Comment Rescue: Deep Media Thought
anon asks…
So what media outlets DO you approve of? Which ones are doing a good job?
Let me preface this by saying I’m talking about mass media. There might be a tiny sliver of media doing actual reporting – but my remarks are confined to the newspapers with actual circulations and TV shows people actually watch.
That said, I can’t think of a single media outlet that performed adequately during the Bush years. If anyone can point to a media outlet that investigated, pushed, challenged or even questioned the outlandish bullshit Bush was throwing out for 8 years, I will be surprised. Our modern corporate media has turned the duty of the media inside out. They are in business to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. I’m exaggerating? Okay. Ask Tom Carper the past time he remembers getting a tough question from a reporter.
Now them, to preempt the wingnuts who will inevitably show up to say that the media is “in love” with Barrack Obama – I say…
1) So? Even if that were true, which it is not, all of a sudden you seem some merit in having a tenacious press? Spare me your belated renting of garments over the sudden loss of an “objective” media.
2) Do you know how I know the media still has a right wing bias in spite of what wingnuts perceive to be a love affaire with Barrack Obama? I believe my own ears and eyes:
Limbaugh: “The dirty little secret … is that every Republican in this country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it”
and…
3) If the interests of truth and accuracy in reporting got a crumb in these past few years, it did so in the form of two basic cable shows (Countdown and Rachel Maddow). That is two whole shows set against the vast sea of wingnut idiocy that gets reported on a daily basis.
The only outlets doing a good job is the liberal blogosphere. MSNBC is trying to catch up but I’m still angry at that whole pushing of the Santelli totally not planned, spontaneous (NOT) rant.
The media wasn’t much interested in critiquing Bush until the Iraq war started to fail its expectations. And even then, the media treated these guys with much more deference than they deserved. Has anyone ever asked Wolfowitz about his cost estimate for Iraq?
That said — I still think that the original sin for the traditional media (not FoxNoise, though) is the pretense to objectivity. Straight ahead reporting of one side and then the other with No Context, No Factchecking just allows for gaming the system. For instance, I’d love to hear one reporter make a repub the lazy “socialist” name-calling. They’ve decided that this is the new “Liberal” and apparently decided that when the going gets tough, the clueless run home to papa — McCarthy. But in just throwing the word around, they stretch the word well out of its usual meaning. Which certainly does not apply here. Or even asking these guys who can’t find an answer to anything other than tax cuts and less government, why they think that this is a solution when all of that is what put us in this hole in the first place?
But I do think that if you are basically getting your info from the TV and the radio (there are exceptions), you aren’t getting much real information.
More — David Simon weighs in on what is being lost in a WaPo editorial.
He makes the point — no one seems left to challenge the PR machines.
Jason,
I’m sorry that you buy into this “corporate media” dog puckey. If you actually understood how a newspaper or TV station operates, you’d be much less inclined to go off half-cocked like this.
First, the vast majority of the “mass media” are LOCAL publications and TV stations. They do not have the wherewithal to cover Bush or Obama on their own. They rely on the news services and networks to do so, as they have done for decades. Your argument regarding Bush therefore focuses itself on the handful of national media outlets – including but not limited to the NYT, WSJ, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc. And most, if not all, of those outlets have done some VERY critical, investigative work on the Bush administration. The stories may not have taken the tone that you’d have liked, or asked the exact questions that you’d have liked, but to say that no one asked any questions or ran tough stories is a lie.
Secondly, local outlets such as TNJ or WDEL do not generally have the resources to cover their congressional delegations in great depth. I know you’d love TNJ to put Carper and Castle on the hot seat every day, but consider that its Washington reporter is also covering several other state delegations at the same time, and you might see the challenge there.
Third, you consistently have conflated editorials and opinion columnists with the news pages – not in this post, but in the past – which reveals a deep misunderstanding of how things work. The two have nothing to do with one another. Except at the tiniest of newspapers, the wall between editorial and news is as absolute as the wall between news and advertising. Ron Williams has zero say in the writing, editing or placement of news stories — just to offer up one of your favorite examples.
And fourth, the regular, everyday operations of a newsroom are not affected one iota by the ownership, generally and specifically speaking. If it’s Gannett, CBS, Rupert Murdoch – it doesn’t matter. The New York Post had a certain attitude before Murdoch bought it, which it still retains. Fox News would still have the same conservative approach if Murdoch sold it. Gannett doesn’t give a shit what its reporters write about Bush, Carper, Obama or anyone else, as long as it’s accurate and doesn’t draw down lawsuits.
Do yourself a favor… Take a week or two off from book publishing and ask to shadow a TNJ reporter or editor, or even just take them out to lunch and grill ’em. You might be surprised what you learn.
… besides, where would you guys and gals be if it weren’t for the traditional, “corporate media”? You’d have nothing to pontificate about or comment on.
And cassandra, since you’re here – any reply to the query about your “Sussex-is-trying-to-dictate-to-Wilmington” argument a few thread pages back?
They do not have the wherewithal to cover Bush or Obama on their own. They rely on the news services and networks to do so…local outlets such as TNJ or WDEL do not generally have the resources to cover their congressional delegations in great depth.
So they are basically just like blogs at this point.
Haha… good one.
They cover local news. There’s more to life than codels, Bush and Obama.
anon 4,
Dog puckey? When was the last time a reporter asked Tom Carper or Mike Castle a tough question? When was the last time a NJ editor allowed something that could potentially make Mike Castle or Tom Carper look bad in print?
I have first hand experience with them spiking a true news story because it made Carper look bad, so I think I get how it works.
So that last part does not sound mysterious – it was my trade tariff subsidy story that they spiked by printing Carper’s “Nothing to see here folks..move along” press statement and leaving it at that.
Hey anon –this “Sussex-is-trying-to-dictate-to-Wilmington” is quite the mischaracterization of my own argument. And if you go back and look, the word “opinions” features pretty prominently. As in: while folks below the canal are quick to judge and diagnose the ills and prescriptions for those above the canal, they shouldn’t be surprised that we have our own thoughts along that line for those below the canal. I know you want to do some shadowboxing over who really screws over who here, but you’ll really need to do that on your own, since that was never part of what I was claiming.
Sure, once Bush became unpopular. Then, at long last, open season! But when Bush and the Iraq War were popular…
When I say “Corporate Media”, I’m not talking about some kind of grand conspiracy. I’m talking about the tendency of the media to push whatever is popular. Howard Dean got a little too worked up? Let’s show that clip 700 times in a single week. Someone throws a shoe at Bush? Let’s show that clip at least twice an hour. Monsanto is trying to turn their 91% monopoly over soy into a 95% monopoly? Ehhh, not sexy, likely to cost us advertising dollars, skip it.
Then there’s the matter of repeating lies that the Bush Administration told without comment, as if they were factual. The Santelli thing, too – it gets treated as an “angle” rather than a farce. It’s the standard Luntz/Rove/Atwater playbook – if things are looking bad for the GOP, just cook up something new for the media to talk about. You can count on them to treat whatever bullshit they come up with as an “angle” rather than a ploy.
From the original thread about the Cape school board race…
Miscreant wrote: Just what Sussex County needs… a prescription from north of the canal.
Cassandra replied: When Sussex Countians stop trying to diagnose the ills of Wilmington and or NCCo, perhaps you may have a reason for this silly observation.
My question is: Who do you think in Sussex is trying to diagnose the ills of Wilmington and NCCo? I’m not trying to shadowbox, but just to really get some answers. If you guys think that Sussex County gives two bowel movements about what happens in Wilmington, you’ve got another think coming.
Do you really think that downstaters are trying to tell you how to solve your problems? I can’t recall a single case of any Sussex politician telling James Baker “Hey, you guys have a big crime problem,” for example. Or to Chris Coons: “Hey, you guys have a big development problem.”
I apologize for any inadvertent mischaracterizations of your argument, and also for going off-topic here. I’d just tried multiple times to get an answer on that thread and found myself ignored.
Again, NOT trying to fight – just to figure out how you Yankees really think. 😉
Very well put X. And Cassandra’s point about the original sin being the false objectivity is also worth repeating.
Man A says, “Two plus two is four.” However, Man B, a lobbyist for high numbers, says, “Two plus two is ten.” So two plus two must be around seven.
Man A says, “Two plus two is four.” However, Man B, a lobbyist for high numbers, says, “Two plus two is ten.” So two plus two must be around seven.
I almost never hear a reporter try to triangulate the answers they get — that would mess with the illusion of objectivity. What I do hear is some variant on this ” Some people would say that two plus two is four, what would you say to that?” And the person who insists the answer is 10 will get in a huff over it and insist on the rightness of his clearly wrong talking point.
And I don’t object when you reporters present two differing opinions or approaches — I do really resent leaving in the clearly faulty objective info that may be used to rationalize said opinions or approaches.
“because it made Carper look bad”
What evidence do you have that they “spiked” the story for this reason?
“Gannett doesn’t give a shit what its reporters write about Bush, Carper, Obama or anyone else, as long as it’s accurate and doesn’t draw down lawsuits.”
You type this as if it means all is rosy in corporate media land. Odd that you give Gannett, which publishes more newspapers than any other company, a pass on being a national media player, and a pass on the effects of avoiding any and all stories that might lead to lawsuits.
As the Freebery backdown proved, TNJ won’t print material that MIGHT lead to a lawsuit, even one the plaintiff would see tossed out of court almost immediately (for those who don’t keep score, TNJ spiked an investigation into the “loan/gift” Freebery got when a DC law firm threatened a suit over it).
If what you mean is that this cowardice didn’t reflect a particular point on the conservative-liberal scale, I suppose you’re right — but it doesn’t absolve TNJ or its editorial department of charges that it was in the tank for the Gordon administration.
In other words, there are many levels on which TNJ “gives a shit” about what its reporters cover. And, with its corporate BS about unnamed sourcing, that bias skews toward the status quo.
“Odd that you give Gannett, which publishes more newspapers than any other company, a pass on being a national media player…”
That’s because, except for USA Today, it’s not. Gannett publishes shitty little community and regional newspapers. Each fiefdom is under separate control. There’s no corporate hegemony coming from the top, which is what you and Jason don’t seem to understand.
Re: the Freeberry backdown, unless you were in the room with the editors and reporters at the time, you don’t have a clue why they did whatever they did. Or were you?
The News Journal, WDEL, WILM and every other in state media….never ask Carper, Castle, Biden, or Kaufman tough questions. Their questions are all softball. Plus, all of them allow these mice to hide behind their microphones, where we the public cannot ask OUR questions.
Its part of the Delaware Way!
“Each fiefdom is under separate control. There’s no corporate hegemony coming from the top, which is what you and Jason don’t seem to understand.”
I understand it a lot better than you seem to think. Actually, the “fiefdoms” you reference are regional groups, and the publisher in Wilmington is one of the regional group publishers. And when the national corporation approves the budget line for lawyering, it doesn’t have to actually say “avoid any controversy that might attract a lawsuit.” The lack of money does the talking.
Besides, you can’t seriously believe that a corporation that pays the top editors from the corporate payroll doesn’t ask them to toe certain lines. They might not care who wins elections, but when they dictate how many pictures of minorities should to run in the paper, and reward editors and publishers based on their meeting those goals, and when they give bonuses based on how many minorities are hired, they certainly are dictating to the fiefdoms.
Plus, I love the “except for USA Today” line. Yeah, except for my addiction to crack, I’m clean and sober!
I understand what happened on that backdown a lot better than you seem to think. I’m under no obligation to spill what I know to someone who doesn’t even have the imagination to come up with a name beyond “anon.” If you work for the paper, say so, and we’ll debate it in public.
Liz, there’s not a state in the union whose congressional delegation goes on the air to answer questions from the public. And you’re wrong about the “questions being softball.” You can ask all the hardball questions you like, and they’re under no obligation to answer them straight. And they don’t.