Media Psychosis

In his column today, Timesman David Brooks grapples with inflammatory rhetoric and the news media role in it:

"We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons."

Brooks is basically right. And I've witnessed the herd mentality in newsrooms up close and personal. But grasping for a silver lining, Brooks adds that the "good news" is that the "mainstream media usually recovers from its hysterias and tries belatedly to get the story right." Well, that's something, I guess. But the media’s approach is akin to leveling a town with artillery fire just to cleanse it of criminals. Sure, it gets the job done, eventually. But the price seems a wee steep.