Spleen Fully Ventilated, Resting At Home

We may have gotten a little carried away yesterday, a little intemperate. After all, we love Frank Rich. His far-ranging free association is often a delight to read (but like his neo-con complement, David Brooks, his conclusions are sometimes a little thin). Rich was merely the cart onto which we loaded our rotten apples—it’s nothing to do with Rich, it’s the widespread conflation of news with opinion. (Most of these public spin-squabbles could be avoided by saying, “Where in the newspaper did you read THAT?”) It’s news “anchors” like Brit Hume framing every news story with a dismissive, normative snear that always sets the table for a neo-con take-away. Some have argued that “objective journalism” is really an anachronism of the 20th century—that newspapering before and since has been (should be) relentlessly partisan. At least you know where your reporters stand. That may be.

For the first time in my life I’ve caught myself wanting to muzzle certain excitable “writers” —both online and in print—for their brazen lies, their cultism, their arrogance. I find myself entertaining the idea that the world needs neo-cons to be the opposition party, not the ruling party, and considering their inherent virtues and vices that make this so. I’m not really questioning the Holy Gospel of the First Amendment, but I chafe at the proposition that all voices should be weighed with equanimity. Some of the bloggers I admire most have recently taken up the slogan “there are no margins in compromise,” and it resonates with me, and I find that disturbing. Reasonable disagreement, civility, compromise—these are Enlightenment values. Values in which our country, and our First Amendment, are anchored.

A few other tangents I would add to yesterday’s spleen-venting action: People do not argue whether Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, or Bill O’Reilly will obsolete journalism. Why does the medium of print (online) trick us into believing that smart bloggers have anything more to add to the basic fund of Truth than those Greco-Roman wrestlers of partisan politics? Those guys HAVE impacted journalism (some more than others) not by practicing it themselves, but by casting a broad pall of cynicism over all legitimate journalism. To my mind, when industry folks worry about the impact of blogs and bloggers, they are sort of tilting at windmills. Do they really expect opinions to replace facts?—well…

I know why Frank Rich is in the Arts & Leisure section. Newspapers today are trying to compete with the subjects they cover. In other words, they are in the attention economy along with all the news, art, and entertainment goings-on that themselves capture their reader’s attention. Aside from the A section, the backpages are being populated with material that is gray-area—lots of pictures, trend, lifestyle, and service stuffing that is traditionally the purview of magazines. (Aha, now you reach the reason why I am so exercised—It’s a turf war!) Naturally, you put your critics in the arts pages, not on the op-ed pages.

My point about NPR yesterday sort of pointed beyond itself. Whenever someone attempts a “bias in media” study, they for some reason land on public broadcasting as the inevitable gold standard. (McNeil news hour also deserves a nod as an attempt at opinion-free news reporting.) This is hardly an accident. Public Broadcasting is very leery about publishing opinion, for a variety of interesting reasons.

Maybe the way to guarantee the existence of an authoritative, non-partisan news source is to increase funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That way, partisan squabbles can cancel themselves out more or less at the pre-funding stage, rather than on after the news cycle at the pundits’ table. Why is the BBC still considered the acme of unimpeachable authority in world news? (Please don’t trot out any hay-penny scandals of recent years that merely prove the point by exception.)

One final point. There are some interesting eyewitness blogs that look pretty revolutionary—particularly from a war zone. But I think one needs to be careful to assess these for any hidden score-settling. War blogs from soldiers are notoriously cheerleaderish, and that’s fine as far as it goes—but it is insane to equate these with real war-zone reporting by even comparing the two. (The meta-media version of equal time: forty killed in Iraqi suicide bombing. Yeah, but what are the bloggers saying about it?) Lastly, the press pool at the White House may be lousy with excellent bloggers, but I would not class processing and replying to a White House spokesperson—or the President himself—as reporting per se, particularly in this day and age. Again, this often falls into the category of exegesis and rhetorical argument—fine as far as they go, but hardly a substitute for observed facts and sourced quotes.

I will now retire for a painful, four-hour episode of public scourging.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.