Reply #1: Interesting timing. Running concurrently with this wiretapping story is Frontline's, News Wars [View All]

which features the LA Times in a very sympathetic light, as it does it's ex-editor Baquet (who just wants to be free of the obligations to shareholders, and to be a public servant..to tell the truth).
It laments the dying off of real reporting which the major newspapers provide and which is not available through any other source. But what of this killing off of the stories their own reporters provide? Does anyone buy that Baquet's LA Times staff couldn't make sense of those AT&T documents, and yet went to the time and expense to put a reporter on that story for so long?

The News Wars story does mention people's overall disenchantment and mistrust of news in general, but chalks that up to continuing downsizing problems and cuts to their investigative reporting units of the major news divisions, etc. due to their 'ownership' by wall street, beholding to stockholders. Or maybe it's the public's fault...their 'craving' for infotainment.

While there might be some truth to that, it is not the whole story. There are other reasons for their lost trust/readership. And this story of the AT&T wiretapping is a perfect example. They don't cover the news that people want to know about, that IS in the public interest. And it doesn't mention the relationship the press now has as a foot soldier of a government which is also beholding to (owned by) corporations, and neither of which is any longer a public servant.

And this is also one reason people have moved to the internet for their news and to foreign sources.