The Post-Journalistic Media
The estimable Mark Bowden describes bloggers whose only purpose is to score political points:
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.
Amen.
These mendacious propagandists, also found on cable TV and radio, conduct themselves as though the end justifies the means, though few are actually willing to defend that proposition. Their approach to discourse has the effect of turning some folks who despise demagoguery away from all political conversation, which perversely increases their audience share.
They ought to be fought. And scorned. I am not all all sure that the blog Mr. Bowden discusses in his article has all the general characteristics he describes — I’ve never read it — but I can think of political commentators who do.
Means don’t need justifying, they work just fine without. And I’d maybe weep a few tears for the beautiful “truth-lovers” if they had the courage of their convictions, but find one of them, pick an issue, and offer to recognize the rightness of their side if in turn they recognize the victory of yours, and see how far that gets you.
— Senescent · Sep 9, 03:40 AM · #
What would a report without spin look like? I can think of no better arbitor of truth than free an open debate. Would you care to offer an alternative mechanism? In China we have CCTV. I would take a diversity of “less-accurate” opinions any day.
Objectivity is a lousy criteria for judging the quality of media reports. More on this here: http://chirony.com/2009/07/30/the-great-biased-media-debate/
— wfrost · Sep 9, 03:42 AM · #
Wfrost,
I’ll take an exchange of ideas too, but I’d prefer the people exchanging them are doing so in pursuit of the truth, rather than “winning.” It changes the conversation.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Sep 9, 03:59 AM · #
I don’t see how truth is any different than consensus (or “winning”). The only difference that matters seems to be in who plays on your team – and how many people/ideas/things you are willing to show solidarity with. Perhaps Truth is a good metaphor for being on everyone’s team, but then it gets hard to figure out what the team is playing for.
The problem is that many commentators honestly believe they are quite close to the truth and see no internal inconsistencies. They just see the world that way. They are, for the most part, not sinister actors who suppress truth in their pockets while snickering to the bank in evil satisfaction.
One option for those of us who disagree is to say our interlocutors are far away from the truth because they are dishonest, ignorant, stupid, misguided, mistaken, misinformed etc… The other option is stop talking about truth, and instead try to convince people that alternate accounts of experience are more useful for governing future actions. This approach allows us to let free discussion decide the truth, and we can basically leave intentions out of it.
The approach does make a big difference – and I prefer the latter. I guess we will just have to leave it to a vote.
— wfrost · Sep 9, 05:04 AM · #
I posted a similar thought at the Yglesias blog a couple of months ago:
Not that it isn’t a baleful development, but given the financial and technological challenges facing traditional media, there’s no way this won’t happen.
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Ah, yes: that wondrous time fifty years ago when journalism was all about truth and justice (and the American Way?). When reporters didn’t have political agendas, and were just looking for “the facts, ma’m.” When editors decided what the public needed to know.
Or a hundred years ago, when Pulitzer and Hearst were giving the public the first glimpses of truth that they’d ever had, along with the manifestos of their pet political candidates. Or a hundred and fifty, when Abraham Lincoln was establishing the boundaries of what the press was allowed to print (and what federal judges were allowed to decide). Nice, and warm, and fuzzy.
Edenic nostalgia’s great, isn’t it? So what color are your glasses? I like the purple ones myself.
— Austin · Sep 9, 10:55 AM · #
I agree that there is way too much propaganda and spin, but there is also much reporting which can be verified through research which merely points to the facts and the problem. I have to mention also that the questioning of “right” also throws the point of his message into doubt — we would all have to get together, talk it out and vote — however, if we decided it’s wrong, would it necessarily be wrong? Just because there are two opposing views, doesn’t necessarily mean that one isn’t right and the other wrong. Surely he’s not saying we can only know the truth through consensus — this Kantian idea has never seemed very “true” to me.
— mike farmer · Sep 9, 12:23 PM · #
Those who are focused on winning are so focused because they believe they are in pursuit of the truth. How are you going to decide who is who?
Changing focus the way you want might make the conversation tidier and more polite, but it doesn’t make truth easier to find.
My impression is that people mistook this for journalism all the time, because they had such lofty expectations of their journalists. Now that our expectations are a little more earthbound, we can better evaluate what journalists say and what they believe. I prefer that transparency, however messy, to the fog of mystique.
I liked this response.
— Blar · Sep 9, 12:48 PM · #
Bowden’s piece strikes me as overly simplistic. Any attempt to argue the thesis he seems to be propounding has to confront, it seems to me, Fallows’s arguments, back in the 90s, in the pages of the same magazine, that American political reporting – even back in the days prior to the rise of the internet as a primary news source for millions of people – was plagued by such an extreme emphasis on the horse-race aspects of politic that it overwhelmed any serious attempts to deal with the substantive policies at issue. If that’s the case – and I think it is – the current trend in political blogs and talk radio strike me as merely an extension of that trend rather than an entirely different phenomenon: If politics is turned into a procedural sport, why <i>shouldn’t</i> the natural progression be toward the type of coverage that populates the sports pages and sports talk radio: Some attempt at objective analysis coupled with a great deal of freewheeling, unabashedly partisan, and frankly rather entertaining (certainly more entertaining than writing/commentary that featured in the stage in the process described by Fallows years ago) reporting/commentary. Until Bowden and his fellow scriveners can acknowledge that the mainstream media’s been playing at this game for at least a couple decades now and that the main change that’s occurred is that they’re being supplanted by folks who play it <i>better</i> than they do, I really don’t understand why anybody takes his criticism seriously.
Three further points:
1. I have no idea where Bowden or Conor’s specialties lie – whether they’re only mere journalists or whether they have a substantive expertise besides their training in journalism, but as someone with specialties of my own – as a practicing attorney and an amateur theologian/church historian – I have to say that “disinterested” journalism covering those two areas almost always makes the reader stupider than he was before, whether through conveying to the reader the illusion that he actually understands something the journalist has covered only superficially or through rank misinformation, whether intentional or otherwise, contained in the journalistic piece. The difficulty of actually digging down into an issue in either of these fields means that in covering any dispute the generalist journalist is going to find it much easier to write in generalities or to give greater weight to the side (a) that he favors for whatever reason or (b) that has the simpler – even if simplistic – story to tell. In my experience, the reader would be better served by reading pieces written by fierce partisans for both sides of an issue than by reading something produced by an avowedly objective, professional – and likely clueless – journalist. Why shouldn’t we assume that the same might be true about political coverage?
2. Consider the health-care debate: I’d be willing to wager that half of the substantive arguments against the House bill have never made it into the pages – whether news or editorial – of my local paper, The Washington Post. The coverage of the President’s proposals I generally find to be glib and simplistic. Now, I don’t personally go to Limbaugh (whom I’ve probably listened to for less than 30 minutes total since he came on the air) or Coulter for these arguments, but I think it’s silly to say that journalists – and the quality of and spin in their coverage of controversial issues – are blameless in the fact that folks seek out alternatives, whether it’s analysis by professional economists (in my case) or something a bit more low-brow.
3. Finally, I think that pining for the oligarchical dissemination of news that characterized the American media market from, say, the 50s to the 80s is ahistorical and completely out of touch with the way that our society has changed. Read historical or novelistic (say, Twain) accounts of American journalism throughout the 19th century, and you’ll understand this. Fits of nostalgia do not excuse the nostalgists from having to explain to me why I should prefer the soporific tones of a Walter Cronkite over the partisan muckraking – and at times, propagandistic – journalism of a century ago or why the former is better suited to preserving a republic than the latter. Moreover, the uniformity of the journalistic consensus between the 50s and the 80s only barely concealed the fact that Cronkite et al were propagandists in their own right – and if we’re dealing with propaganda, aren’t we better off if said propaganda is both (a) more explicit and (b) more entertaining?
— Richard · Sep 9, 01:37 PM · #
The following web address will create a download from my web site of a word file devoted to the fact that Barack Obama is wearing eye shadow. It has 8 still shots and youtube links.
michaleslevinson.com/Eyeshadow2.0.docx
Here is my Health care solution. My innovative approach deserves everyone’s attention. that I am an unknown candidate for president does not hurt my case.
Health Care For The Rest of Us
Health care, a major element of our economic heartbeat is stressed! My Loose Penny Program, a capital injection, will start to repair our muscle, but mission critical diplomacy is required.
The president needs to bring our fast foods, supermarkets; Target and Wal-Mart CEO’s to the Rose Garden, to ink the deal. Barack Obama went to Cairo. He can meet with KFC. Our pocket change can make the critical health care diff rinse.
Every chain must participate in our Loose Pennies Program, regardless the size of their enterprise. Our purpose: an additional two-cents in their cash registers. For every item registered we want two pennies extra, tacked as patriotic gratuity.
This is not a government mandate. A patron can refuse to pay the voluntary two cents. Burger, fries and a drink total six extra cents, pennies off the pavement. Regardless what we purchase at the market; we are only pitching in some loose change out of pocket. 40 items at the supermarket could easily add up to $150. Does 80 cents inhibit your generosity?
A worker chosen by the workers to represent them can meet with the managers to approve the total pennies for everything out the door the week before, dividing that total by everyone’s hours worked.
Then we include up to $2 dollars extra for every hour in the worker’s paychecks. We could deduct 5 % for a medical mal-practice pool, but employers are exempted from matching, so sticker prices won’t be raised to cover any additional cost of doing business. Fast food chains and supermarkets won’t be harnessed by charges from our two-pennies program!
The worker’s pay raise doesn’t come out of management’s pocket, but work place production will increase. When someone quits, the crew might ask the boss leave them to pick up the slack, so they earn more money!
The overage, beyond $2 dollars hourly extra in every pay, goes to interest bearing medical savings accounts, with the worker’s name on his or her portion. President Obama can ask everyone on the low end of the economic chain to divide their bounty, or he can order the take home half in cash, with the balance going to grow their medical savings accounts.
The medical savings account, as a health care solution beats health insurance! Insurance companies are dedicated to making money, not protecting the sick from financial disaster. When an insurance company cancels your policy because you have an expensive disease, they don’t refund your premium. But with a Health Assurance Savings Account, when you quit or get fired from the job, your medical savings account goes with you!
After a year behind the fast food counter, a 40-hour per week worker could have more than two grand in their Health Assurance account. Ten million uninsured people at the bottom of our economic food chain might not have health care insurance but all would carry Health Assurance. In the event they don’t feel right they have access to medical care, and a second opinion, because the money to pay is there! When it’s your money, wasteful procedures evaporate.
This works for the medical professional. You agree to the fee, the doctor swipes your card and the money is deducted from your Health Assurance account. The insurance company is out of the mix.
This proposed over-the-counter voluntary two-cent gratuity, $344 dollars monthly is transferred to the working not so rich by management, without bureaucracy. Government bureaus are out of the mix.
In all the dry cleaners add a nickel to every shirt pressed, a dime for every dry cleaned piece. In all the family operated dry cleaners, medical savings accounts will replace the worker’s share of their family’s health insurance.
This 2 cents extra covers 90% of all the minimum and lower wage jobs in USA, juicing the recovery by pumping the bottom of our economic chain, enriching the people most likely to purchase consumable goods with their money! Those in a low echelon hourly job, working 40 hours a week will have $80 extra weekly in his or her pay envelope, the diff rinse between a life scraping by and getting ahead; the advantage of $76 after a 5% set aside for a medical mal-practice pool, or $40 in their pay with minimum $36 earmarked for Health Assurance savings.
Millions of uninsured not so rich people building Medical Assurance Accounts will directly benefit from this voluntary deal. We gain from tipping our pennies to working folks, as these millions of uninsured won’t be crowding emergency clinics for care, which we all pay for.
Emergency health care is infected by the actuarial projections of how many uninsured people might use an emergency room walk-in for care during the course of any year.
Working people in min-wage jobs with Health Assurance accounts cover their access on a need-to-be seen basis. In addition to medical savings accounts, the two cents gratis could save a million mortgages, a contribution to neighborhood health as deserted house disease devalues the whole street.
For the rest of our uncovered citizenry, doctors and dentists must be given the volunteer opportunity to do tax deductible charity work, treating them. A charity patient is anyone without insurance. The plan: doctors do $50,000 in charitable medical services and deduct the 50 large off the top of their federal tax. Then, after all the deductions, the doctors take an additional half off their bottom line; twenty-five thousand or half, whichever is greater.
The hallmark of Obama’s campaign for president was “change” beyond a changing of the guard.
Medical professionals could perform $100,000 in charity and deduct $50,000 off their tax and because they only owed $49,000 in taxes, earn a one thousand dollar income tax credit.
This health care approach cost effectively makes sense.
Doctors won’t be at the mercy of an insurance companies,’ take it or leave it payment. Those who cannot afford the premiums, with pre-assurance from their family physician, will cancel their outrageous insurance policies.
Every doctor will have a waiting list of patients waiting to be classified as charity. Doctors will have more patients, their work incentive, freedom of income tax.
Isn’t this one-line change in our tax code easier to digest than a thousand page med-reform vaccination, a stick-it-to-us hatched by a scam congress? Would the insurance company’s shills show up at town hall meetings screaming, “It’s a communist plot! Down with their two cents extra for medical savings accounts?”
Every doctor and dentist will have a sign on the door: “No insurance? I’m here.”
These ideas will enrich our economy from the bottom up, possibly save a million mortgages, and insure access to health care services for many, if not all the millions of uninsured people, whilst leaving the greedy insurance companies out.
But your on-the-take congress, salted with insurance money, won’t allow it.
The long-term solution to our health care prob limb is free medical education for doctors, dentists, and all related personal, our goal one hundred thousand doctors graduated every year until we have one family doctor for every thousand people. A national marijuana tax could fund this program. Politishinz are good at identifying issues, but those who finance their campaigns govern the solutions.
In that light, the above proposed change in our tax code, encouraging doctors and dentists to treat the uninsured as a deductible charity, could not pass either House of the current congress in a million years without a public outcry first.
I am the unknown poet, a long-time candidate for president, roasting in the sun.
Once upon a time our Fourth Estate was independent, standing watch, reporting true. Today’s corporate approach to politics locks out the unknowns who seek public office, a primary reason there aren’t any candidates. You announce, “I’m a candidate.” The editor’s don’t ask, “What are your ideas?” But, “Show us twenty million dollars.” And without access to buckets of ducats, the access to broadcast speech, to present their platforms is also blocked. Blog in the bog, dog.
We need to renew our politics, starting with the reestablishment of our First Amendment Right to televised political speech. Upon this essay, I am requesting e quill time of our television networks, to give my response to president Obama’s health care speech to the congress, which the networks intend on playing live.
Michael S. Levinson
8601 9th St N # 9
St. Petersburg, Fl 33702
jacklegsjumpingup@earthlink.net
727 – 466 – 3064
— Michael S. Levinson · Sep 9, 01:48 PM · #
Take another example: Does Conor – or anybody else for that matter – think that the educated layperson would have a better understanding of the pope’s latest encyclical after reading the coverage in the New York Times or after listening to coverage on EWTN and reading America, or reading The Anchoress and Andrew Sullivan. I think the answer to that is exceptionally easy and explains why, increasingly, respected news outlets are not worth the time of people who really want to understand an issue, a controversy, or a scandal.
— Richard · Sep 9, 01:53 PM · #
“Those who are focused on winning are so focused because they believe they are in pursuit of the truth.”
They’re not pursuing the truth. They believe they already have the truth and, as such, no longer need to bother with critical thinking or moral judgments.
And I think people are sorely underestimating what losing the age of objectivity will mean for our country and our politics. The journalism of the mid 20th century was different than what came before because of its interest in objectivity. It wasn’t perfect to be sure, but it was a damn sight better at informing the public and framing reasonable political discourse than what we had before. They embraced the principle that if you had the facts on your side, you won the argument. Now, everyone has their own “facts” and simply disregards what the other side has to say.
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 9, 03:37 PM · #
I guess in this world of spin, I don’t see Journalists as being able to cut through the mess anyway.
In terms of truth vs power, truth is losing. Or rather, I’d say its lost. Most journalistic institutions right now exist to be spun, and those that do take a stand on truth are categorized as being on one side or another.
I definitely agree that its sad where media is headed, and bloggers are playing no small part in moving us toward demagoguery and constant spin. I just don’t believe journalism, as its been traditionally defined in newspapers, magazines, broadcast news, is the cure.
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