My own experience shows this on both sides of the issue. I have been involved in some local government issues and it's easy to get coverage in local media by just sending a press release out to a few dozen contacts. They rarely (if ever) do any fact checking. That's not to say that I make things up. In fact, that's the other side of the issue. I pride myself in researching local government issues through the use of the Freedom of Information Act, and then compiling that information into something the media would be interested in.
The flip side of the coin is that if I release some FOIA data and then the reporter goes to the government entity for a comment, the government representative will often times make things up or just lie about the facts. The local reporter just takes that person at his or her word, despite the fact that I have produced documentation directly from that government agency which contradicts its talking head.
It's become clear that local reporters (for the most part) don't do any independent research. They regurgitate AP reports or whatever they're told. Most reporters have no expertise or clue about what they're reporting on.
One sign of this degradation in local (and national) media quality to watch out for: online articles that are composed entirely of paragraphs that are one or two sentences each. Here's one randomly chosen example: http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/11/justice/texas-explosion-probe/...
Part of the problem is the internet has taken a lot of the money out of local news. They don't check things because they don't have time. Where I live all the local papers, which were going bankrupt, were bought by a conglomerate and 90% of the staff was laid off. They're more like stenographers than reporters, and it's not their fault, either. They simply do not have the time to do anything buy bounce from one story to the next, getting the facts mostly right. Nothing that's the slightest bit complex or subtle gets the treatment it would have a decade ago.
The flip side of the coin is that if I release some FOIA data and then the reporter goes to the government entity for a comment, the government representative will often times make things up or just lie about the facts. The local reporter just takes that person at his or her word, despite the fact that I have produced documentation directly from that government agency which contradicts its talking head.
It's become clear that local reporters (for the most part) don't do any independent research. They regurgitate AP reports or whatever they're told. Most reporters have no expertise or clue about what they're reporting on.
One sign of this degradation in local (and national) media quality to watch out for: online articles that are composed entirely of paragraphs that are one or two sentences each. Here's one randomly chosen example: http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/11/justice/texas-explosion-probe/...