The Corruption of Mainstream Media

Sunday, 20 April 2014 09:35
By Danny Schechter, Consortium News | Op-Ed

The United States' mainstream media still pretend they are custodians of "serious journalism," but those claims continue to erode as the corporate press shies away from its duty to challenge propaganda emanating from various parts of the US government.

First the good news: The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was not only the best covered of its awards this year, but it recognized a series of disclosures that made many media outlets nervous, if not adversarial – the publication of National Security Agency secrets leaked by Edward Snowden.

The award recognized the reporting by the Guardian in England and also Bart Gellman’s work in the Washington Post even as they, did not recognize the work directly of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras whose independent reporting appeared in many newspapers.