Russian Paul,  I agree. A ‘skewering’ to me is much worse.

I think one of the fundamental problems is that news is a means to generate profit before it’s a means to inform citizens.  This institutionalized pressure plays out in two broad ways: 1) money brought into the organization and, 2) expenses paid out.  First, for generating money, it means making money through advertising.  So papers must use their content to attract readers whom the advertisers want to reach, rush to get a story our early (to help attract the “right” readers), and not offen those readers the industry sells to advertisers (thus their sensitivity to “objectivity” based on public opinion rather than empirical reality/support).  Second, regarding expenses, it means reducing the number of reporters (e.g., lay-offs) and places worthy of reporting on (e.g., foreign bureaus), and the amount of time/resources invested into a story. Sociologists and Communications scholars have written about this structural feature of the news media and predicted this kind of eventual struggle and decline for the past almost 40 years, it’s really rooted in the structure of the industry. The internet is more a nail in the coffin rather than the real culprit. 

Ironically, the NY Times had a story several months ago titled something like “News you can Endow” about creating an endowment to fund news.  I kind of like that idea.  Robert McChesney (a renowned communications scholar) recently gave a speech in Portland, OR about creating a public trust to fund an independent (the key word) public news media (not PBS).  Among other things, he suggested spending roughly $60 billion over three years to create an endowment to fund an independent public news media system.  The money could come from fees paid by commercial media for broadcast licenses, a tax on radio and television advertising (paid for by the advertisers, not the general public), and an annual spectrum fee paid by commercial broadcasters to use the public airwaves (which I believe are used for free now).  None of these would require much from the general public in terms of expenses.  Those are just some of the suggestions.  People are writing about these things, it’s just not making into the public discourse.  I put a link to his talk above.