More Traffic Cam Propaganda

.
It was only yesterday that I pointed out some boilerplate promo disguised as "news" in the T&G regarding red light cameras, wasn't it? And yet, here they are today pushing forward in the same direction, only now they're not disguising it as news. Today they've got their anonymous pontificators providing the public with some sort of, ostensibly, informed opinion.

Clearly, this kind of thing has gone far enough...

This is the heart and soul of why newspapers are dying. It's a clear example of why they will continue to die. They have lost any semblance of credibility with anyone and everyone who has a brain.

This red light camera sideshow is an extremely simple matter, yet the T&G has, for I cannot imagine what reason, taken the position that they should continue to be the cat's paw for this "product".

Here's the basic fact about red light cameras, however, that the T&G has apparently failed to spend any shoe leather on:

This is nothing more than a nationwide business venture, promoted heavily by several corporations. It is not a new technology for law enforcement. It is not a way of making traffic "safer". There is no purpose or motivation behind this activity besides squeezing significant amounts of money OUT of local jurisdictions that would, otherwise, not be paid out by anyone at all.

As to the newspaper business and its suicidal insistence upon feeding this highly skewed trash to their customers, I could go on forever about how much it pisses me off. Newspapers, once upon a time, were in the business of informing the public. As a minor sideline, they would opine. But the success of newspapers in the future will not depend upon the opinions of their owners and editors. Rather, the veracity and completeness of the news they report for the permanent record will be the only pivot upon which their future success or failure turns.

No-one else can do this. Not the TV news, not the radio news, and not the internet. Only the shoe leather journalism of professional newspaper journalists can fulfill this unique role going forward.

And yet they just continue to blow it with this kind of faux "reporting".

It's a complete waste of ink.

What really gets me is that the newspaper business, in general, seems to act as if they're in competition with other media. This is nothing new, either. It was the misperception when radio was thought to be their nemesis. It was the misperception when television was thought to be their undoing. And it's now the internet they're blaming for falling revenues.

But I have to reiterate that no-one else can do what they can do. It's the providing of complete who, what, when, where, how, and why that only professional journalism can produce for the permanent record... this is what's at stake here. When it's clear that a newspaper is merely boilerplating a promotional campaign for a corporation to make a sale, then their one true coin of the realm, trust, has been violated.

I sincerely want to trust that my local daily newspaper will be presenting me with the true and complete facts regarding anything and everything that's going on locally, day in and day out. But right now, I can't trust that they will be fulfilling that traditional role in my community.

And the saddest, most tragic aspect to this whole thing is that no matter how bad it's gotten for the newspaper business, and no matter how much it's pointed out what they've actually done to ruin their reputations nationwide, newspapers continue to operate under the assumption that they're in competition with anything and everything that could convey communication beyond simple one on one conversations.

I, for instance, am not in competition with newspapers. As a blogger, I represent a completely different activity. If one were to characterize the blogosphere on any general terms then you might say that it's all about feedback, opining, ...and let's not forget narcissism. Any newspaper that operates under the assumption that the blogosphere is their competition simply has its head up its ass, however. And that position further erodes the one thing they have to offer us, and turns it into nothing of value at all.

It is, indeed, unfortunate that chain ownership of city dailies has become a major factor in eroding the viability of these newspapers as businesses. But throughout the increased commodification of individual newspapers, there have always been plenty of opportunities for local personnel to turn the tide and get back the public's trust, and provide the facts for the public in a way that would bring us all back into the fold.

What's truly pathetic about the example of this whole red light camera thing, though, is that nobody has to waste any shoe leather to research the red light camera industry in this country, or to quickly realize that Nestor has been campaigning to get the illegal product legalized by selling the idea of their revenue generating product all across the state, community by community, for quite some time now.

The T&G's obvious lack of journalistic endeavor in this whole matter is truly egregious.
.