I emailed this to a few people, correcting a few spelling and punctuation errors first. Maybe it will go viral.

By Customer0012 - June 6, 2008

I think we're all in agreement; the news media is awful. They report on trivial matters at the expense of real issues, a la the controversy mongering during the Obama-Clinton campaign. Their editorial pages are biased. They pay outright political hacks for "perspective." For example, Rove and Kristol have landed center-stage gigs at FOX and the NY Times, respectively. They're easily duped with bogus stories, and rarely do any fact checking. See the pentagon-generals-as-independent-informants debacle and the Valerie Plame affair if you don't believe me.

Oh sure, each of us may have his or her favorite anchor or reporter or on-air bloviator, but on the whole we can all agree that there's something seriously wrong with the media.

I'm here to tell you whose fault this is. It's mine. Of course, not me personally. I'm not stealing Chris Matthews' script or sabotaging the NY Times' Iraq war coverage or spamming the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Rather, it's the fault of people like me.

You see, I haven't had cable TV in six years. I don't even watch network TV. I haven't bought a newspaper, or a Time magazine or read any traditional print media in ... well, I can't remember how long. I couldn't tell you what the AM news stations are in my city. I haven't done any of these things, and there're a lot of people like me, and we are the reason your media is so bad.

Let me explain. You see, the news media as we know it (hereafter, just "media") is incredibly over budget and, concurrently, losing readers/listeners/views (hereafter, "customers"). This has led the media into a negative-feedback loop; the nature of the media turns away customers, and a loss of customers reinforces the nature of the media.

First, let's examine the nature of the media, and why we don't like it. For brevity, I'll only focus on sensationalism, but the same argument that I present there can apply to many other negative aspects of the media.

Most of us hate sensational and trumped-up stories. The brand of whiskey that Hillary drank in PA didn't have anything to do with the primary. A missing girl in Aruba is not the primary concern of Americans. These sorts of stories are even worse when they are reported on at the expense and real issues: health care, the Iraqi war, the economy and so on. In fact, the only thing the various candidate's supporters could agree on during the primaries is that the media doesn't cover the issues enough, and with enough seriousness.

That's what the media gives its customers; sensational and superficial reporting. Now, let's examine the customers' response to the above. Your average customer may not decide one day to just disconnect the cable, or to cancel his newspaper subscription, but when times get though, those are the first things to go. Hey, fifty bucks a month for internet can buy quite a few groceries, and you never really read the paper anyway. The icing on the cake is that when the customer decides to get rid of some media source, he doesn't see it as all a bad thing. After all, he never really liked the media to begin with.

So the media has lost a customer. Let's take a look at their response to this.

Like a whiney child that has been neglected, the media gets louder and brasher. The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, network TV and many others have increased their sensationalism and manufactured controversy in the face of losing customers and, in some cases, millions of dollars. Who can blame them though? After all, it's conventional wisdom that these sorts of stories lure in customers.

There's also an economic aspect. The media has been losing customers, and money, for quite some time. Newspaper circulation has plummeted. Network TV viewership is at an all-time low. Even AM radio is feeling the heat. It's much cheaper to manufacture a controversy than to research a real news story. So that's what the media does.

Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom is wrong. People don't like the fake news. Additionally, the media can't afford to do real research and reporting. So we're back to square one; the media has lost a customer, the circumstances of that loss are exacerbated, and the media unwittingly prepares itself to lose another customer, and on and on.

So, on behalf of me and everyone like me, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that your media is so bad, and I'm sorry that I'm not going to help it get any better. There will be plenty of posts in the coming days, on TPM and elsewhere, about how awful the media is. I can only offer you this; if the media gets so bad, and if you are gaining nothing from it, turn it off. Unsubscribe. Cancel the cable. The media will get louder, more superficial and even worse, but it won't matter, because everyone that pays attention already knows that the media, as it is now, is a failure.