Posted on 10/07/2009 11:03:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Respectable news outlets aren't the only ones having trouble processing the fact that a purple-eyed partisan like Andrew Breitbart is producing impactful journalism this season. The ancient Atlantic magazine–which, strangely, appears to have morphed into a sort of Blogger's Monthly–has been furrowing its brows at Breitbart & Co. both in print and online.
Regular Atlantic contributor Conor Friedersdorf, writing at The Daily Beast (and earning a high-five from Andrew Sullivan), poses the question:
ACORN is just the latest example of how conservative media love to blast The New York Times for its shortcomings. So why can't they live up to the Gray Lady's standards?
Easy answer: Because it's possible to criticize X on grounds of Y without yourself doing Y better than X. In fact, it's probable, given the fact that X is powerful enough to be a regular target of criticism. (If you think about it, media criticism is one of the only categories of criticism where the critics at least somewhat participate in the act being criticized–no one expected Pauline Kael to make better movies than The Sound of Music, but they lapped up her reviews anyway.) Andrew Breitbart (a friend of mine) is nobody's Pauline Kael, yet he produces bits of real-world journalism that eventually The New York Timeses of the world have to catch up to. This fact is apparently enough to make people's brains pop.
Take the normally interesting journalist Mark Bowden. Writing in this month's Atlantic, Bowden discusses two political gadfly bloggers who, out of political motivation, dug up the two videos of Judge Sonia Sotomayor that most news networks were playing on the day of her nomination to the Supreme Court–the "wise Latina" speech, and another one about appellate courts making "policy." Instead of asking the (to me) obvious question–why is that the tens of thousands of paid journalists in this country who did work related to Sotomayor's nomination failed to unearth the newsworthy videos?–Bowden spins the anecdote into Exibit A of All That Has Gone Horribly Wrong in Journalism. Excerpt:
I would describe their approach as post-journalistic. It sees democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle. The blogger's role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all "news" is unapologetically propaganda.
Reading this, you'd almost think that Sotomayor's nomination was derailed, that the "wise Latina" quote ended up defining her, that the bulk of journalism about her was based on partisan misunderstandings of a long and presumably boring speech she gave at Duke. None of that is remotely true.
More relevantly to the journalism discussion, partisan media criticism is not "rapidly replacing journalism," it's supplementing journalism, forcing journalism to be sharper, and frequently committing acts of journalism in its own right, despite not being motivated by the same allegedly pristine Mission guiding postwar American newspaper types. That fact is not difficult for most consumers to grasp, but it's proven maddeningly elusive for keepers of the old flame. Here's the scoop: Media critics are more motivated by politics than journalistic purity, and in their extra motivation they can and will occasionally steal the old guard's lunch. They–and more importantly, their work–should be held to the same standard that people apply to alt-journalism from all sources, not just those whose politics seem yucky.
Read Breitbart defending himself here; Friedersdorf responds here. Watch Breitbart on ReasonTV here and here. And in December 2004, I used him as my lead example of a column called "Biased About Bias."
Boy, you weren’t kidding about the comment! I have hope!
How can you "supplement" a vacuum? Alternative medi, including partisan media criticism, is indeed "rapidly replacing journalism."
Love the quaint "leading us toward".
The comments are better than the article, and well worth reading.
“Jourbalism”?
Read the comments at the link and I think you'll get it.
They best look out for Newsbusters as well as Breitbart.
There are more, and the list grows.
We have merely returned, some would say, to the real roots of journalism which is a partisan press. The notion that "news" is "objective" is flawed anyway, for ANY selection of this fact over that fact to report involves bias.
What the media can't stand is the notion that all biases must be equal---that there is no truth. One can be extremely biased and yet 100% correct . . . as I am most of the time :) (joke). But in the age of relativism, all bias must necessarily mean "no truth." That's not the case at all.
“So why can’t they live up to the Gray Lady’s standards?”
STANDARDS??!?!????
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!
John|10.7.09 @ 10:23AM|# The Atlantic is shocked that someone actually bothered to read the public speeches given by a Supreme Court nominee. And at the same time has no problem with one of its headline bloggers being obsessed with Sarah Palin's OBGYN records. Seriously, almost a year after the election, Sully is still at it. http://andrewsullivan.theatlan.....-data.html The Atlantic are Democratic partisians and they are angy that they can't control the narative anymore. Seriously, if during his confirmation process someone had dug up a ten year old speech of John Roberts saying something embarassing, does anyone here think the Atlantic wouldn't have held it up as great journalism? Who are they trying to kid here?
FriscoDB|10.7.09 @ 6:52PM|# Breitbart didn't live up to the NYT's standards. The standards that permit the running of a story the weekend before the 1992 election reporting an old rumor that Bush 41 had an extramarital affair while overseas many years prior.....or the standards that permit the running of a story the weekend before the 2000 election reporting Bush 43's DUI....or the standards that permit the running of a page one story during the 2008 presidential campaign implying, without any confirmation, that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist....or the standards that permitted the AP do photoshop smoke flumes into a picture of a Lebanese cityscape to visually establish that Israeli planes were bombing indescriminately.....or the standards that permitted Reuters to stage a picture of a dead Palastinian going as far as to have him smeared with mud, placed on a stretcher, and later claiming that picture was meant to be representative.
Great article and comments. Thanks for posting.
I would describe their approach as post-journalistic. It sees democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle. The blogger's role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all "news" is unapologetically propaganda.
On the contrary, I would argue that this Walter Lippman fantasy of established, professional, "quality" journalism--the basis of the MSM itself--was always a lie. Even in Walter Lippman's day, the presence of shameless propagandists like Walter Duranty, or even earlier, the relentless anti-German propaganda that helped bring American into World War I--proved this.
"All information" has ben "spun" for a very long time, and its only the freedom to analyze and criticize on the most basic levels that does anything at all to keep government honest. THE FOUNDERS KNEW THIS IMPLICITLY, and they would have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the new media.
FReep mail me if you want on/off the list.
Good article. Excellent comments below.
Bowden made the weak case that journalists don't have the time to sit through hours and hours of tapes. And he has a point. Publishers don't have the time to put the kind of man-hours into finding needles in hay stacks - especially when they know there might not BE a needle.
But, that said, journalists have to work with "citizen journalist" to the point where they feed off the obscure, but correct - information. Too many sit around in offices waiting to see what the New York Times is reporting on - and then add local slants to that take.
Journalism has to move out of the comfort of the "we suck less" crowd...if they want to survive.
That was the comment that most stood out to me, too.
Those occasions should NEVER be forgotten by us, nor the CBS “Bush National Guard” faked documents that were run everywhere as “legitimate” until weeks later.
Leni
Stop it! LOL!!!;)
Leni
B T T T
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