The Media, and my present complaints
Dec. 13th, 2005 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI used to be a member of the press, and for the entirety of that time (and even more in the present) I have heard the press is biased, and that the bias is to the left.
I don't see it.
Digby has a long piece up on this, and while all of it is worth reading I'll excerpt the relevant bits; in light of my comment above.
The DC press corps has no idea how they look to the rest of the country after more than a decade of running with GOP trumped up scandals, pimping for impeachment, trivializing the effects of an unorthodox presidential election in 2000, and then saluting smartly and following Dick Cheney over the cliff on Iraq. We liberals never thought of the press as particularly partisan. We thought of it as competent or incompetent. But for a lot of reasons, for the last 15 years the DC press corps have far too often aligned themselves with a manipulative GOP political establishment to the point where it's been hard to see where one ends and the other begins. It's not a matter of political preference. It's insiderism. And when you become an insider in a corrupt system, for money, access, fame, fun whatever ... you become corrupt yourself.
I'm not surprised that the WaPo staffers don't like links to bloggers and others on the WaPo site. We are very critical. And I'm sure that we are often unfair and often flat wrong. But it would behoove these guys to stop consoling themselves with the notion that they "must be doing something right" if both sides are mad at them, and take a good look at the nature of these complaints. The right has spent the last quarter century in an organized campaign to work the refs and push the dialog to the right. The complaints coming from the left are the result of pent-up frustration at the tabloidization, the celebrity chasing, the insiderism. We have no organized campaign and we don't see the media as being politically biased. We see it as abdicating its duty to sort out the important from the trivial and connect the dots in these confusing times that are ruled by spin, PR and marketing on all sides.
This country cannot survive without proper journalism. Blogs can't do it. We need newspapers and news broadcasters who keep foremost in their minds the fact that they are indispensible to a functioning democracy. For the last fifteen years Washington politics have been covered as if they are high school with money. The DC press corps needs to reacquaint themselves with the idea that their purpose is not to have drinks with powerful insiders so they can keep their confidences. Their job is to have drinks with powerful insiders so they can get to the truth and write about it.
He's right. The press has failed the nation, not because they are biased (all in all, at this point I would say they are, but to the side of the money... they folks who own the papers, and those who offer access are the people the press are looking to keep happy, which means they have abandoned the idea of comforting the afflicted [always to be commended] and afflicting the comfortable [never really to be condemned]) but because they are afraid of losing privilege. They have allowed those who provide access to buy them with it.
Is anonymity needful? Sometimes. I think, in the five years I was really working on papers, I gave three people permission to go, "off the record." I used it never. In that same time I think the papers I was at (or the part of them I was working for) allowed it twice.
Jefferson (whose opinion changed, somwhat, when he was president) said he would rather have a press without government, than a government without a press. Why? Because an independant press is supposed to hold the feet of the powerful to the fire.
These days, the better analogy is that they bring them logs to stave off the cold.
I don't see it.
Digby has a long piece up on this, and while all of it is worth reading I'll excerpt the relevant bits; in light of my comment above.
The DC press corps has no idea how they look to the rest of the country after more than a decade of running with GOP trumped up scandals, pimping for impeachment, trivializing the effects of an unorthodox presidential election in 2000, and then saluting smartly and following Dick Cheney over the cliff on Iraq. We liberals never thought of the press as particularly partisan. We thought of it as competent or incompetent. But for a lot of reasons, for the last 15 years the DC press corps have far too often aligned themselves with a manipulative GOP political establishment to the point where it's been hard to see where one ends and the other begins. It's not a matter of political preference. It's insiderism. And when you become an insider in a corrupt system, for money, access, fame, fun whatever ... you become corrupt yourself.
I'm not surprised that the WaPo staffers don't like links to bloggers and others on the WaPo site. We are very critical. And I'm sure that we are often unfair and often flat wrong. But it would behoove these guys to stop consoling themselves with the notion that they "must be doing something right" if both sides are mad at them, and take a good look at the nature of these complaints. The right has spent the last quarter century in an organized campaign to work the refs and push the dialog to the right. The complaints coming from the left are the result of pent-up frustration at the tabloidization, the celebrity chasing, the insiderism. We have no organized campaign and we don't see the media as being politically biased. We see it as abdicating its duty to sort out the important from the trivial and connect the dots in these confusing times that are ruled by spin, PR and marketing on all sides.
This country cannot survive without proper journalism. Blogs can't do it. We need newspapers and news broadcasters who keep foremost in their minds the fact that they are indispensible to a functioning democracy. For the last fifteen years Washington politics have been covered as if they are high school with money. The DC press corps needs to reacquaint themselves with the idea that their purpose is not to have drinks with powerful insiders so they can keep their confidences. Their job is to have drinks with powerful insiders so they can get to the truth and write about it.
He's right. The press has failed the nation, not because they are biased (all in all, at this point I would say they are, but to the side of the money... they folks who own the papers, and those who offer access are the people the press are looking to keep happy, which means they have abandoned the idea of comforting the afflicted [always to be commended] and afflicting the comfortable [never really to be condemned]) but because they are afraid of losing privilege. They have allowed those who provide access to buy them with it.
Is anonymity needful? Sometimes. I think, in the five years I was really working on papers, I gave three people permission to go, "off the record." I used it never. In that same time I think the papers I was at (or the part of them I was working for) allowed it twice.
Jefferson (whose opinion changed, somwhat, when he was president) said he would rather have a press without government, than a government without a press. Why? Because an independant press is supposed to hold the feet of the powerful to the fire.
These days, the better analogy is that they bring them logs to stave off the cold.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 04:13 pm (UTC)Of course, Mr. Brock's book was recommended to me by the president of Young Democrats on my campus, so take that into consideration as well.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 05:47 pm (UTC)I fail to see how an intimate knowledge of the other side's ways of business somehow reduces a person's credibility. Espcially as they seem more than willing to grant a great deal of credibilty to people like Hitchens, because they saw the light and came over to the Conservative side of the aisle.
Sauce for the goose, and all that.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 06:32 pm (UTC)-D2
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 08:01 pm (UTC)If they can proclaim the insight and probity of those who become conservatives, then those who leave conservatism may be justly claimed by the party/faction they go to.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 05:40 pm (UTC)It shows how stories are created, planted and fed, so the popular impression is changed to reflect the views of the Right.
It also shows there are those (who have ready access to the bully pulpit of the opinion pages, as well as the ear of reporters on the news pages) who are more than willing to lie to win political points.
I forget, at the moment, which of the big consservative types admitted the press wasn't biased to the left, and that in fact it tilted their way, but he hasn't stopped flogging the horse of "media bias" because it is so useful at deflecting negative news. It lets them claim the story isn't true, without actually denying it.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 04:06 pm (UTC)Later, after moving more into print and online media it seemed the bias changed to match the prevailing winds.
The only consistent bias I ever noticed was a sort of well-worn, hard-earned cynicism of the left and the right. None of the (mostly) men I worked with were the Ed Morrow or the Hunt/Brinkely of their area but neither were they Bill O'Reilly. They were simply doing their job, rolling their eyes as they sat smoking next to the police scanners and the telex machine. And oh my gods but the dark, twisted humor during times of disaster. You had to laugh, otherwise you'd cry.
I rarely miss those days, I admit, but it was a good proving ground for me.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 05:45 pm (UTC)It was a sad day when Dr. Wolf stepped down as college president, because he believed in a free press. We had a struggle with the campus cops (who didn't want to release public records to us, the blotter, various reports). The EIC complained to Dr. Wolf, who told her to hang on, got the chief of the campus PD on the other line, talked to him for about a minute and told her the stuff would be waiting at the desk for whomever we sent to look at it.
And the black humor... oh yeah. Between that, working hospital security in ERs and the Army, I have some twisted ideas of what's funny.
TK