Not sure how many of you have been following the fallout from Keith Olbermann’s suspension from MSNBC. There has been Ted Koppel getting the vapors over the loss of objectivity and waxing nostalgic over perfectly objective times gone by. Or how about Howard Kurtz trotting out some of the tick tock on the MSNBC/Olbermann war.
I was going to use these posts to have another go at the fake objectivity of the news business. To remind people that one of the fundamental acts of reporting news is grounded in what reporters and editor choose to report on and what they choose to ignore. Those choices (much like mine to not write a post on,say, the City of Wilmington’s layoffs) are themselves NOT objective choices, but choices largely in the service of shaping the stories they choose to tell. The current fetishization of “objectivity” is largely an excuse for the reporter to not be part of the world that he or she is reporting on. As characterized by Jay Rosen, the current form of “objectivity” is really the view from nowhere — itself a POV that wants to convince you that the reporter is just reporting what he or she sees or hears. Even though said reporter has a well-stocked rolodex of folks who will provide the right balance of POV for any story.
Happily, I don’t have to write that blog post. Because Keith Olbermann did. This is worth reading in its entirety. Because he reminds us that some the signature bits of TV journalism — the ones we hold up as brave and smart — were certainly not “objective” choices. But as you look at those examples, you wonder how the business of holding the powerful accountable can ever exist with the usual view from nowhere.
What interests me about the reaction to Olbermann’s suspension is that we have plenty of folks crawling out of the woodwork to have on about this so-called loss of objectivity. Where were these people as Fox News was recreating itself as a PR arm of the RNC? Their shenanigans are legendary and documented — there are no other traditional news networks who send out a memo with the Talking Points or the POV of the Day. Fox is wall to wall lack of “objectivity” and the usual handwringers never seem to get their panties in a bunch about FOX except as part of a critique of news that needs to call out ALL fringes (stupidly including MSNBC) without calling out the singular abuse of journalism that is FOX.
But here is Olbermann dissecting the business of “objectivity”:
The great change about which Mr. Koppel wrings his hands is not partisanship nor tone nor analysis. The great change was the creation of the sanitized image of what men like Cronkite and Murrow – and H.V. Kaltenborn and Elmer Davis and John Charles Daly and H.R. Baukhage and Howard K. Smith and Eric Sevareid and Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and George Polk and even Ted Koppel – did. These were not glorified stenographers. These were not neutral men. These were men who did in their day what the best of journalists still try to do in this one. Evaluate, analyze, unscramble, assess – put together a coherent picture, or a challenging question – using only the facts as they can best be discerned, and their own honesty and conscience. And if the result is that this story over here is a Presidential chief of staff taking some pretty low-octane bribes and the scandal starts and ends there, you judge all the facts, and you say so. And if the result is that that other story over there is not just a third-rate burglary at a political office, but the tip of an iceberg meant to sink the two-party system in this country, you judge all the facts, and you scream so.
Insist long enough that the driving principle behind the great journalism of the television era was neutrality and objectivity — and not subjective choices and often dangerous evaluations and even commentary — and you will eventually leave the door open to pointless worship at the temple of a false god. And once you’ve got a false god, you’re going to get false priests. And sooner rather than later, in a world where subjective analysis is labeled evil and dangerous, some political mountebank is going to see his opening and seize the very catechism of that false god, words like “objective” and “neutral” and “two-sided” and “fair” and “balanced,” and he will pervert them into a catch-phrase, a brand-name. And he can create something that is no more journalism than two men screaming at each other is a musical duet.
This is good stuff and there’s more at his dKos post. And he is right that “objectivity” serves no one except the person who wants to armor himself with it. It seems to be the last refuge of those who don’t want to make the case for genuinely fact-based journalism, rather than letting the partisans tell their story and pretend that your consumers now know what they need to know with no context for what those partisans say and no fact-checking of what the partisans say.
This isn’t a defense of what Olbermann does nightly (because sometimes it is over cooked), but what Olbermann and Maddow do *is* some real fact-checking and the provision of real context for the spin of the day. Sometimes (especially Rachel) you get to hear some of the worst spin offenders have to really answer for their spin. Outside of NOW and the occasional 60 Minutes piece, there is nothing else like this on TV and there should be MORE, not less of it. Because I’d like any political journalist worth their salt to explain to me how they are holding the powerful accountable or even informing their consumers by just letting two sides say just anything. (And even this two sides thing can be really misguided. During the health care debates, the real debates were *within* the Democratic Party — the Republicans had largely opted out, but you dutifully got the Dems vs Repubs he say/she say throughout.) Beyond the fact that standing in the so-called middle and observing both sides, lets the dishonorable get away with alot of lying. Keith and Maddow deconstruct some of that lying and for their efforts at some accountability they are labeled not “objective”. When they are done, you know more than what he or she said — you know something about how he or she is trying to shine you on. In an era when getting zombie lies into the CW is the only way to influence policy discussion, knowing who is straying from the facts is news I can use.
The story of accountability ought to be in very high demand these days. Because while journalists have been hiding behind their “objectivity” there have been massive stories developing over the past 30 years that they have been completely missing. For example, the wholesale buying and selling of our governments (by both parties). Or even the massive destabilization of the middle class — on purpose — by Reagan acolytes who saw government as a tool to increase the wealth of those who already have money (Or as my Dad says, Supply Siders who think they should have all of the Supply.), rather than as a tool to keep building the most productive middle class in history. Or even right now — where we have lots of folks furiously displaying their deficit hawkery plumage and NO journalists asking these same hawks how stuff they are proposing (modernizing the nuclear weapons arsenal????) gets paid for. Or how this new stuff employs Americans. Or even following up on jobs claims to see if they are real.
Olbermann is right about this though — “objectivity” is not the current crisis of news. Getting journalists to commit to genuine acts of journalism *is* the current crisis of news.