We Can Fix It (Although Nothing's Wrong). Really!

The Providence Journal's editorials are generally fair and well considered. This, however, lightly highlights an attitude that contributes considerably to the problem:

As far as the BBC is concerned, Lord Hutton's report was full of recommendations about reforming its editorial processes to avoid a recurrence of that one faulty story. Our conclusion is that news organizations, even government-subsidized ones like the BBC, are well equipped to improve practices on their own, and that the last thing a free press needs is government "guidance" such as Lord Hutton suggests.

It wasn't just one story, and it wasn't just a fault. I haven't read the Hutton report, so I don't know if this remains an officially unstated truth, but the underlying problem is that the BBC acted out of naked political, ideological interest. It didn't just err; it deliberately "sexed up" its story on intelligence being "sexed up" out of an inexcusably similar motivation to that of which it accused Blair's government.

How can news organizations be "equipped to improve practices on their own" when they don't realize that anything substantive needs improvement? Frankly, I'm beginning to think — not only out of wishful thinking, but out of observation and analysis — that the day of "big media" as some mythically objective social institution and political force is coming to its sunset.

The major outlets, such as the Providence Journal, aren't going to disappear; they've too many resources and investments for that. But they will become, in essence, better-funded, more-polished, but no more credible bloggers.