Why Newspapers Are the Way they Are

From a review of "The Room and the Chair" by Lorraine Adams (Louis Bayard in today's Washington Post:

The big newspapers, she argues, are missing the big stories because all they can see are the words in front of their faces, the "written reports from government men" that constitute "the Room's preferred language." "There were pretty much two ways to find out things," the night editor explains. "People and paper. People . . . could fudge. Paper, made by government -- courts, agencies, committees -- was worse. You had to use both, flawed as they were, and find where they met, where there was some kind of coinciding about what might possibly have actually happened. But even that wasn't enough. . . . You had to take time to feel your way along the edges back to the center, and to wonder, past the point of patience, what it was you still couldn't quite believe."

As Adams must realize, this is an often unattainable ideal for a daily newspaper or, in these direly transitional times, for any mainstream media outlet.

I suppose that one may also observe directly, observe via still photos and film or video, and go directly to measurements in areas where numerical data are available. All of these sources of information are less than perfectly factual, but they are probably less subject to spin and lies than government handouts and interviews.