The Blue Board

Fox News is always on at the place I deliver for

There are two major factors that have to be considered.

First, anybody can be a "journalist" today. The explosion of the internet has made some people rush to be the first to report, which leads more people to making mistakes. The 24 hour news cycle is certainly more prone to mistakes than in previous generations, and once the mistakes are out there, people tend to believe them.

Second, the collective attention span of the public has dwindled. This leads to a shift in how journalists present their stories. They either have to summarize all of their information off the bat, which leaves people with an idea of the story, but often leads them to ignoring the rest of the story; or they have to go over the top to catch peoples' attentions, which may deflect from the real story.

The media is all too often a scapegoat, but the reality is that "journalism" has certainly changed. Sure these things happened before and have always been happening, but they happen at a much faster pace these days.

Oh and tweeting - people tweet a story headline in 140 or however many characters and some people only read those headlines and try to fill in the gaps otherwise. This phenomenon is pretty bad for writers and the audience.