Who's the Real Media?
In Political Jihad and the American Blog, Jay Rosen mulls a Sept. 26 piece by Chris Satullo, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer that attempts to escape the trap-thinking of big media-vs.-blogger debates. Satullo says journalists should embrace bloggers:
Switching back and forth from Satullo's piece (in italics) and his own reaction to it, Rosen holds an imaginary conversation that both challenges and transcends Satullo. As usual, Rosen writes way too long. Whoever he had as an editor during his reporting days sure wasn't around when I was at it, and anything past 15 inches was at peril of being chopped.
But between the two of them, Satullo and Rosen move the discussion into a context that both admits the paralysis of so much of what passes for "big media," and the risks for bloggers, whose legitimate critiques of the Dan Rathers converge with more ancient agendas:
The "propagandists-vs.-media" battlefield has a left wing, too, of course. But the propagandists seem to make less headway there, I suppose because the mainstream media (Fox News excepted) is aware that it's leaning left as far as it can without admitting a bias, and you have to get well off the mainstream to outflank it in that direction.
It's interesting to watch print media's reaction to Rather vs. the Bloggers. To us, TV is the phony "new media," a pseudo-news system that has more to do with bouffants and corporate sponsors than truth-telling. Yet more people get their news from the tube than from the morning fishwrap we throw on their doorsteps. And now here comes the next stage beyond that, grinding TV news into irrelevance. I don't know whether to cheer or weep.
Many bloggers are citizens who care about facts and ideas. (Some are narcissistic boors, but let's ignore them.) Good bloggers devour information, making then a smart, skeptical audience. Any journalist who would not welcome that is a fool. Given a choice between a world of nonreaders zoning out with MTV or a posse of tart-tongued digital watchdogs, I say: Up with blogs!
Switching back and forth from Satullo's piece (in italics) and his own reaction to it, Rosen holds an imaginary conversation that both challenges and transcends Satullo. As usual, Rosen writes way too long. Whoever he had as an editor during his reporting days sure wasn't around when I was at it, and anything past 15 inches was at peril of being chopped.
But between the two of them, Satullo and Rosen move the discussion into a context that both admits the paralysis of so much of what passes for "big media," and the risks for bloggers, whose legitimate critiques of the Dan Rathers converge with more ancient agendas:
But the event is being hijacked by propagandists of Orwellian agenda. Their cover story: We're challenging the bloated corporations that own the biased mainstream media. This strikes a chord with the hype-weary youth who've made the Internet their own.
This brings him to the war, and the war cry of bias:
But the real goal of the propagandists - with their shouts of Bias! Arrogance! Monopoly! - is to destroy journalism. Why? Because journalism is the sworn enemy of propaganda.
I believe Satullo is drawing a distinction between those who are frustrated and angry with the traditional news media, and want answers, as well as changes, which is one group of critics--many of them pro-Bush or red staters, some of whom blog--and another group, posing as critics of bias, who see an oppportunity to discredit CBS News in the wider public sphere.
They want to achieve an historic victory in a very long war between conservatives and the likes of CBS, going back to 1969 and Spiro Agnew, or even further to 1964, when Barry Goldwater met the hostility of Northeastern journalists. (For this background go here.) They want to inflict as much damage as possible on an institution they treat as hostile to Republican Truth, and to the message of the cultural right.
Bias is their lever only because CBS and other mainstream news organizations claim to be un-biased. (And Newsday's Marvin Kitman said Sunday that's a fantasy in TV news.) If CBS identified itself as liberal news, made by progressives for all Americans, the war against Rather and crew would go on, but not on the grounds of bias. It would switch to the defeat of "CBS liberalism" itself. Bloggers, says Satullo, be wary of the Orwellians.
They've pressed their attack against journalism for 30 years now, frothing about Bias.
But this does not mean the press is innocent of bias, error, laziness and poor quality control.
And shame on journalists for having given them so much ammunition. We screw up too often. We take too many shortcuts. We lapse in vigilance against our own preconceptions.
To lapse in vigilance against your own preconceptions is to take up residence in built deceptions-- as with spin alley. This happens way too often, Satullo says. The press should value bloggers who can point it out.
But, in the public forum, overuse has drained meaning from the cry of "Bias!" Often, all it denotes is: "What you reported does not conform to my assumptions." Or worse: "What you reported, while true, does not advance my agenda."
It's the "or worse" case that made Tom Brokaw speak of a "political jihad" against Rather and CBS. But Brokaw, like Rather, is still lumping Internet, blogger, and jihad together and reacting with outrage at the enemy's tactics. Satullo makes distinctions, so he can warn the citizen bloggers against the jihadis.
The "propagandists-vs.-media" battlefield has a left wing, too, of course. But the propagandists seem to make less headway there, I suppose because the mainstream media (Fox News excepted) is aware that it's leaning left as far as it can without admitting a bias, and you have to get well off the mainstream to outflank it in that direction.
It's interesting to watch print media's reaction to Rather vs. the Bloggers. To us, TV is the phony "new media," a pseudo-news system that has more to do with bouffants and corporate sponsors than truth-telling. Yet more people get their news from the tube than from the morning fishwrap we throw on their doorsteps. And now here comes the next stage beyond that, grinding TV news into irrelevance. I don't know whether to cheer or weep.
