Pretty plainly, Fox News is full of conservative opinion hosts, while its news wing has fixated on anti-Obama causes célèbres from ACORN to the tea-party protests. (Equally plainly, the White House is not concerned about fighting the bias of, say, MSNBC hosts who agree with it.) But Sean Hannity's Republicanism, Beck's populism and Mike Huckabee's Christian conservatism are very different — as are, say, Rachel Maddow's progressivism and Chris Matthews' Democratic insiderdom. American politics has civil libertarians and Wall Street conservatives and social-justice moralist-populists and much more.
And they all, in these unsettled times, have various issues with the centrist establishment — which has its own permutations and camps. All of this promises wild and interesting times for journalists to cover, but they won't be able to do it from the neutral center. Because there isn't one, and there never was.
News and opinion have merged into one product whether we like it or not. At least Stossel admits this.
Will, the fatalism you express here may appear, at first, to be cynical realism that allows us to take off our rose colored glasses and see the world for what it really is, but it is actually doing great damage to thinking minds and fair debate. I'll concede that everybody has some degree of opinion and personal biases, but journalists and editors, by in large, take their responsibilities very seriously.
ReplyDeleteEditorialists, on the other hand, (who include the likes of: Hannity, Beck, Huckabee, Maddow and Matthews etc.) are idealogical mercenaries beholden to no standards except ratings and readership.
There is no reason journalists can't eliminate most bias from reporting, and while it will always be a battle to keep them in check, it would be a disservice to independent thinkers to give up on news and supplant it with unadulterated opinion.
There are such things as facts, and journalists are the best vehicle for bringing them to me. My current approach is to distill a few sources with minor bias and synthesize it. I'll take that over John Stossel's snake oil salesman shtick any day. I really think you're letting the talking heads off the hook. Let's not give them a free pass.
Who knew W&L's own J-school has an ethics class?:
http://journalism.wlu.edu/J344/index.html
Will and Noam Chomsky Agree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(journalism)#Criticisms
"There is no reason journalists can't eliminate most bias from reporting..."
ReplyDeleteOf course there is. They will not make money if they do this. It's that simple. The model has changed. Again, we can romanticize the profession all we want, but this is the direction it's going in and there is nothing we can do about it.
Today information costs nothing and opinion costs nothing. But what people still and will always want is celebrity. Fox News has capitalized on that market like no other.
When it comes down to it (and I think I need to take off my own pair of rose-colored glasses), the only reason I empathize with Stossel is because he is one of the only media celebrities I can relate to. But at the end of the day I have little use for him.
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ReplyDeleteOne more thing.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, thanks for pointing out that wikipedia entry. What I think it notes is that, at its core, the conduct of journalists is intensely philosophical.
What is objectivity? How is it best conveyed? Who determines that? Because you are playing to an audience, is the enterprise not ultimately subjective? And so on...
Then there is the matter of truth. Truth does not equal objectivity. Or does it? Should the journalist make that determination himself? Should he even pursue truth? But, again, what is truth? Is it not inherently subjective?
I believe Stossel is attempting to discover the truth, but his version of the truth is simply an extension of his values (which are very similar to mine, thus why I identify with him). Can Olbermann and Limbaugh, two people I do not identify with, also claim they are pursuing the truth? Because if we say yes, then we are saying truth is relative and we are getting into some very dangerous territory.
Much more complex stuff than it appears at first glance.
Will, you raise a lot of good points that I think I chose to ignore because of my enthusiasm for public discourse built upon a foundation of statements of fact. For example, your insights about the sliding scale of objectivity and truth are dead on. We will probably never be able to apply an exact rule to either, but I think it's not unreasonable to expect a degree of consensus on the issue; One that would allow fair and civil debate for 99% of people (there will always be crazies).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think you're missing the point on the financial motives of news publications. While it's true that the news media is beholden to demands of the market, journalists are not. The office politics of reputable news organizations are complex, but my understanding is that publishers are not allowed to make the call on what gets printed. This removes the business office from the news room and provides some insulation from market pressures. Of course, we are seeing the newspaper business crumple (get it?) across the country, but I think and hope this is due to a shift in media not a shift in preference for news that reflects one's own opinions. In the end we will see how much the bottom line affects journalists to report with minimal bias.
Hey, I hope you're right. I just don't see it. What are the most popular news radio programs? Talk radio. News websites? Huff Post and Drudge. Television? Fox News and MSNBC. (Note: I don't have any data to back this up, but I think the trend is true from what I've been reading about the media in past few months).
ReplyDeleteI think news is being customized to fit consumers' increasingly unique preferences. It's like the car industry eighty, ninety years ago. You want a car? Black Model-T was your only choice. Today, anything.
Same with news. Sixty years ago you had a few tv channels, a few radio channels, and a few local papers. Today, anything.
Supply & demand + technology + innovation. No industry is immune, for better or worse.