There is a new book out about Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, written by Michael Wolff, which details the evolution of Fox News and its right wing bent. In essence, it is all about money and Murdoch acknowledges a dislike of Bill O’Reilly but keeps him because he makes money. (You can watch the video below).

As someone who believes very strongly that the media failed miserably to do their job during the build up to war in Iraq and fully investigate claims made by the administration I have a strong negative reaction to Murdoch and Fox. Tossing journalistic responsibility aside for a media formula that makes money and costs American lives is repellent. Worse, Fox News deliberately upsets viewers, riles them up, agitates them and plays on their fears… and their actions have been harmful to the public.

Of course, Fox was not alone, the NY Times and other mainstream media were just as complicit in taking our nation to war as the Bush administration. Had they done more than cut and paste White House press releases and done the investigations that many independent journalists and bloggers had done and used their resources and public access to inform the public that US intelligence was wrong, we very likely would not be in that quagmire and more than 4,000 US troops would not have died.

The very same can be said of small town papers on local issues, for example, I do not believe that The World has properly investigated the claims of ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ being sold by Jordan Cove with respect to the new LNG terminal. They have left it to citizens to do the digging up of statistical and empirical evidence and analysis of other projects and evaluate the likelihood of real long term benefits to the community.

In today’s profit driven news industry, independent journalists and bloggers are often on point in these investigations and now work closely with mainstream media to disseminate information to the public. Bloggers may not have all the resources of big media nor do they have the overhead and to a great degree they are not limited to the same constraints.

Locally, I write a weekly column for The Sentinel, an opinion column and occasionally do political reporting or report on other matters when I have the opportunity. While I enjoy writing for the paper and sharing information about energy and other matters, obviously I cannot be as down to earth or free with my opinions as I am on this blog.

For example, the paper would never publish the image of the ‘harpy’ that I found (though several people have told me it is a stunning likeness). For that matter, I wouldn’t publish that picture or the accompanying commentary in the paper anyway because that is what this blog is for. This is an opinion/news blog… my opinion about the news.

While writing for small town papers is much different than other large papers and journals I have written for, in each case, the publication hopes to inform or entertain their readers. Small town papers may not be as glitzy and not have multiple editors and fact checkers as their big city brethren but they do inform their readers, accept past deadline submissions, last minute photo submissions, late ads and classifieds and impart the spirit of the story.

Everyone is pleased and happy that the city council made a quick decision, rather than dragging the process out, to bring Dian Courtright onto the council to fill the seat vacated by Kathy Hagan. Everyone that is, except two bitter old curmudgeons with overt personal agendas or more accurately, personal vendettas. Without any regard for the city, the mayor, the council or Dian Courtright and the people who voted for her, these two want to use the unusual circumstances of Hagan’s departure to settle old scores that have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Dian.

Desperate people do desperate things and often despicable things. Perhaps they will try a few tricks from the Fox playbook and succeed in working up the community, perhaps not. So far, everyone is just disgusted with them.