The Nanny Media

John points out a problem with the media that has long bothered me but that I've never articulated in public before:

Hello Ted,
I just read your column about how the media can restore its credibility. All your points were spot on, but I'd like to add one more that is counter-intuitive.
Right now I'm reading George Packer's book Assassin's Gate. In it, Packer describes a scene during which an American guard demeans and humiliates a detainee by using obscenity. Summarizing the conversation does not do it justice. Only reading it verbatim conveys what every American knows: When we use the F word among friends, it's a sign of affinity. When we use it among strangers, especially when the stranger is in a difficult situation, it's a sign of dominance and often an indication that we are willing to resort to violence. How does a reporter respond when every other word is an expletive? Usually, he skips the whole statement or he reduces it to a meaningless exchange.
From there, where do the newspapers go? Well, they can't show pictures of dead bodies. From there? They can't show coffins. From there, if they travel with troops, they can't publish the obscenity laden dialog of soldiers. From there, they have to rely on press conferences, which, as you mentioned in your article, are a source of lies, not news. The ultimate result is the daily news media go from a fear of publishing the obscene to a fear of publishing the offensive.
What does the public get? A litany of mundane, feel-good stories; a streak of political "gotcha" stories; a limitless supply of superstar screw-ups; and, when foreign events are covered, they are watered down to the point that they bore most adults. Acceptable for kids, palatable for the easily offended, boring to the average adult who requires something a little more visceral to pique his interest.
Mark Twain originally published his book Innocents Abroad in a newspaper, the Daily Alta California. By today's standards it is a highly offensive book (it points out the sanctimony, cruelty, and hypocrisy of pilgrimaging Christians), and it is not journalism because it relies simply on the keen observations of the journalist. Now imagine Packard trying to get his book published in any daily newspaper in America. Forget the neocon history, or the relevance, or the fact that it paints a detailed picture of Iraqis that Americans rarely see, it would be banned because it is written as a first-person narrative and because it is spiced with the occasional expletive.
Journalists have a long litany of words and things they can’t publish, but far war worse is the fact that journalists cannot publish their own observations because personal observations, particularly in a war zone, are often rife with obscenities, offensive topics, and dead bodies.
If I could say one thing to the readers of the trade journal Editor and Publisher, it would be this:
War is not rated G. It is an adult topic, it is an obscene topic, and, unless journalists want to continue destroying their credibility by relying on anonymous sources and pathological liars, they've got to get out there and report first hand what they see and hear. Thank you, Ted. I enjoy your writing very much.

I can also vouch that Packer's "Assassin's Gate" is superb.