Trusting New Media Over Big Media?

Two absolute must-reads on the whole issue of Big-Time-Professional-Journalism’s devolution into something shaky, and the Upstart-New-Media’s evolution into…well, what, exactly is not yet known.

Check out AllahPundit’s comprehensive and angry recap of faked and choreographed photojournalism, those who have witnessed it, those who seem to defend it (or would wish it away into something small) and the evidence at hand. It’s a hard-drive keeper.

Then go to Patterico for more thoughts.

The issue of where the professional press is headed is one of the biggest stories of the blooming 21st century, and the press does not want to talk about it. Indeed, the press – finding itself hoisted upon their own petard thanks to their posturing during the whole fake Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson/Made up non-story debacle – is crying, don’t pick on uuuuuuus!” and stop looking so closely at what we’re doinnnnng!”. And, don’t make fun of us when we act like infannnnnts!

As our press goes, so will go the nation. Currently, the introspection-hating press seems to be self-destructing in a whirling dervish of over-insulated arrogance, mainstream detatchment and Bush Derangement Syndrome. They don’t know they’re caught in the maelstrom, because everyone they know is caught in it too – and they won’t listen to anyone standing outside the whirlwind trying to tell them they’re spinning out to sea, because…well, what would anyone outside their little group know, anyway?

When you and everyone you know congregate on the Upper West Side, in the Beltway or at the beaches of Malibu, Nantucket and the Vineyard, when you sniff in disdain at anyone-and-anything not part of your little world – or who deigns to disagree with your “conventional wisdom” and narrative, well…I hate to say it but you’ve taken yourself out of the loop. You haven’t a clue what is actually going on.

Trusting New Media over Big Media?