The “News” Media

Having mentioned both network evening news and a 24-hour cable news network in recent writings, I thought that the topic of the news media generally should be covered. If you are pressed for time, here are the salient points in one-word descriptions: cowardly, gullible, enabling, titillating, beholden, and vapid.

I generally watch one of the network evening newscasts each day, at least when I’m at home at the proper hour. I don’t really have a preference among the three, although I will tune in to a particular program if I know that a topic of interest will be covered. Network news can best be described as a series of sound bites mixed with pretty graphics. The “news makers” of the day have a few of their sentences regurgitated and if there is any further dialogue on the matter from the members of the newscast, it by and large can’t be described as “in depth.” Very rarely is what is said by the news makers challenged. After all, each network only gives thirty minutes to news, although each used to give an hour or more. Moreover, news-gathering done right – digging into stories rather than parroting talking points – is expensive. And news today at the networks faces the same pressure to make money as do sitcoms, dramas, and “reality programming.” With not much there, why do I watch? For several reasons, I suppose. The first is simply habit. I’ve been watching a network newscast for as long as I can remember. (Of course, for much of that time, I actually thought that it was news.) Secondly, I find it interesting – and disheartening – to see what millions of Americans are watching… and very likely still believing that what they are seeing is the truth. Finally, occasionally stories are covered about which I’ve yet to get wind. It doesn’t happen often on network news, but the heads-up allows me to then go to alternative sources where the actual story might be told.

One would think after taking in what I’ve written above that the 24-hour cable news networks would be a better alternative. After all, they face no time constraints or – seemingly – internal competition from non-news programming. You would be mistaken. If anything, this format is even more mundane and the pressures noted above even greater. With so much time to fill – endless amounts! – stories are covered to death. Anchors and reporters will talk and talk and talk, but only occasionally will any new facts be covered. After all, facts about a story generally are not unearthed in such a way as to give them fresh topics throughout a program. Plus, getting those facts, once again, costs money and while these networks may not have comedies and dramas against which their news shows compete, they are large commercial concerns whose bottom line is to make money. Thus, we have witnessed the rise of the pundit. Bringing in an “expert” in a field and having that person talk a subject to death with the anchor is much, much cheaper than actually going into the field and getting the facts on a story. If you close your eyes and don’t think about it too much, it almost appears to be actual news. Plus, there is an endless supply of pundits. Filling a whole day, and the next, and the next will be no problem. Cheaper still than a pundit is the “news maker” herself. Why not have her come on camera to talk about the issues and the “facts,” thereby filling even more time? Why not indeed?

Most news outlets to one degree or another live in fear of not being able to gain access to the policy makers of the day. Having to fill air time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, this takes on a greater concern. After all, having members of Congress, Senators, and high-level White House staff on a program fills a lot of time. It also looks important and can pass for news. The network also fears losing its pundits, which would leave more dead air time to fill still. Why would the pundits and the policy makers leave and be loath to return? Well, would you like being exposed as an empty suit, dishing spin rather than facts on national television? Exactly. These networks are especially reluctant to do their job and challenge people when they don’t tell the truth. It would cost money to go out and get the facts to issue the challenges… and their time-fillers might just not return next week once challenged. All of this is why you are more or less getting 24 hours of horse shit. [Filling time on the cheap is also why celebrity “news” (see Anna Nicole Smith) and what should be purely local stories (see Jon Benet Ramsey) also dominate the air waves. That, however, is a topic for another time.]

To illustrate my point, I’ll note a recent appearance by Rich Galen, a Republican strategist, on Wolf Blitzer’s nightly program, The Situation Room, on CNN (8 May 2007). CNN had just conducted a poll (and this example in no way endorses the validity of polls!) indicating that 57% of the American public supports a fixed timeline for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Galen, however, stated that the poll indicated that 61% of Americans were against such a timeline. Note that Galen was not arguing the validity of the poll or what the poll numbers actually meant in terms of a debate. He simply changed the numbers and thereby entirely changed the outcome of the poll itself. I don’t blame Galen; he is paid to destroy the truth. No, I blame Blitzer for not calling Galen on his lying… about CNN’s own poll for Pete’s sake!

As an aside, I do like one program among the 24-hour news network pabulum, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which appears weeknights on MSNBC. You won’t generally find policy makers on his show because he’ll call them on their crap. He does have the usual posse of pundits, but I simply take all of what they say with a grain of salt. I’m certainly not saying that I always like his program or that I always am in agreement with his viewpoints. I simply think that Olbermann is actually trying.

A big part of the problem is the closeness of big, main-line news organizations to Official Washington. Since I haven’t mentioned newspapers thus far, I’ll use them here to illustrate this point. The NY Times and the Washington Post will be my examples. These are probably the two most broadly respected newspapers in the country. Along with that, they are probably the two most influential papers as well. The common wisdom is that discerning people read them – or at least respect them – and certainly policy makers read them. As a result, the staffs of these papers are able to speak with the policy makers themselves on the record. Moreover, their status buys them access to the policy makers as sources off the record as well. The tendency of the papers seems to be to “think big.” Why speak to the little fish when the big will bite? (In other words, the mentality is “why speak to the ‘underlings’ when policy makers are available?”) And if you can talk with the big fish, why dig further? That costs money and monetary pressure is every bit as much alive with print media as it is with television. So, too, is the tendency not to challenge your sources. After all, the big fish may not come back to your pond if you do. The problem with all of this should be apparent by now. Policy makers are designing policy, promoting it, and have a very large stake in its outcome. They will say what is in their best interests. Sometimes it will be the truth, but more often it will only be a “version” of the truth (read “spin”). Other times still, they will outright lie. This “big fish” mentality – focusing entirely on policy makers as sources – combined with the need to both have these same big name sources return in the future and to maximize profit for the company, means that reporters will face pressure to put out the story that the policy makers want them to put out… rather than print the truth. I’ve used newspapers to illustrate this pitfall, but it certainly exists for big-time television sources as well. [This section doesn’t even touch on the topics of journalists and policy makers socializing together or of the modern notion of journalists as celebrities in their own right. Both topics only bolster my arguments, but each could be the subject of a blog writing on its own.]

I’ll offer up an illustration in support of my assertions above. From the events of 9/11 until to the start of the war with Iraq, the Times and the Post in large part towed the Bush Administration line in its push for war. The sources noted were almost entirely “high level” and the off-the-record sources – often later revealed – proved to be the same. “Proof” of WMDs and “Saddam Hussein’s imminent intent” to use them was repeated as if from the Administration itself. It was. Congress as a whole bought the stories and so did much of the American public. Of course, it was all lies and half-truths, but who could know that then? Well, actually, journalists at Knight-Ridder knew. John Walcott, Warren Strobel, and Jonathan Landay put together a compelling piece of journalism, stories published over the months and months leading up to the war. They did it the old fashioned way, which is also to say the time consuming way, which is also to say the expensive way. They called people. They tracked down leads. They traveled and met with sources that were mostly mid-level. (Sources, I might add that had nothing to do with crafting policy and everything to do with implementing it. The very people, quite often career civil servants, who would know what was going on and who could verify or disprove what the policy makers were actually saying.) They dug through records, mostly electronic and many even on the Internet for anyone to see at home. They threw up warning signs as to why the Administration’s case for war smelled funny. They outright debunked then many of the things that now everyone – except Dick Cheney of course – knows to have been false. All of this could have been done by the Times and the Post. They had much greater resources at their disposal than did Knight-Ridder. So, too, could have any member of Congress had he been so moved. They did not. They were too powerful, too elite, and too close to Official Washington. It took people who were too “unimportant” to catch the big fish to actually do the work that needed to be done and get the real story (read “to get the truth”). Had the work been done by the Times or the Post, Official Washington would have been reading it. It might have helped frame the debate, such as it was. Unfortunately, Knight-Ridder published no papers in Washington. The organization was far enough away from the seat of power to get the story, but not close enough – or important enough – to tell it. The McClatchy Company purchased Knight-Ridder in 2006. If you are lucky live in a city that publishes one of their papers, you are very likely to be much better informed as to the political truths of our society than are those of us who live elsewhere. The latter most certainly includes those of you living in New York or DC, like it or not.

I suppose that my final topic today will be the myth of a liberal bias in the news media. Discerning, intelligent people still believe this to be the case… in the face of common sense if nothing else. The story of the press in America is the story of the ownership of production and distribution of the press itself. This is true today, where basically every major source of news in America is owned by a large corporate interest. Moreover, most of these corporate concerns are not focused on the news business as their only – or even their primary – venture. All of these businesses exist to make money. Period. Now, I happen to enjoy making money myself, so I can’t fault them that. However, let’s not whitewash the effect that this singular corporate goal has on news divisions. You don’t make money by pissing off your advertisers. You don’t make money by pissing off politicians that are so nicely in corporate pockets. You by and large play it safe, which means conservative (small “c”). You don’t rock the corporate boat, which is just fine for Conservatives (large “c”).

It is too easy to point out absurdly right-wing “news” organizations such as Fox News. That Fox is a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration and the RNC at large is the obvious, gospel truth even to my benchmark retarded squirrel. It displays outright, in-your-face Conservatism. No, I’m pointing to all of the little ways that the news media tip toes around the truth – and sometimes leaps over it – in order to not offend Big Business, which would play with the bottom line. We have the supposedly Harvard-loving, tea-swilling, intellectually-pinko New York Times, in the lovely words of my wife, “aiding and abetting” the Bush administration time and again on the road up to the war and sadly quite often still. (Hell, Judith Miller was so far up Bush’s bum prior to leaving the Times that she could see Condoleezza Rice and Robert Novak playing yahtzee somewhere near the President’s duodenum.) We have the supposedly liberal editorial (and also opinion editorial) staffs of papers publishing the work of the William Safires and Charles Krauthammers of the world right alongside their progressive counterparts. Certainly, there are examples to be found that are exceptions to all that I have noted above, but by and large, the pressure on today’s journalist is to trend conservative… which Conservatives find most satisfying.

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell a story that I just recently heard that illustrates one of the “leaps over the truth” I noted above. Just after college in the early 1980s, a fellow beekeeper from the US (“Kevin”) not only wanted to learn more about alternative beekeeping methods, but was also infatuated with Latin American culture. As a result, he traveled extensively throughout Central and South America. At one point, Kevin found himself in a relatively small town in Nicaragua. He was there to meet the people and to see how they kept bees. While there, he struck up a friendship with a reporter for Time magazine. This reporter was using this town as a base of operations while reporting on the war between the Contras and the Sandanista government. Kevin knew of the war, but it really had not affected his travels. Around this town were acres and acres of cleared forest – “stumps for miles” – but although the town had been a forestry town, its workers had not performed the clear cutting. That had been done by Weyerhaeuser, a giant wood and paper company, which had struck a deal with the Contras during their control of the area. Presently, the Sandanistas had control and were letting the foresters of the town use the area once again. In a raid to take back the area, and thus continue the flow of money from Weyerhaeuser, the Contra army attacked the town. Although Kevin thought that the townspeople were neutral in the conflict, focusing only on day-to-day living, dozens were killed in the gunfight. Both Kevin and the journalist were in the town at the time of the attack. The journalist was writing stories all of the time, of course, and Kevin would read the stories as magazine issues were sent down to the reporter. When no mention of the attack was made in any of the reporter’s articles during and after the time in question, Kevin asked him about it. The reporter told him point blank that it just wasn’t worth writing about because such a story would not be printed. The reporter had learned to only write favorable – or at worst neutral – accounts of the Contras because Weyerhaeuser was a big advertiser and a paper supplier to boot. It was a big eye-opener for Kevin and I can sympathize with him.

I’ll offer three final thoughts and a post script. First, Fox News is brilliant business. Rupert Murdoch may be a parasite, but he is a parasite with brains. There is often much more money to be made by serving the bulk of the customers in a smaller slice of the total market than by serving a broader selection of customers in the market as a whole. MSNBC followed CNN’s path to the latter, while Murdoch followed the former strategy with Fox News and laughed all the way to the bank. It also helps that promoting Republican leaders generally leads to more favorable business rules and laws. Republicans are slightly easier to buy than Democrats. However, if the world were turned upside down tomorrow and Murdoch believed that more cash would flow to him with Fox News having a left-wing bent, Bill O’Reilly would be parroting Michael Moore faster than a NASCAR race bores me.

Second, William Safire, both in his columns and as a TV pundit, championed the Bush case for war with Iraq. He as much as anyone fed the line “we will be greeted as liberators” to the press and to the public over and over again. I’m curious; can anyone find anything that Safire hypothesized about the war in the period leading up to it that proved to be correct? Why does this man still have a job and why does anyone take him seriously?

Finally, it is a sad reality that the best political commentary in this country comes in the form of political satire. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, and Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury lampoon the powerful and shine light on the bullshit of our day. Humor frees them to call a spade a spade, a crook a crook, and a liar a liar. We don’t like to hear that the emperor has no clothes, but it goes down better with a laugh. Reading Doonesbury last week illustrates my point as to their collective worth nicely. Comics from 2002 and 2003 were reprinted. In these, Trudeau’s characters mocked Bush’s pre-war assertions that the war would be clean and swift, offering up a look at what Trudeau projected would come to pass. Sadly, he was spot on. A little digging, common sense, and a sense of history were a good guide for him.

My post script to this long piece is to remember Newton N. Minow, a former chairman of the FCC. On 9 May 1961, at a gathering of the National Association of Broadcasters, Mr. Minow called television programming “a vast wasteland.” Many today believe that even in the face of such criticism by a respected and influential figure, it was at this moment that the networks consciously chose profit over public interest. Although his judgment fell on deaf ears, he was correct then and he would be correct today. I do not know if he included TV news in his assertions, but I’m sure that he now would.

Note: This piece was originally finalized for publication on 11 May 2007, but I only found time to upload it today.