The Death of Investigative Journalism

This blog did not start out with talking about news stories. In fact, it began talking about philosophy, religion and metaphysics. It was not intended to be instructional, it was more about just asking questions and looking at he possible answers. Once I felt I had exhausted those issues, I destroyed all of the posts. I couldn't even begin to tell you what the second version was about and eventually destroyed that version. The current version seems to be about the news.

I read the news and look for stories that others might not have paid attention to. Frequently the stories, in and of themselves, are not very exciting. It requires looking at the possible implications that is much more interesting. While reading news from around the world to find things that might affect us in the future, I discovered that the mainstream media is failing miserably and says pretty much the same thing in every city, every state and even most western countries. What I do not see anymore is what used to be called Investigative Journalism except from alternative media which tends to be so heavily biased as to lose credibility.

According to EBiz which looks at internet traffic monitoring sites, it shows what the top 15 news sites are. eBizMBA - Top 15 Most Popular News Websites | July 2013. Yahoo News ranked number one. I often link to Yahoo News and find it a good collector of articles; but, the vast majority of it's articles are simply republications from other sites. The next most popular are CNN, MSNBC, Google News, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Fox News, Washington Post, LA Times, Mail Online, Reuters, ABC News, USA Today, BBC News and Drudge Report.

All these sites are in a competition to get out the news quickly and more and more I notice that they are not having editors check what goes out and make many foolish spelling and grammar mistakes. I have no editor on my blog; but, lets face it, this is not a newspaper, has no budget, sells nothing and has no advertisements. You cannot really expect me to hire an editor.

It used to be that newspapers and news magazines would do investigative journalism and drill down into the headlines. People like Edward R. Murrow would do lengthy pieces on things that they spent months investigating. You don't really see that much anymore and when you do it is from the alternative media that frequently has a political agenda such as Alex Jones. We now have more access to news than ever in history and faster access; but, no in depth analysis. I cannot find ONE of the top 15 who predicted either the housing bubble crash or the stock market crash. That should concern us.

YouTube - Fox - 8/18/2007-One Of Peters' Favorites: Flashback Of Peter Schiff Vs. Ben Stein & Friends. Prior to the big crash in housing, some people were discussing it; but, they would always be outnumbered and ridiculed by people who really should have know what was coming.

YouTube - Ron Paul questions Alan Greenspan at joint economic hearing in 2004

YouTube - Jim Rogers "Housing will be a disaster" 5-20-2006.

There were people out there saying that the housing market was doomed; but, Greenspan and Bernanke said the market would have a soft landing right up until it crashed. The media spent more time reporting that and having wars of talking heads than doing any real analysis themselves or at least reporting what real analysis would have shown. Part of the reason is because the people reporting the news merely repeat the words of the person they believe is in charge. Mainstream media has just become porn focused on stories about some celebrity or tragedy.

The reason this is all a problem is because eventually, we don't believe any of the news and that is the same as not knowing what is going on. When an investigative journalist researches something, we should come away with information that they have independently verified and not just them repeating what they have been told. Another problem is that we focus on charts and graphs.

The financial news is the worst at using charts and graphs as they distract one away from asking the real questions about the innate value of a company. It would be like asking the Captain of the Titanic to predict how his trip would go. He would show all the charts and graphs which proved it was the best ship and all of the safety features being greater than other ships that had survived all types of problems. The same is true of the twin towers, their graph would show how they were better built than other buildings that had been hit by and survived plane crashes.

Because the media has become so ignorant, biased and centralized they have to explain how every tragedy could not have been foreseen. In Economics they have come to call these "Black Swan" events. The black swan is the idea that if you have only ever seen white swan then you could not predict that a black swan might exist and if you only bet on white swans then when a black swan showed up, you would lose all your money. It is a garbage theory and that is why we have contingency planners, they plan for the unthinkable. We have doctors who plan on fighting diseases that do not currently exist by asking what could be created, same thing.

Detroit, an analogy

So lets say that you are an underwater homeowner. You cannot afford to pay your mortgage and your property is worth less than you paid for it. At the same time, you have four kids living at home and only one has a job which pays minimum wage. Would your solution be to buy a swimming pool? That is what Detroit is doing. Rather than pay their mortgage or even feed their kids, they are going to build a $450 million hockey arena.