTIN HOFFMAN in "All the President's Men" ) has this to say (Feb 2006) :

"But I think the really important trends in journalism in the last 25 years are basically the dumbing down of media what I called in a cover piece for The New Republic in 1990 the triumph of idiot culture, manufactured controversy, sensationalism, shouting from the left and the right as if this were real news and real information.In this cacophony truth, the best obtainable version of the truth, which is really what reporting is that snapshot at a given moment of where an event and the facts stand when reporting is good that's getting lost in this noise and, as Bob says, in this rush to get stuff out. Who the hell knows what's right and what's right and what's fact and what's context and what's not? And if you -- it's particularly egregious on television with all due respect and on the Internet."
Artist : Garrett Price The New Yorker 15 Dec 1945