It’s official, the news media is afraid of criticism and analysis of its shoddy, biased product. After years of telling America what is right and what is wrong from their perch of control of the airwaves, the news media is now finding itself called to standards of objectivity and depth of knowledge on all subjects they care to delve into it. And they are frightened by it! Now that their own consumers – “the public” (which have a choice where to get their news) – have applied THEIR own collective insights, expertise and experience to the hot topics of the day journalists have decided the public speaking out on matters of national import is a bad (and scary) thing – which needs to be challenged!

It ranges from the CNN YouTube debates to political blogs to cellphone video of that sniper who opened fire at an Omaha Mall. These are all examples of so called “citizen journalism,” the hot new extension of the news business where the audience becomes the reporter.

Supporters of “citizen journalism” argue it provides independent, accurate, reliable information that the traditional media don’t provide. While it has its place, the reality is it really isn’t journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse. The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.

Bull crap. The news industry needs to find a way to tolerate wider world views and stop pretending they are experts in fields they can barely grasp. Because they do not have the expertise to delve into subjects, and therefore rely on the biased “intuition” (which seems to manifest itself as wild paranoia) they have decided they must control and regulate their critics? Not going to happen. We still have a constitution and a right to voice our views – without regulation. Want to debate? Come armed with facts and preferably a reasonably good education.

These has-beens of information flow to the masses find scientist and engineers (like myself and others) who find faults and errors in their reporting on matters like Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Global Warming a threat! We are threat, but only to their careers – not to our nation which needs to hear from people with years of experience and expertise. When faced with people who understand the workings of our government and national defense infrastructure beyond a life time of ingesting made-for-TV scripts, these ‘journalist’ cannot accept the views of people who have deep insight into matters like NSA’s role in national security and liberty, or the role of technology in intelligence. So instead of paying attention and learning from the public these idiots want to regulate our speech!

You know what they really don’t like? They don’t like it when we the public, consumers of their efforts, find cheaters and liars amongst them. How about people who forge documents to make fake news? And no – I am not talking about RaThergate, that was not the only instance. And we all know Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame planted stories of forged documents being used by the White House to take us to war in Iraq – only to find later those planted stories were lies! How many staged and doctored photos have been uncovered being used in the media (here and here for example)? Hundreds I would guess. How many terrorist plants have been placed in the media as stringers and sources? How many stories run in the media have turned out to be lies?

Instead of the new media policing the public (Heil to The Gray Lady) they should police themselves and do something about the rampant misuse of propaganda being sold off as news. This panic and cry to control those who are simply demanding honesty, objectivity, depth and diversity from a dying industry is just an indication of how far the news media has sunk. They cannot compete with the thousands of experienced minds and souls who now can share their thoughts and come together when they agree on aspects of any topic of the day where the media missed, screwed up or tried to bury key elements of the story. But they also cannot control it – so give up on that fool’s errand right now. They have no right or authority to call for the regulation of the views of citizens – none. They dreams of being dictators is the product of insecure and frightened minds being outclassed in their own field.

Mea Culpa Addendum: In a second reading of the article listed above I think the author is looking to find regulations and standards for professional journalists – at least that is where he ends up. True enough, the crap we see as news needs cleaning up. But where the author made his mistake was starting off by blaming blogs and citizens for having views. That is ridiculous. They way crap gets passed off as news (whether as leaks from the government or war stories from fiction writers in Iraq) is because the news media buys the crap in the first place. It its in with their paranoid delusions. So while the call for the news media to clean up its act is something I can agree with, I still say pointing the finger at the public (and their customers) is a lame excuse to face the fact it is not those (a) correcting the stories or (b) planting the stories who are at fault. The buck stops with the news media.