As more journalists vanish, who will tell the truth about the liars?

Mitchell Bard, a writer, filmmaker, journalism academic and - as you will note - a political liberal, raises questions that haunt modern media.

To make his point he links two stories. First, the false claim on Sarah Palin's Facebook page that her ethics issues in Alaska are "a sinister 'partisan' conspiracy directed by Obama's White House."

Second, the reported axeing by ABC News of nearly 400 staff, about a quarter of its total staff.

Bard argues that "in a time of revolutionary upheaval in the way Americans get their news", there is a worrying possibility that lies, such as Palin's, will not be revealed as such because too few journalists working for too few outlets will survive. He writes:

With network news and newspapers struggling, the two pillars of traditional hard news are slowly disappearing from American lives. Yes, many people now turn to the internet to get their news, but this raises two main concerns. First, we are in a transitional era, in which the old media (broadcast and print) are supporting the free news content online. That model can't last, and we have yet to see a financial model emerge that would allow news content to be funded in an online future. Second, many online media sources (like cable news outlets) are partisan (while we know HuffPo is an excellent source of fact-based news, its progressive instincts can be used against it.

Bard fears that when Palin or other right-wingers (including Fox News presenters) tell lies, the traditional mainstream media is not in a position to expose those lies.

Though pleased that HuffPo and other sites - such as Media Matters - do expose the right's falsehoods, he writes:

There is a qualitative difference between challenges from progressive-oriented sources and the traditional mainstream objective media. The fact that such media are dying allows the lies to gain traction in some quarters.

He talks about "the emergence of a right-wing media structure (Fox News, conservative talk radio, etc.) that constructs its own set of "facts".

In this world, he writes, President Obama is a terrorist-loving Muslim socialist born in Kenya who seeks to have the government take over American businesses while stripping Americans of all of their freedoms. How can you reasonably debate policy when there are two different sets of "facts"?

Source: HuffPo