"Media Circus" -H. Kurtz

Like anyone, the Press think mainly of themselves. It's a bit odd, but true enough. They are supposed to be informing the nation of the news, like a "reporter," or a conduit or something. But, they are human enough. Also greedy and grasping. They got that job, didn't they?
    Their problem is ego, like so many of us. They think their newspaper or T.V. job is about themselves. How do you think they got their jobs? By thinking about themselves -- get it? OK so they're thinking about themselves but unfortunately they're employed as reporters. In a competitive capitalist system, who gets ahead economically? Those who think primarily about themselves. Yes, but their j-o-b is informing us on the news. Well, I'm sorry --- that's too hard. What they can do, thank you, is report on their own stories: where the story came from, how it developed, what tomorrow's newspaper-selling "news" is going to be, etc.
    This is the press talking about themselves. The press write about themselves. They write about the press. Their industry's "product" is a little too creative I think and it slips away from them. There is not really a "product" --- except for what they write. The "story" becomes merely an exercise in their own egotism (that, plus: they spell really, really well). And they of course may just think that this is what the public craves --- more of their wonderful stories. Isn't that rank? Isn't that rank stupidity? Isn't that egotism?
     A number of these persons have a bit higher integrity, though; they aren't all equally bad and these press of the better sort have endeavored, ala Howard Kurtz (on the back cover, he is, appropriately, called a "media reporter." Huh? What else is there? As if there was any other kind of reporter! Ha ha ha ha ha. He's at the Washington Post), ...a few individuals of the press --- writers with a media background --- have laid out how this works in practice. So, go read about it.

     Now look at what Tina Brown, that poor misguided soul, said, when Kurtz went over to her "Daily Beast" in 2010: "I have great respect for Howard as a journalist and newsbreaker, but I admire him most of all for his understanding of media and politics as the story of our era." Sorry, Tina. That's what I'm talking about. Now you may be married to a special man who was a good editor of a British newspaper, but what you are saying is that the "story" is the "story" --- and that just sounds a little too much like what I am talking about above. She says that the "story" is media and politics. Oy Vey. That just works like a funnel pointing down (they usually do) to exactly the problem that Kurtz was illustrating in his book, "Media Circus." Maybe Kurtz, too, has gotten lost in his own industry.