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Ken Auletta on media woes

Published Monday, October 25, 2004 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

Interviewed in advance of his Oct. 26 speech to an international PR conference in NYC, he says:

"The problem in journalism is the barrel that holds the apples. That barrel contains incentives for people to do bad journalism. I don't mean cheating and lying. I mean shortcuts that take you away from the truth or from in-depth reporting. I'm not saying the barrel is rotten. I'm saying it's rotting. Business pressures journalism to get better ratings, better circulation. Those business pressures compel journalists to go for the sensational, the conflict stories, the kind of stories that might command readers' or viewers' or listeners' attention. These stories are the most exciting, not [necessarily] the most important, things that happened yesterday. You get wall-to-wall Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson coverage, or the latest murder sensation scandal stories."