It is becoming increasingly obvious that the whole edifice of modern journalism is built on a lie, argues Mike D’Virgilio
Back in the day, when there were only a few choices for America’s TV viewing pleasure, there solidified a myth that certain human beings had a view of reality devoid of all prejudice, bias, or personal opinion. They were called journalists. One even signed off his evening newscast telling America, “That’s the way it is.” And people believed him, it is said.
Although most Americans with any modicum of common sense and understanding of human nature realized that all human beings have a point of view in everything they do, journalists continued to insist that their allegedly dispassionate view of the day’s events was “the way it is.”
Many of them still make that claim, but the reality is that there is no such thing as “objective journalism” and never has been, as my colleague S. T. Karnick tells me. If the election of Barack Obama didn’t completely burst that bubble, Web maestro Andrew Breitbart is doing his bit to deflate the balloon completely.
The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto tells the story in a very informative article, “Taking On the ‘Democrat-Media Complex’: The conservative Internet entrepreneur on bringing down Acorn, Hollywood liberals, and embarrassing the mainstream media.”
It is more than obvious that the current U.S. media complex is corrupt and that the elitist, progressive experts’ claim of objectivity is a mere fig leaf intended to hide that corruption. Breitbart’s ripping away of that fig leaf—which has been drooping for the past three decades since the press’s response to the rise of Reagan made media bias increasingly obvious—is salutary and long overdue.
Taranto makes a point in the last paragraph that I think questionable, although I understand why he says it:
Even if one accepts Mr. Breitbart’s critique of the mainstream media, nobody should root for their downfall or destruction. Their role—that of impartial watchdog and broker of information—is a vital one, whether or not they perform it well. While Breitbart-style opinionated journalism can provide healthy competition, it cannot substitute for straight news.
Can there actually ever be an “impartial watchdog”? That depends on what you believe about human nature. As I noted above, objectivity is ultimately impossible. I would argue that the less religious you are, as Taranto is, the more you would have confidence in man’s ability to rise above his own prejudices. But that is clearly an illusion, if the past three decades of increasingly biased U.S. journalism are any indication of reality.
The alternative to this obviously phony pretense of a pursuit of objectivity is the fostering of a free and vibrant culture in which a wide variety of points of view are openly asserted and defended. If each newspaper, magazine, and TV news show were open and honest about its point of view, people would be able to judge among them, instead of having to wade through a swamp of self-justifications intended to establish a particular point of view as the only valid way of seeing things.
That sort of free culture, in fact, not “objective journalism,” is what we had at this nation’s founding, and it seems to have worked out well at the time. It was only with the elitist, Progressive movement of the early twentieth century that journalism, like everything else, became a thing for elite experts only.
But what elites do is control things, and in doing so their personal imperfections are magnified throughout the society. As the Internet does its good work of breaking down the ossified structures of the American media, it frees us to see what we should have known all along: objective journalism is a lie.
–Mike D’Virgilio
Spot on, Edmond! The Orwellian perversion of language is a tactic engaged in by all quarters of the statist progressive movement.
“Let us, then, make it formal by rejecting phony calls for objectivity that are intended to force a halt to that salutary change.”
And so we have reached that moment of sweet solidarity. LOL I utterly object to the lies that the msm perpetrates under the guise of objectivity. There is nothing even vaguely objective about Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric, the NY Times, etc. By trying to co-opt the word they’ve made it made it worse than meaningless; they’ve made it the exact opposite of what the dictionary tells us it means. I mourn the loss of a once proud word. 🙂
Edmond, what you’re describing here as a likely scenario is precisely what I’m calling for. I suggest that the right should continue to point out that the MSM are biased, but not express that in an angry way but instead simply note it as a reality and suggest that people should try alternative sources as well or in lieu of the MSM. Thus we will not look like the angry ones, and they will, as Jim Lakely notes in his excellent article regarding CNN’s advocacy of government regulation of talk radio.
As you note, the change is coming anyway. Why not just welcome it and enjoy the new world?
I greatly like your use of the word “organic” to describe the process that is currently working out in the media. That is what the right stands for, and should. Let us, then, make it formal by rejecting phony calls for objectivity that are intended to force a halt to that salutary change.
S.T.:
“Thus the solution I suggest is to shoot for what the nation’s Founders advocated: a truly free press in which a variety of points of view are able to get a fair hearing in the public square.”
“Fair hearing”? Well, doesn’t that require the the msm stop doing the kind of reporting that is the problem in the first place? If, on the other hand, you mean that the msm keeps on keeping on but that there are more conservatively oriented outlets as you rightly state is happening now, that isn’t my best case scenario but I could live with it.
Actually I think what is likely to happen is that as the msm continues to lose audience, some (God knows, not all) will figure out (Fox’s success can’t be ignored by any media exec who’d like to make a buck) that there is gold in reporting in a more even-handed way. I think this will be a sort of organic process that will hopefully lead to reporting that people recognize and will be, not biased in one way or another as you seem to think it will be, but reasonably fair. I’d hope that will be the face of a new, chastened msm. And of course this should leave plenty of room for more viewpoint reporting as well.
It will be interesting to see how things develop, for sure.
As mentioned earlier, Edmond, I’d be quite happy if the current media outlets were fairer. I certainly agree that the MSM could do much better at attempting objectivity. Unfortunately, I cannot realistically envision that happening.
They have been given plenty of opportunities to admit their bias and change, and their swiftly declining market shares provide a big incentive to do so. Yet they are so arrogant, self-righteous, and irredeemably elitist that they cannot do so.
To continue to insist that they do so seems to me a huge waste of effort. It hasn’t worked yet, and there are no signs that it will in future.
Thus the solution I suggest is to shoot for what the nation’s Founders advocated: a truly free press in which a variety of points of view are able to get a fair hearing in the public square.
As the journalist A. J. Liebling noted, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” Today we are moving toward true freedom of the press because everybody can own one. That will break the power of the MSM. But if we allow the MSM to dictate what the standards should be, they will use that process to deride and destroy all opposition, as they have already attempted to do by their continual slams at Web journalism.
That is why we must reject calls for journalistic objectivity: because they are a naked power grab by the mainstream media to be accomplished by marginalizing those who disagree with them.
In response, we should call for the public to regard all journalists, publishers, and broadcasters with equal skepticism and consider all news sources to be biased.
If they do so, the truth will indeed rise to the top.
S.T.:
I’m certaily with you on the need for a wide variety of choices but I think that all the current problems you list would be considerably lessened if journalists didn’t approach their jobs as a way of righting perceived wrongs (which is the reason so many so-called journalist list as why they got into the field) and saw their role as it should be: giving the facts. Though Sharpton makes my flesh crawl and causes me to scream invectives at my TV screen every time I see him, he is a “prominent” person and what he says about Limbaugh should be reported, BUT only if the truth or falsehood of what he says is also mentioned. He’d probably shut up after awhile if what he said was always followed by, “Mr. Sharpton’s comments are incorrect.” And maybe he’d soon stop being so prominent if everything he said was fact-checked and reported.
I think the problem lies ultimately with journalism schools and what passes for standards in the field today. Good journalism used to be judged by how accurate it was. I have no problem if the Sharpton’s of the world get coverage if all sides of a given story in which he is a part are given critical coverage ie; subjected to the same standards of accuracy. I am very secure in the belief that if all sides of an issue are reported in fair way conservative points of view will carry the day. We’re right most of the time, after all. We’ve got zilch to be afraid of. On the other hand truth is the enemy of liberalism.
You talk about the coverage of global warming. Well the msm does not report it in a balanced way – the huge skepticism about it in the scientific community is almost never reported. More stringent standards, excercised by editors who would never let the current unbalanced stories see the light of day would go a long way towards correcting the problem. I think I disagree with you most when you say, “But if they quoted equal numbers of people who like him, that wouldn’t be any better because the very premise behind reporting the story in the first place is advocatory.” I think the truth would make the advocacy seem pretty heavy-handed and obvious.
We need a return to standards. You’re right, we can never expunge subjectivity completely but we can do a whole lot better than we are doing now. Once upon a time, we did.
That would be an improvement indeed, Edmond, and I certainly endorse such an approach as a general rule for journalists. And in the Limbaugh case–a fairly simple story with pretty clear facts–it could quite possibly work.
Regarding the bigger picture, however, objectivity is a pretense, not a reality. For example, what makes the Limbaugh story worth reporting on at length in the first place? Only the opportunity for journalists to calumniate him and humiliate the right by suggesting that even the NFL thinks one of the most prominent people on the right represents prejudice and racism. And so they go to people who despise Limbaugh to supply the opinion quotes in their stories. But if they quoted equal numbers of people who like him, that wouldn’t be any better because the very premise behind reporting the story in the first place is advocatory.
There is a fact: someone has made claims that Limbaugh is a racist. Is that fact news, even if you use the story to prove it untrue? Or does making it a story at all plant the seed that he is indeed a racist and his defenders are wrong? The very choice of what stories to cover is a judgment and not a simple fact.
Now apply this principle to issues such as global warming, the economy, tax rates, etc.–issues where there are competing numbers and fact claims and room for much interpretation and doubt–and you can see that just reporting The Facts can’t solve the problem because of the central disputes over what the facts are, which ones are truly relevant, and the like.
But if the NYTimes openly pitched its stories toward a position favoring hedonistic utilitarian statism (as it now does while falsely claiming to be objective) and Fox News did likewise for neoconservatism, people would be encouraged to judge all of them on that basis, and the truth would be revealed much more efficiently, as Thomas Jefferson noted.
As things currently stand, the statists use claims of journalistic objectivity as a cudgel with which to beat down all opposing points of view. Although it is possible for journalists to be more objective than they currently are, as you point out, objectivity is an ideal and quite unreachable given the judgments that must be made regarding what to cover and how to see it. That’s why, like Mike, I propose that we simply acknowledge that all journalism is inevitably biased to some extent and that only liberty and a wide variety of choices can help us get toward the truth.
You know, Mike, when I first read your column I agreed with you – unbiased reporting is impossible. But the more I thought about it the more I found myself disagreeing.
This is how I think the Rush story should and could have been reported in an unbiased way:
You recieve info that Rush is trying to buy the Rams – YOU DO RESEARCH – then you report – Rush Limbaugh has joined a group trying to buy the Rams.
Someone makes an accusation that Rush has made racist comments – YOU RESEARCH THE ACCUSATION – then you report – Someone has accused Rush Limbaugh of making racist comments but this paper has found no basis for this accusation.
THAT should have been the whole story; REPORTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT.
It really isn’t all that complicated. I think Jack Webb understood the secret of real journalisM better than those who pretend to be journalist today: JUST THE FACTS.
Journalism as it should be practiced requires a lack of the kind of egoism and elitism that seems to be at the root of the problems with the field that we see everywhere today. Report the facts and let the opinion guys have at it.
The problem with “journalists” today is that they don’t want to be journalists. They all want to be opinion guys and PRETEND that it is journalism.