April 20, 2013 by David K. Sutton
We Don’t Break The News; It’s Already Broken
We Don’t Break The News; It’s Already Broken
That is the sub tagline for this blog. It’s meant to be a bit funny, but it also is intended to make a statement: “Breaking News” is broken. And Salon writer Farhad Manjoo agrees:
Breaking News Is Broken — Don’t watch cable news. Shut off Twitter. You’d be better off cleaning your gutters.
Breaking news is broken. That’s the clearest lesson you can draw about the media from the last week, when both old- and new-media outlets fell down on the job. By now you’ve likely heard the lowlights. CNN and the AP incorrectly reported on Wednesday that a Boston Marathon suspect had been arrested. People on Reddit and editors at the New York Post wrongly fingered innocent kids as bombing suspects. Redditors also pushed the theory that a Brown University student who has been missing for more than a month was one of the bombers—a story that gained steam on Twitter Thursday when people listening to police scanners heard the cops repeat the student’s name.
As the founder and chief writer of this liberal political blog, I don’t have the resources of the big news organizations, but sometimes that is a good thing.
This blog is not about breaking news. This blog is not about an equal balance of left vs. right. Make no mistake, this blog is liberal. This blog is progressive. This blog is about equal rights and social justice. You should expect nothing less than hard-hitting liberal analysis. This might be a liberal opinion blog, but it’s the facts that matter most.
I’m not interested in adding “BREAKING NEWS” to my blog post titles because I think the phrase is rendered meaningless by nonsense like this week’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. There are plenty of other liberal sites in the blogosphere that cater to this lowest common denominator style of reporting. I’m interested in getting to the heart of the matter and revealing the motives behind social injustice.
History does not judge us based on “breaking” headlines. History judges us based on our long and sustained actions on social justice. And that is what makes this site tick.
