Media and Communications Policy : Media Policy & First Amendment Foundation : The Media Institute : Free Speech, Media Regulation, Content Controls

• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

If Rupert Murdoch were an evil alien, a mass murderer, or a child molester, his press coverage would look pretty much like what he’s been getting lately.  That so much of the media attacks on the man has been generated by people who are competitors (like the Guardian, New York Times, Bloomberg) and/or political adversaries explains a lot.

Even so, the criticism is extraordinary.  Take, for instance, the published opinions of the editor of the American Journalism Review, Rem Rieder.  Just this month, the gentleman has written no fewer than eight pieces.

From earliest to most recent, here are the titles: “Murdoch Under Fire”; “The Escalating Murdoch Scandal”; “For Murdoch, a Shocking Reversal of Fortune”; “The Inevitable Departure of Rebekah Brooks”; “Les Hinton, The Latest Casualty of the Phone-Hacking Scandal”; “The Wall Street Journal Careens Off the Rails”; “The Murdochs in the Lion’s Den”; “The Incredible Shrinking Rupert.”  Rieder’s WSJ piece is particularly noteworthy for what it says about his own editorial judgment:

It’s a truly shameful editorial….  The Wall Street Journal, stung by the ouster of its publisher last Friday in the fallout from the massive scandal that has engulfed its fellow Murdoch properties in Britain, has come out swinging wildly at the company’s critics….

When Murdoch acquired the Journal in 2007, there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments on the part of many people who are not enamored with Murdoch’s brand of journalism….

The Journal no doubt has changed.  It is much less distinctive, with less emphasis on the quirky page-one features that helped make it special.  It devotes much more attention to political coverage, and some have seen a decline in the comprehensiveness of its business coverage.

Not to be outdone, Politico has covered the British tabloid story with even greater interest, and a lot more venom.  Two pieces published the same day, July 20, are representative of the whole.  In a display of his usual subtlety and sophistication, Roger Simon penned “The Evil of Rupert Murdoch,” while Neal Gabler relieved himself of “Rupert Murdoch: Journalism’s Mubarak.”  Gabler’s piece is especially valuable for its cool erudition:

Most people realized that Murdoch was something of a conniver, that he was a bully, that his media empire was designed in the most self-serving ways….  But the telephone hacking scandal in Great Britain and the other attendant revelations reveal that Murdoch was something more than a garden-variety journalistic despot.  He appears to have been a journalistic terrorist as well, a journalistic KGB, a journalistic mobster whose minions used blackmail – overall a journalistic thug.

And for those whose preference runs to government-funded journalism, NPR weighed in with people like David Folkenflik, on “Morning Edition”: “The News of the World was less than 1 percent of News Corp., but it could – just could finally (emphasis added) drag the company out of the Murdochs’ grasp.”

Apart from the abject and transparent piling on – something that, in the current political and economic environment is probably to be expected, though not venerated – there is a deeply serious side to this affair that journalists of all political stripes and circumstance should heed: As a matter of law and policy, what goes around comes around.

Take, for instance, the federal investigations in this country now being launched or considered by agencies like the FBI and the Justice Department.  The gravamen of these investigations is that (1) News Corp.’s British journalists have committed acts that put the parent company in harm’s way of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; and/or (2) that there is a need to follow up on the rumor that News Corp. journalists may have attempted to hack into the cell phone calls of 9/11 victims.

Never mind the absurd overreach in attempting to apply the FCPA to newsgathering techniques used by foreign reporters, however unethical, or the fact that, as reported by Dean Starkman in the Columbia Journalism Review, the only news story that “purports to offer independent evidence” of the 9/11 hacking is “bollocks.”  Imagine what would happen if examples such as these became established precedents for government investigations of the media.

In the same way that the Democrats’ use of the parliamentary maneuver called “reconciliation” is certain to be used by the Republicans to undo Obamacare, if and when they acquire control of Congress and the White House, so too would Republicans use the FCPA, and stories like the 9/11 rumor, to initiate investigations of disfavored media organizations.

In time, history will tell us which was worse: tabloid reporters who bent all journalistic rules to acquire some salacious tidbits, or the journalism establishment that, by its desire to gain commercial or political advantage, stood by while the U.S. government bent rules and regulations in a way that diminished the independence of the press.

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As noted here, the recently released FCC report on the future of journalism has effectively put the kibosh on the “media reform” crowd’s dream of government intervention to “save journalism.”  Likely gone forever are such schemes as a federal tax credit for investigative journalism, or an AmeriCorps-like “Geek Corps for local democracy.”

But there’s another element of the “reformers’” agenda that is still alive and kicking, and that is the rise of so-called nonprofit journalism, i.e. the creation, as nonprofit organizations, of “investigative” journalism groups, like ProPublica, which research and write feature stories that are then peddled for publication (or publicity) to for-profit, and often mainstream, media companies like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press.

At a time when so many news organizations, newspapers especially, are laying off reporters, concern about the future of journalism is neither wrong nor untimely, and when compared to the inherent evils in direct (or indirect) government funding of journalism, the nonprofits’ activities are orders of magnitude more benign.

This said, even a cursory review of this cottage industry reveals deep flaws that aren’t, in the main, even being discussed.  Two in particular stand out: (1) Virtually without exception these groups are funded by left-of-center individuals and foundations – funding that is reflected in the groups’ mission statements and/or in the material they publish; and (2) the nonprofit groups’ relationship with for-profit outlets reveals a business plan on the part of the former that relies utterly on the existence  of the latter, thereby vitiating claims that the nonprofit groups are any kind of “solution” to what ails the media.

A piece recently published in Politico shines some (unintended) light on the problem.  Titled “Liberal Journalism’s Fickle Godfather,” the article tasks PBS commentator Bill Moyers – who also heads a grant-giving foundation – for not staying long enough in financial support of some liberal nonprofit startups that subsequently folded.

In between quotes from disgruntled grant recipients dropped by Moyers’s foundation (the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy), the author of the piece recounts some recent history of such organizations, including a few survivors, and sums things up this way:

“Earlier this month, the FCC released the results of a year-long survey of this destruction and recommended that philanthropy play a bigger role in supporting journalism.  But so far, few foundations are set up to provide the ongoing support that journalism organizations really need.”

Well, okay, if Politico says so it must be true, right?  But there is this: Every nonprofit mentioned in the piece as doing “investigative journalism” derives virtually all of its financial support from liberal grant-giving foundations.

Take, for instance, the Center for Public Integrity, said by Politico to have “a diverse funding base.” In fact, the Center’s funding base is “diverse” only in the sense that there’s more than one contributor.  Otherwise, virtually every group shown (on Wikipedia) to be in support of the Center is a liberal grant-giving foundation.  Though not all of them give the same proportion of their funding to nonprofit journalism groups like the Center for Public Integrity, the media programs they do fund are resolutely left-of-center.

There is, one hastens to say, nothing intrinsically wrong with committing liberalism (of course there’s nothing right with it, either), but kidding aside, when the whole of the nonprofit journalism community is funded by such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, or the MacArthur Foundation, or the Tides Foundation, or the Knight, Ford, or Schumann foundations, and manned by the kind of people, and/or with the kind of mission, as at the Center for Responsive Politics, the Center for Investigative Reporting, or the Center for Public Integrity, there is the risk (how to put this gently?) that the resultant investigations will be “one-sided.”

Of course this isn’t a problem for everybody, and certainly not for Politico, but it really is a problem – though not yet widely recognized as such – for the participating mainstream media.

About a year ago I was given the unpleasant task of participating on an ABA panel with the general manager of the newest kid on the block, the nonprofit investigative group called ProPublica.  Founded, chaired, and bankrolled by the billionaire and uber liberal Herbert Sandler, ProPublica’s editor is Paul Steiger, formerly with the Wall Street Journal, on whose watch the organization has won two Pulitzer prizes.

According to published reports, Mr. Steiger’s total compensation in 2009 was just under $600K, so it’s not clear if he joined ProPublica because he believes in its stated mission (“shining a light on the exploitation of the weak by the strong”), or for more pedestrian reasons, but whatever the case the point of conflict between me and ProPublica’s general manager back then was his argument that it was possible for journalists to separate their work and opinions from those of their employers.  The example the gentleman gave was of the management of The Wall Street Journal and its reporters.

As I subsequently wrote, this argument doesn’t compute because a for-profit media manager’s job (as at the WSJ) is to make money, not politics, whereas the investigative nonprofit manager’s job is just the opposite. Indeed, this argument is akin to the tired old nonsense, spouted for decades by certain editors, that the political affiliation of their reporters – even where, say, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nine or ten to one – doesn’t color their journalistic product.  Of course it doesn’t.

So at a time when the perceived bias of the MSM is driving people en masse into the arms of such as Matt Drudge, Andrew Breitbart, and Glenn Beck (and how “progressive” is that?), the collaboration of mainstream media with the uniformly liberal nonprofit journalism groups threatens to hasten that emigration.  And as suggested at the beginning of this piece, even this isn’t the only problem with nonprofit journalism.

The other problem is that, unlike the ersatz “reforms” (of which nonprofit journalism is but one) promoted by such as the Knight Foundation, there are some real initiatives being undertaken by individuals and organizations – including media companies themselves – who have not given up on the MSM or for-profit journalism, and are trying very hard to find ways to compensate for the extraordinary loss of advertising that is at the root of the crisis in medialand.

Broadcasters, for instance, are hoping to adapt to the new realities through the development of such things as multicast digital channels and mobile DTV, while print companies, like The New York Times and the Dallas Morning News, are rolling out online subscription pricing plans in an attempt to generate more revenue.

And they are not alone.  Other informed people, like certain members of the communications bar, are trying to lend a hand.  Take, for instance, the highly regarded media and First Amendment attorney Bruce Sanford, who has written and testified about prospective changes in copyright, ownership, and antitrust laws as would provide a more level playing field for the commercial mainstream media.

At the end of the day it’s this – the contrast between the hopes and plans of those who have not given up on the media versus those who have, and would now turn it into an industry reliant on the government, or nonprofit groups with an agenda – that frames the other problem with nonprofit journalism: It’s a time-consuming and expensive distraction from the real work that needs to be done.

Even if, as often seems to be the case, the real motive behind the promotion of nonprofit journalism is the rescue of the recently (or soon-to-be) unemployed, dressed up in the rhetoric of “saving the news,” it amounts to little more than a gesture in the larger scheme of things.

Even if it were a more ideologically even-handed enterprise, nonprofit investigative journalism is not now, and never will be, either a solution to the problems of, or an obviation of the need for, mainstream, professional, and for-profit media.

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Online and off, the magazine called POLITICO sets the standard for political reporting in the U.S.A.  It doesn’t set the standard very high, mind you, but by its signature amalgamation of horse race journalism, rumor and innuendo, POLITICO represents a model of sorts for wannabe political reporters everywhere.

Thus it is that one dare not neglect to pay attention when the magazine focuses on Things That Really Matter … like, for instance, the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Once a year this affair provides a backdrop for every other political reporter’s fantasy: a stage on which all the people who count (stars and starlets, politicians and reporters) can rub elbows, see and be seen.

This year’s dinner, held just last weekend, was no exception.  Some examples, as chronicled in a few of the numerous stories in POLITICO:

“Star Strut – Scenes from the Red Carpet,” a “minute-by-minute” account of “the events leading up to DC’s biggest night,” complete with a photo of Bob Schieffer and a blond woman in a red dress.

“Seth Meyers Skewers DC,” on the “SNL” head writer’s remarks, wherein it’s revealed that “outgoing Commerce Secretary Gary Locke (soon to be ambassador to China) admitted to POLITICO that he’s been a huge fan of Meyers for years.” 

“What the Stars Wore” – “FLOTUS wears Halston to dinner.”  “On the red carpet, CBS’s Lara Logan, a very early arrival, wore cobalt blue Badgley Mischka." “Arianna Huffington wore Nanette Lepore.”  And Matthew Morrison (?) (I don’t know, you tell me) said: “I’m wearing Calvin Klein underwear.”

In other words, everything was perfect! The glamour, the wit, the very essence of it all.  Of course there are probably some cranks, mindful of those Americans who gave their lives last week in the Middle East, or of the millions more who are now facing the imminent prospect of abject poverty, who may be less than thrilled by the spectacle.

But hey, at a time when, according to a 2010 Gallup poll, mainstream journalists still outrank organized labor in the confidence people have in them, why worry, right?

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The excitement is almost more than a person can bear.  From one corner of medialand to the other, progressives are on the march!  From out of New York comes the report, sure to send a frisson through who knows how many strange people, that Keith Olbermann is joining Al Gore’s Current TV.  As Olbermann’s PR firm put it: “He and his new partners will make an exciting announcement regarding the next chapter in his remarkable career.”  Remarkable indeed, since if codswallop were diamonds, Olbermann would be the shiniest man on television.

Meanwhile, Arianna Huffington, than whom no one better amalgamates progressive politics and uber commercialism, just sold the Huffington Post to AOL for more than $300 million.  And as for those cranks who have qualms about AOL acquiring a property with HuffPo’s pronounced political slant, not to worry, because Arianna says it isn’t “left” since only 15 percent of the site’s traffic goes to the politics section.

Indeed, Huffington’s denial of being a purveyor of liberalism is a familiar refrain these days.  Over at the New York Daily News, Josh Greenman recently wrote that the success of Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, and Fox News proves the nonexistence of the “dominant liberal media,” while John Harris, the editor of Politico, has opined on the subject in print and on the air.

Interviewed on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last month because he wanted “to rebut” Hewitt’s earlier claim that Politico has veered left in the last two years, Harris mostly avoided answering Hewitt’s questions, and this week published an essay in Politico where he claimed that most reporters “might more accurately be accused of centrist bias.”

So what to make of all this?  Why the rush to deny liberalism and lay journalistic claim on the center?  Several theories present themselves.  The first is opportunism and the second is obfuscation.  Beyond these lurk other possibilities, such as: (1) that certain reporters see the political handwriting on the wall and want not to be seen as among the victims; or (2) that many political reporters just don’t get it; that when they say, as Harris says in his Politico piece, that they “believe broadly in government activism” they’ve just conceded conservatives’ principal complaint, and cannot then go on and blithely characterize that stance as “centrist.”

The ideological composition of the citizenry differs by country, but in the USA the math is clear: There are at least twice as many conservatives as liberals, and not to take anything away from Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, or Roger Ailes, this is the primary reason for their success: They have delivered products that appeal to a large number of people whose views are, and have been, badly underrepresented by the vast majority of news organizations, political reporters especially.
                                       
The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In 1991, the Greek-owned cruise ship Oceanos sank off South Africa’s eastern coast. All of the crew, including the captain, abandoned ship before many of the passengers got off, leaving them to the safekeeping of the shipboard entertainers.

Watching the presidential candidates mumble and fumble their way around the country’s financial mess, it’s hard not to feel as those passengers must have felt—abandoned and alone, and every man for himself.

In fact, though, the more astute will have felt that way for some time. This, because though you wouldn’t know it from the stories filed by this country’s political reporters, the nation’s financial agony isn’t something that just sneaked up on us in the last few weeks.

From the extraordinarily high price of commodities like oil and gold, to the drying up of business and consumer credit, to the collapse of the housing market, to the sinking value of the dollar against foreign currencies, to the erratic and downward spiraling action in the equity markets, the U.S. economy has been sending out SOS signals for at least a year.

Like the presidential candidates, though, political reporters have been serving up economic mush, when they haven’t ignored the economy altogether in favor of “horse race” stories.

It’s in this environment that John Harris and Jim Vanderhei, co-founders of Politico, accuse Obama and McCain of putting on a bad show. “Tuesday’s debate,” they say “was a look through the wrong end of the telescope. Men with fascinating biographies seemed conventional.”

No argument with that assessment here. But then they come up with this: “Both Obama and McCain were once cult-of-personality candidates, running on their inspirational personal biographies and reformist profiles more than on their policy records.” D’ya think?

In my lifetime there have never been two candidates more uncritically acclaimed by the media. No Republican politician has ever gotten the kind of press coverage that (prior to this campaign) McCain received. And as for the press coverage of Obama, well, to say it’s been fawning is like saying that an eon lasts awhile.

So as the country’s staggering economic problems cast a giant shadow across the land--and in the process reduce the two presidential candidates to dwarflike proportions—it seems kind of late in the day for political reporters to blame the candidates for their lack of substance, much less because they no longer seem “inspirational.”

Journalists have had innumerable chances, over a long period of time and in an eerily declining economy, to explicate and challenge the presidential candidates’ economic policy views. Why haven’t they?

Pining for the candidates lost allure, Harris and Vanderhei close their article with this: “Obama and McCain are men with large life stories, asking to lead the country at a large moment. With one more debate to go, could someone turn the telescope around?”

Perhaps a better question would be when political reporters are going to turn that telescope on themselves.


 

• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Because, as they say on TV news promos, "you need to know," herewith some thumbnail opinions of certain journalists and media outlets:

Daily Kos—Not since the Ku Klux Klan started wearing sheets has anonymity been put to a more malevolent use. If you worry only about the right, spend a little time reading the anonymous posts here and see if you still feel that way.

Drudge Report—If anyone had told you, back in the day, that Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report were destined to become the news leader in American journalism, would you have believed it? Well, you should have, because these days that is not only the fact, it’s the acknowledged fact. News organizations from the great to the obscure fall all over themselves trying to get a link to one of their stories on the Drudge Report. As Drudge himself says, “they kiss the ring.”

Christopher Hitchens—The scourge of all things politically correct, and a very entertaining writer. Wrong about a number of things, but who cares?

Charles Krauthammer—Smart, clever, serious.

Mainstream media (generally speaking)—In immediate and urgent need of more (and more prominently displayed) economic reporters. Looking back on the financial crisis gripping the country at this time, historians will marvel at the shallowness of the media coverage of it. In significant part this is owing to the fact that the media have too many political reporters covering economics and not enough economic reporters covering politics (or economics).

Keith Olbermann—If he’s not deliberately channeling Howard Beale he gives a good impression of it.

Politico—Though its coverage of politics is devoid of anything even remotely artful and features an overabundance of “horse-race” analyses, this relatively new journal is already the best in class. The online version is updated frequently, including on weekends, and taken as a whole its political slant is neither pronounced nor off-putting.

RealClearPolitics—One of the best of the political news aggregators, though they provide too many links to the same few (and politically predictable) sources. The greater value is found in their links to less familiar outlets, including blog sites, and in their own contributors like Jay Cost.

Robert Samuelson—Though he writes impressively about many things, Samuelson’s greatest strength is his understanding of economics. His pieces last month and this about the financial crisis are far and away the best things written on that subject by anyone at the Washington Post.

Tom Shales—In the way that some people are said to have a perfect ear, Shales has a perfect eye. His take on everything from speeches to TV shows is almost always spot on, and the class of the field. Unfortunate, therefore, that he occasionally wanders into matters of politics and policy. Note to Tom: Don’t do it. You’re not good at it, and it diminishes you even to make the effort.

Slate—Not perfect but a serious place for serious people, and marked by terrific writing. If the Washington Post, which owns Slate, were more like it, it would be a fresher and more widely admired newspaper.

George Will—The best of the commentariat. Made his journalistic bones, so to speak, during the Nixon regime where, second perhaps only to Woodward and Bernstein, he was the leading critic of that Administration. Though a conservative Republican, not averse to taking on conservatives and Republicans, as seen in his recent scathing criticism of John McCain (McCain Loses His Head). One of the very few journalists (Robert Samuelson being another) with a broad understanding of the speech clause of the First Amendment.