The American Press Has Embraced a 'Demented Caesarism'

"What has happened to the press in the United States?" asks Mark Crispin Miller. "Certainly it wasn't anything to brag about ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, but now its irresponsibility is simply staggering. Why? A proper answer to that question has to be complex, entailing many factors - corporate concentration, radical deregulation under Reagan, Bush and Clinton, TV's touchy-feely influence, the laziness and (yes) conservatism of a corporate press corps grossly overpaid, the fervent, brilliant rightist propaganda drive against 'the liberal media,' and so on. While all such factors surely have a lot do with it, however, 9/11 clearly made a very sudden difference, turning a bad situation even worse..."