Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media Book

In the wake of scandal over Bill Clinton's "inappropriate relationship" with intern Monica Lewinsky, media watchdogs Bill Kovach (the ombudsman for Brill's Content) and Tom Rosenstiel offer a detailed analysis of how the news is made and unmade in the information age. A "journalism of assertion," they pessimistically observe, is starting to eclipse the more traditional "journalism of verification," as media outlets feel compelled to feed "the never-ending news cycle" of 24-hour cable news channels and Internet sites rather than allow reporters the time to pursue tips and fact-check their material. The result is a debased form of journalism in which reporters rely on unnamed sources and often run with stories before finding second sources to back them up. Sources often control the flow and content of news by timing their leaks and striking deals with reporters, while editors increasingly replace expensive reporting with a much cheaper staple of professional debaters and so-called experts who engage in prepackaged conflict. The authors zero in on how the media reported the Monica Lewinsky affair: in its first weeks, they show, a full 41 percent of the media's "reporting" was actually opinion and analysis, rather than hard news. "The study's most important finding," they write, "was the extraordinary degree to which reporting and opinion and speculation were now intermingled with mainstream journalism." Kovach and Rosenstiel perhaps underestimate the liberating potential of the new media--journalism's tired old gatekeepers no longer hold a monopoly over information--but Warp Speed is nevertheless an important contribution to our understanding of what we know and how we know it. --John J. MillerRead More