I have been musing over an exchange I had with a liberal, who on learning I wasn't in his fraternity said in a condescending way, "You probably thing journalism isn't objective." My response was laughter, to think that anyone would suppose they could put me on the defensive about journalism. In the event, I was dissatisfied with the way I approached discussing it after he said that laughter wasn't an argument.The dumbing down of what is called news started in 1977, when ABC News put Roone Arledge, then in charge of its Sports Division, in charge of its News Division. The network was, unfortunately, correct in its judgment. News is really entertainment, except with unpaid actors and unpaid scripts.And it occurred to me today that I should have apologized for laughing at his religion. That would have gotten his attention and made him interested in my challenge: if his belief in the objectivity of journalism were based on something other than faith, he would be able to show that journalism tells "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Since nobody even knows the whole truth, and nobody tells everything that they know, it's impossible to prove that journalism does not have a self-interested tendency.
And of course, as you say, it does have a self-interested tendency - journalism has the imperative to entertain. More generally, the one thing journalists want you to take away from their stories is that journalism is important. And although as you suggest, they want the audience to tune in to their particular show, it is noteworthy that journalists adhere to a go-along-and-get-along ethic - no journalist will criticize another journalist, and all journalists uphold the conceit that all journalists are objective. Which ultimately means that there is no substantive competition among journalists - that although we have many journalism outlets we actually have only one journalism.
And liberals hold that that one journalism is the font of all wisdom and the very embodiment of the public interest. Otherwise why accept that the rules for profitable journalism - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog' rather than 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "Always make your deadline" - ineluctably lead journalism to produce objectivity?
I realized years ago that 'news' is a church full of pregnant girl scouts getting struck by lightning on the Fourth of July.
I don't accept that journalism was more objective without the explicit recognition of its entertainment imperative. In fact, it would be far less tendentious if it was open and candid about its entertainment imperative. After all, that is exactly what the Rush Limbaugh show is - journalism which is candid about its political perspective and about its intention to be entertaining so as to attract a large audience and be able to "charge confiscatory advertising rates."
Journalism isn't objective, journalism is politics.They are not a "free" press. They are the dedicated handmaidens of the left and they duly follow its "line of march".
It is not necessary to assume that journalism isn't free, merely that because journalism is free it sets its own agenda - and that journalism is singular. There's not a dime's worth of difference between ABC News and The New York Times, or between The New York Times and The Washington Post, or between The Washington Post and CBS News, and so forth.It's true that the liberal would want to dispute that, but his desire to consider journalism objective puts paid to that argument. After all, if all those outlets of journalism are objective, how can they be truly independent of each other? If one of them is objective and another one disagreed about something, wouldn't that prove that the second one was not objective? The reality is that when CBS got caught dead to rights promoting the crude forgeries they were calling the "Killian memos," all CBS had to do was set up an "independent" commission to "investigate" Rather and Mapes, and to "learn" that there had been "no political agenda" behind their ruthless attack on the Bush reelection campaign.
Did The New York Times, or any other journalism outlet, investigate with an open mind and state the obvious, naked-emperor truth that CBS had gone all out to swallow any camel and strain at any gnat to smear Bush while giving Kerry a free pass? Of course not, because the outlets of Big Journalism are no more independent than the Boston Red Sox are independent of the New York Yankees. Oh, they compete within the lines of their games, but they cooperate in hiring the umpires and promoting the importance of the games. Just so, the outlets of Big Journalism compete for your attention among each other, but they mutually promote journalism and the idea that journalists - all journalists - are objective.
The dirty little secret is that what they are actually doing in the process is defining "journalism" as being what The New York Times and the rest of the Big Journalism guild does/says. Is Rush Limbaugh a journalist? Big Journalism would say no. Why? Not because he doesn't report news, but because he is candid. He is candid about his objective of making his show interesting so he can attract an audience and charge "confiscatory" advertising rates, and he is candid about his political perspective. Oh, yes - and his political perspective does not derive from the same source as does the (singular) political perspective of Big Journalism.
What drives the political perspective of Big Journalism? The nature of the business. The business of journalism is selling the idea that journalism is important for you to pay attention to. That is journalism's way of attracting attention, which leads to ratings and to advertising rates. In the process of promoting the importance of journalism, journalism calls into question the integrity and competence of everyone who takes responsibility for getting things done. Whether it be providing apples for the children (Alar, anyone?), or providing gasoline (pollution, high prices), or security (high crime, brutal police, ineffective military "losing" in Iraq, "Abu Graib).
Journalism is criticism of everyone who does anything. And socialism is the very same thing. Socialism aggrandizes credit for the development of products and production methods which was done by entrepreneurs, without of course taking any responsibility for any of the failures which went along with the successes. If everyone knew a priori that they could successfully start a profitable business, everyone would be a businessman and no business would ever fail. Socialism assumes that fact of life away, and therefore constitutes a second guess of the people who tried and succeeded.
A political perspective which inheres in the model of "objective" journalism. That perspective is socialism. Aka, "liberalism."
Obama: Best since FDR?
The Boston Globe ^ | Robert Kuttner