Jack Shafer points out the many ways in which Richard Posner’s review in The New York Times Book Review is sloppy.
“He ignores journalistic history as he spots emerging “trends” and gets basic facts wrong. A 4,600-word piece about the decline of journalism should cite numerous specific transgressions, yet Posner is too lazy to collect the evidence. He names only Newsweek‘s Quran retraction, CBS News’ mishandling of the Air National Guard story, and the media’s saturation coverage of the Michael Jackson trial. . .
[W]hen Posner cites a rise in press sensationalism, what is his baseline year? Surely he’s familiar with the journalistic circuses run by such press titans as William Randolph Hearst, Col. Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Pulitzer, Harry Chandler, and press midgets like Walter Annenberg. . .
When Posner declares that media competition has pushed the established press to the left, he gives only one example: Fox News making CNN more liberal. Has Posner lost his cable connection? The success of Fox News convinced CNN of the opposite. CNN realized that the demographic that has the time and interest to watch a lot of cable news tends to be older and more conservative, as this Pew Research Center report indicates. If anything, the one-worldist CNN of founder Ted Turner has been vectoring right in recent years.”