Tag: Media criticism

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Orts and All

Regulating the ’Net.  Much has been alleged in recent days about the risks to the independence of the Internet were the copyright bills currently before Congress to become law.  As mentioned here and here, the most extravagant of these allegations are flummery of the first water, but copyright issues aside, the ’net is indeed on the cusp of a significant transformation.

Evidence of this can be seen in the actions of the FCC, whether on its own initiative or by its implementation of regulations after passage of legislation into law.  The Commission’s codification of  "net neutrality" rules was the first example of the Internet’s capture.  The action currently underway by the FCC to promulgate regulations re the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, a law which, among other things, mandates captioning for online video, is another.

Goes without saying that making online video accessible to the deaf is a nice thing to do, and for many that’s the end of the story.  But people who are familiar with the way laws and regulatory policies evolve know that things like these have a precedential impact in Congress, the courts, and the regulatory agencies, and that very often these precedents are then offered up in justification of other laws or rules that are not so nice.

In any case, the point here is that it’s already too late in the day for people who have an idealistic interest in the Internet to fret the future loss of its independence.  Thanks to the majority at the FCC and/or in Congress, the Internet’s pristine independence has already been lost.

Media Matters.  The organization called Media Matters for America, which exists to demean and (where possible) destroy conservative journalists and organizations like FOX News, has now come out with a contrived accusation against George Will.

The gravamen of MMA’s contrivance is that, as a Board member of a conservative grant-giving group (the Bradley Foundation), Will should be required to mention this connection whenever he writes about or cites the work of any of the groups to which Bradley contributes!

Given that Bradley funds a very large number of conservative think tanks and other enterprises, this would mean, as a practical matter, that Will would have to include this disclosure pretty much all the time since he is, after all, a conservative himself and cites these organizations’ work frequently.

As the Washington Post’s executive editor put it, in reply to a request from MMA for comment: “Is it seriously a surprise to you that George Will quotes experts from conservative think tanks more often than he quotes experts from liberal think tanks?”

What a relief! The latest news is that Keith Olbermann, who is faithfully viewed nightly by at least 16 people, may be staying on at Current TV, a network that captures the imagination of dozens.  

It’s been a close call for the past few days, but as this is being written word is out that Olbermann and management of Current, who have been at loggerheads over something or other, have resolved their differences.  So a country that has been paralyzed with fear that things might not work out can breathe again. What a happy day.

                                  

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

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Christopher Hitchens and the Art of Persuasion

For those who believe in words as a medium not just of expression but of discovery, life is a journey made all the more fascinating by the prospect that one may occasionally hit upon a word or a sentence that reveals something profound, even to oneself.  Christopher Hitchens, a man of many words, was such a person.

For those who are unfamiliar with him, the gentleman was a British-American author and journalist.  A prodigious and eloquent writer, Hitchens is perhaps best known for his resolute atheism, ideological tergiversations (from confirmed Trotskyite to alleged neoconservative), and criticism of Islamic jihadism.

With his passing this month, journalism has lost another of the very small number of political commentators who combine the qualities of erudition, scholarship, and the ability to surprise with their take on things.

Not for Hitchens the kind of commentary that centers on campaign strategies, public opinion polls, or political horse races.  For Hitchens, as for William F. Buckley Jr., politics was the stuff of deeper meaning than the careers, or even the policies, of politicians.

The Hitchens-Buckley comparison is apt in another way, too.  Buckley’s Roman Catholicism was central to his political philosophy in much the same way that Hitchens’ atheism was to his.

Hitchens, of course, wasn’t the first person to condemn religion.  H.L. Mencken once defined an archbishop as “a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”  But as agitated atheists often do (because in a calmer state they’d be agnostics), Hitchens traveled way past such witty criticisms into the realm of the proselytizing anti-believer, a posture that, in its anger and simplicity, bears a striking resemblance to religious fundamentalism.

But never mind that.  The fetching aspect of Hitchens’ journalism, apart from the great writing, was its escape from the tiresome cant and clichés of contemporary liberalism – indeed, of all the “-isms.”  Though the man himself, early on and late, was a confirmed leftist, Hitchens’ catalog of the good and the bad gave left-wing ideologues migraines.  He was, for instance, a critic of the Vietnam War but a defender of the Iraqi invasion.  He wrote scathingly of Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush, but also of Hugo Chávez, about whom he said the following after a trip to Venezuela:

“After all [Chávez said] there is film of the Americans landing on the moon….  Does that mean the moon shot really happened?  In the film the Yanqui flag is flying straight out.  So, is there wind on the moon?  As Chavez beamed with triumph at this logic, an awkwardness descended on my comrades, and on the conversation.…

“Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.”

More evidence of Hitchens’ maverick ways can be seen in his earlier-mentioned crusade against what he called “fascism with an Islamic face.”  In 2008 he wrote a piece in Slate titled “To Hell With the Archbishop of Canterbury,” a criticism of the quaint suggestion by the archbishop that Britain should adopt a form of sharia law as an adjunct to British common law.  Hitchens’ criticism was greeted by much harrumphing by the politically correct, something that bothered him not at all.

As suggested at the outset, though, Hitchens has left something more than just the sum of his theological or political opinions.  He showed the way to greater readership and distinction for political commentators, editorialists, and columnists.

In a word, he demonstrated the virtue in not allowing oneself to become marginalized; to not write just for a tribe of people with similar beliefs; to be willing to tread even on the sensibilities of those who are often allies.

As seen by the wide and varied number of people who, since his passing, have written flatteringly of him, Christopher Hitchens, the man and the writer, enjoyed an appeal that went well beyond just those who agreed with him.  For one whose life involves the expression of strong opinions, it doesn’t get better than that.

                                  

First published in the Dallas Morning News, Dec. 26, 2011.  The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Shrill and the Marginal: The Left’s Criticism of the Media

Readers of this blog know that it’s the personal opinion of the writer that the mainstream media are hurt by the years-long perception, among Republicans and conservatives, that the media are unsympathetic to their views.  Given their large and growing numbers, and the availability of competing sources of news and commentary, this perception seems like both a journalistic and a business problem for the MSM.

This said, we’re always on the lookout for those people who view this matter differently, even where they represent only the most marginal points of view.

Thus it is that we’ve come across a piece in The Nation magazine (than which nothing’s more marginal), by Eric Alterman.  Titled “The Problem of Media Stupidity,” the thrust of the thing is that journalists, unwitting victims of a so-called “cult of balance,” are much too fair to Republicans.

As Alterman so elegantly puts it:

There is a specter haunting America today.  It is the specter of stupidity.  A few months ago, I wrote a column I called “The Problem of Republican Idiots.” Believe me, this problem has not gone away.  No less alarming is that this stupidity is apparently contagious.  The men and women who inhabit the upper reaches of the U.S. media (and pull down the multi-million dollar salaries) appear to believe that to do their jobs properly, they must make themselves behave like idiots in order to be “fair” to the Republicans and their idiot ideas.

In support of this thoughtful view, Alterman cites the progressives’ favorite wordslinger, Paul Krugman, and quotes from an interview David Gregory did with Rick Santelli – seven months ago – on “Meet the Press.”

Santelli’s comments, this one especially, figure large in Alterman’s argument: “If the country is ever attacked as it was in 9/11,” said Santelli, “we all respond with a sense of urgency.  What’s going on on the balance sheets throughout the country is the same type of attack.”

Never mind that Gregory didn’t respond to Santelli, as other guests on the show jumped in with their own observations, it’s Alterman’s opinion that for Gregory even to countenance such a comment without criticism is proof of a kind of intellectual rot among mainstream journalists.  “On America’s most respected television news program,” he wrote, “it is apparently OK to equate a problem with your fiscal balance sheets with terrorist mass murder.  Here again, we see the ‘cult of balance’ destroying the brains of our press corps.”

Given the modest dimensions of his own intellectual attributes, one suspects more people will be struck by the chutzpah of Alterman calling other people idiots than will be put off by Santelli’s remark, in which the CNBC personality was obviously equating not the acts (9/11 and the nation’s balance sheets), but the societal impact of the two, and the need for the kind of urgent action re the latter as was the case with the former.

Still, there remains the larger issue raised by Alterman’s rant: Are the MSM too evenhanded in their treatment of Republican and Democratic policies and politicians?  Do they, as Alterman suggests, show undeserved respect for Republicans?  And if we wanted to test this hypothesis, how would we go about it?

It’s a tricky thing, this business of calling people idiots.  Dostoevsky titled one of his novels The Idiot, though in that case the subject of the pejorative, Prince Myshkin, was likened favorably to Christ, something that is probably not the way Alterman sees Republicans.  Clearer still is that Alterman is no Dostoevsky.

Which is just to say that, as a practical matter, we can’t vet Alterman’s claim just by taking his word for it, any more than we could subject it to the opinions of like-minded leftists, or conservatives for that matter.  This, because whatever “evidence” any of them might conjure up, it’s going to be tainted by their own subjective view of the world, by their ideological IDs, so to speak.

One way, perhaps, of getting around this problem is by looking at whatever evidence there is, anecdotal or scientific, indicating that Republicans themselves feel privileged by the quality of their media coverage, something one would expect to find if Alterman’s claim is true.

Unfortunately for the gentleman’s thesis, Republicans seem not to have gotten the memo. Whether measured by public opinion polls, the public statements of Republican politicians or conservative commentators, or simply by letters to the editor written by Republicans or conservatives, it’s pretty clear that the overwhelming majority feel, much to the contrary, that the media are largely in the camp of Democrats and liberals.

Perhaps, though, there’s another way of looking at this matter.  Call it, depending on your own political leanings, either the “democratic way" or the "way of the marketplace.”  I refer to the percentages of people who, as measured over the years by organizations like Gallup, classify themselves as liberals, conservatives, or moderates.  If, one could argue, these statistics show a much larger number of liberals than conservatives, media coverage of Republican policies might fairly be criticized if it could be shown that such coverage was at the expense of the larger number (of readers and viewers) who are liberals.

As it happens, though, the exact opposite is the case.  As shown by a Gallup poll conducted just last month, conservatives outnumber liberals by two-to-one, and in fact outnumber self-described moderates as well. Even more telling, for purposes of assessing Alterman’s accusation, is the poll’s percentage breakdown of those people who call themselves conservative or very conservative, in contrast with those who say they are liberal or very liberal.

Here are the numbers, as broken down by Gallup’s poll of national adults: Conservative, 30%; Very Conservative, 11%; Liberal, 15%; Very Liberal, 6%.  Apart from the much larger numbers of conservatives vs. liberals, the datum that is uniquely relevant to Alterman’s claim is the tiny percentage of people who consider themselves very liberal.

Why is this important?  Because Alterman, like all of the editorial contributors to The Nation, would admit to being “very liberal,” if not further to the left.  And as shown by the Gallup poll results, very few people share his views!

Seen this way, one can confidently say that whether one believes that the media, in a democracy, should proportionately represent the will of the people, or understands the need for the media, as for-profit businesses, to cater to the majority of their viewers and readers, there is as little evidence that they need to veer further to the left as there is that they need to take instruction from Eric Alterman.

                                  

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

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Doin’ Well by Doin’ Good: Fannie Mae and the Press

Even as it’s come under the inevitable attack by ideologues of the left, and even a few on the right, the lessons in New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson’s book, Reckless Endangerment, resonate. More than this, they provide the stuff for some interesting speculation, none more important, for those of us in “medialand,” than this: Why didn’t the media shine a bright light on the perfidy of Fannie Mae and its “paid clappers” in academia and Congress (people like Joseph Stiglitz and Barney Frank) before now?

Could it be, as one may infer from what Morgenson reports, because the company at the center of the story had contrived to promote itself – in language that was politically correct but deeply misleading – as a high-minded enabler of home ownership for minority and lower-income citizens?

And if it’s true that investigative and political reporters, working for mainstream news organizations, were anesthetized by that kind of sloganeering, even in a case as egregious as the Fannie Mae fiasco, why would anyone think that “progressive” nonprofit news organizations would cover such a story – then, now, or in the future?  Organizations, for instance, like ProPublica that, founded, chaired, and bankrolled by a man as liberal as he is wealthy, sees its mission as “shining a light on the exploitation of the weak by the strong.”

For the benefit of those who haven’t yet read it, Reckless Endangerment is, most importantly, the story of the role in the country’s economic meltdown played by the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) known as Fannie Mae.

Created in 1938 to assist borrowers in buying homes during the waning days of the Great Depression, decades later Fannie Mae would become, in Morgenson’s words, “the largest and most powerful financial institution in the world.”  And size wasn’t its only defining characteristic.

Under the venal leadership of its former CEO, James Johnson, and his corrupt successor, Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae became the very embodiment of crony capitalism: an outfit that used its (predominantly Democratic) political muscle to gain competitive advantage and to ward off every attempt at reining in its imprudent business practices, all while hugely rewarding its senior executives. (For his service as CEO in the ’90s, James Johnson took home $100 million.) The upshot of it all?  In 2008, the Federal Housing Finance Agency took conservatorship of Fannie Mae, at a cost to taxpayers (to date, and counting) of $150 billion.

This and much more is told in stomach-turning detail in Reckless Endangerment, and as is often the case with books of great moment, it has sparked numerous discussions, some about its primary thesis, and some about matters of secondary importance.

Not to be out-marginalized, and as suggested at the outset, the interest here is with an aspect of the thing that might be said to be of “tertiary importance," connected to “Fanniegate” only obliquely: namely, what the press coverage (or more precisely, lack of coverage) of Fannie Mae suggests about future stories and the relevance of nonprofit news organizations, particularly those in the “investigative news” business.

Nonprofit news organizations are all the rage these days.  We know this because the J-schools, journalism reviews, journalism-funding foundations, and the deep thinkers at places like Politico tell us so. Indeed, there are those (most of whom are on the payroll of the movement’s principal sugar daddy, the Knight Foundation) who argue that, because of the tough times at for-profit media, the nonprofits are indispensable keepers of the journalistic flame.

It says a lot that many of the same people who sing the praises of nonprofit organizations also advocate a larger role for government in the affairs of the media. Even as “local news” and “investigative” reporting need the input of nonprofits, they argue, the nonprofits themselves need help from the government, whether in the form of much larger contributions to NPR and PBS, or such things as federal tax credits for investigative journalism.

But because, as mentioned in an earlier blog, virtually all of the nonprofit groups bring to their work a history, a mindset, a funding base, and/or a mission statement that venerates government policies that are said to be “helping people,” when such policies go wrong they are invisible to these same nonprofits.

This is true not just of issues like the corruption of Fannie Mae, but of myriad other issues, among which are some of the most pressing problems in the country today.  Things, for instance, like the Ponzi schemes that governments at all levels have been running in broad daylight with their unbalanced budgets and debt issuance. Investigative reporters could write a different piece once a week for a year or two about examples of this in the states, municipalities, and at the federal level

Or what about the ruinous effect on state and municipal finance of public employee unions’ pay and retirement packages? Or the extraordinary expense, spread across so many industries, of ambulance-chasing trial lawyers?  Or the disastrous dependency, forged after decades of government support, of people trapped in the inner cities – areas that are these days so depraved and dysfunctional Charles Dickens wouldn’t recognize them?

Concerning these and many other issues, there is no reason to believe that nonprofit news organizations out there today would show any greater interest than have the mainstream for-profit media. They largely ignored the monstrosity that was Fannie Mae when their “investigative reports” might have made a difference, and because of their prevailing mindset they will in all likelihood ignore all other issues displaying a kindred pathology.

                                  

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

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Voices of Moderation Strike Again

Readers of this blog may remember the post in January re some of the opinions expressed immediately after the shooting in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  The worst were those, by people like Slate’s Jacob Weisberg and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who attempted – before anything was known about the shooting – to link it to right-wing political rhetoric.

Though it turned out that the shooter, Jared Loughner, was just another nutjob with no discernible political interests (it’s always so embarrassing when that happens), people like Krugman and Weisberg carry on, unchastened.

So whereas, re the Gifford shooting, Krugman said: “Even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those that pander to that desire.  They should be shunned by all decent people,” he is now saying, in columns about the debt ceiling and possibility of default, things like:

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being.  “Has the GOP gone insane?” they ask.  Why, yes, it has.  But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades.  Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye….

The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse. 

Meanwhile, Jacob Weisberg, whose emanations within hours of Giffords’ shooting included a piece titled “The Tea Party and the Tucson Tragedy: How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism made the Giffords shooting more likely,” is now saying, re the debt ceiling deal:

Some of the congressional Republicans who are preventing action to help the economy are simply intellectual primitives who reject modern economics on the same basis that they reject Darwin and climate science….

At the level of political culture, we have learned some other sobering lessons: that compromise is dead and that there’s no point trying to explain complicated matters to the American people.  The president has tried reasonableness and he has failed….

A Congress dominated by mindless cannibals is now feasting on a supine president. 

One sometimes wonders what certain people were like as children, but with Weisberg and Krugman we don’t have to wonder because they’re still children.  As such, they aren’t even worth talking about, especially as there are people on the right who are every bit as juvenile.  But the difference is that the right-wingers don’t occupy such lofty, and so-called “mainstream,” positions.

For all practical purposes Paul Krugman is these days the face of the New York Times, and though Jacob Weisberg is employed by a considerably less noteworthy organization, Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co., as “mainstream” as it gets.

Like those high-frequency sounds that only dogs can hear, few people will be able to detect the value in the opinions of commentators who have such contempt for them, a thing that ought to be of concern to those people at news organizations whose business plans count on mainstream Americans as current or prospective subscribers.

                                  

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

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Matthew & Rush & Glenn & Andrew

For those numerous consumers of news and opinion whose political views are right-of-center, the ideology and ubiquity of people like Glenn Beck, Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and Andy Breitbart are a breath of fresh air.  Apart from the serious stuff, some of what they do – like Breitbart roller blading through a crowd of progressive protesters, or Drudge boasting of the MSM’s efforts to get a link on his website (“they kiss the ring”) – is fun.

More than this, all four have demonstrated a substantial talent for creating commercially successful journalistic products.  In 2009, for instance, the financial website 24/7wallst.com estimated that the Drudge Report was worth $46 million.  Given that the same report, though, suggested the Huffington Post was worth only $96 million, whereas AOL paid $315 million for it just two years later, the Drudge estimate is undoubtedly on the low side.

Their personal attributes notwithstanding, however, the simple truth is that none of these gentlemen, alone or together, provides a substitute for mainstream journalism or a cure for what ails it.  In part this is because all of them engage in opinion rather than reporting – and in Drudge’s case not even his own opinion but that found in the content he aggregates.  But it’s also because, like their liberal counterparts, they address issues solely from within their own ideological constructs, with predictable if sometimes bizarre results.

Take, for instance, Glenn Beck’s absurd suggestion that Sen. Scott Brown’s joking reference to his single daughters’ “availability” was tantamount to “pimping them out.”  Or Andrew Breitbart’s careless or deliberate distortion of the words of Shirley Sherrod.  Or, these days, of the prevalence on the Drudge Report of overwrought headlines that mislead about the content of the articles to which they’re linked.

There is a place for opinion journalism, and for conservative opinion, but the great journalistic need today is for mainstream, objective news reporting.  Indeed, it is the perceived absence of objectivity among the MSM that has created the market for conservative opinion, not just among the four individuals mentioned above but in talk radio generally, at Fox News, and on the Internet.

Which is not to say that this fact is widely acknowledged.  Actually it’s never acknowledged by those people and institutions, such as J-school professors and journalists themselves, who instead follow the lead of the grant-giving groups, like the Knight Foundation, whose munificent gifts set and pay for the journalism establishment’s agenda.

So instead of spotting the journalistic elephant in the room, which is the perceived lack of objectivity (bias, to use the word most commonly employed), the journalism reviews and media critics are uniformly pushing these days the notion that journalism’s greatest need is for more “localism” and “investigative journalism.”  And if the MSM were seen to be objective players in the news business these would be good and timely ideas.  But given that they are not seen that way, the question becomes who would read or watch such stuff, or believe it if they did?

Though the mainstream media’s problems are frequently conflated, there are at least two severable parts to the whole: the business problems, which derive from the damage inflicted on the MSM’s advertising revenue by the Internet generally (and Google specifically); and those strictly journalistic problems, only some of which are a consequence of business problems that have led to downsizing.

Management of the MSM have been slow to come to grips with their business problems, but even slower to deal with their biggest journalistic problem.  Whether this is because they share and approve of the perceived bias in their newsrooms, or because of the firewall that separates the business and editorial sides at most news organizations, the damage to the MSM, to professional journalism, and to the country is palpable – and not at all relieved by the growth of the conservative commentariat.

                                  

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

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Hypocrisy and Heavy Cost of Rupertphobia

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.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Nonprofit ‘Investigative’ Journalism: A Distraction (and Worse)

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.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Political Reporters and the ‘Dismal Science’

The story is told that five years after Hannibal’s victory at Cannae, with his troops camped outside the very gates of Rome, the Roman Senate auctioned off, at full price, the very ground upon which Hannibal was standing; perhaps the first example in history, given the Carthaginians’ subsequent retreat, of the market as a predictor of future political events.

More than 2,000 years later, the markets are still the best single predictor of political events, but you’d never know it if you get your clues about such things not from financial and economic data but from that breed of journalists called political reporters.

A couple years ago this was the subject of a blog called “What Do Political Reporters Know?”  The answer given to that question (little of value) is as true today as it was then, but more about that later.

First, let’s take a brief stroll down history lane.  For all the angst and surprise now being expressed by many about the state of the American economy, it’s not as though we couldn’t see some of this coming.  Indeed, many people (those who follow the markets) knew by election time, 2008, that the country was in great economic distress.  Some knew this even earlier.

And how did they know?  Let’s count the ways: They knew because commodity prices, especially oil and gold, were rising rapidly; that unemployment was rising and the dollar was falling; and that two of the most iconic names in American industry – General Motors and Chrysler – were petitioning the government for assistance to avoid bankruptcy.

They knew because in September of that year Lehman Brothers bellied up, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history; and because, after peaking in 2006, house prices began a steep fall, such that by December 2008, the Case-Shiller home price index reported the largest price drop in its history.

All of this was known by people who follow the markets; this, and something else too: They knew that government at all levels – state, federal, and local – were running big and unsustainable deficits, tricked out with accounting gimmicks and featuring licentious borrowing, often to pay off unfunded liabilities.  In short, they knew that governments were running the same kind of game for which Bernie Madoff would later get a life sentence in the slammer.

Given that nobody had ever seen anything like this kind of economic maelstrom since the Great Depression (even as aspects of it – most notably, housing and unemployment – were to get vastly worse in the years following), and given too that this was occurring right in the middle of a presidential election, one would expect that historians reviewing the period would find that the “people’s sentinels” – political reporters – shined a bright light on the economy and its portents, and obliged the candidates for the presidency to do likewise, right?  Forget about it.

Not only did political reporters fail to oblige the presidential candidates to focus on the economy, they didn’t spend any quality time on the subject themselves. Instead, they treated the economy like a sideshow to the main event – the political horse race.

Now in fairness, it should probably be acknowledged that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain knew the first thing about the economy, and Obama’s only passionate comment about the matter – that he inherited the mess from President Bush – is not without some factual bases.

But none of this is to excuse the triviality and nonperformance, then and now, of the nation’s political reporters.  More importantly, the mere knowledge of reporters’ shortcomings isn’t enough to enable citizens generally to make smart and informed decisions about those economic and socio-political developments as will affect them personally down the road.

If, for instance, they wonder how they – or anyone without a defined-benefit pension plan – are going to be able to retire with interest rates near zero; or if they are concerned about the likely effect on crime and our civic culture of the impoverishment of millions of formerly middle-class people; or if they worry about the effect on their assets of further significant declines in the purchasing power of the dollar; or if, mindful of the growing might of a country like China, they are concerned about the future, including the future security, of their children or grandchildren; if, in other words, they are interested in things more serious than which political party is best spinning the misery, or likely to be awarded at the polls, then they need to begin to familiarize themselves with finance and economics.

There is no guarantee, of course, that a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, or any such, will make of you a veritable soothsayer.  But it’s a safe bet that if you follow the markets you’ll get a better handle on those things that matter than if you rely only on political reporters for your news of the world.

And there is my lesson for the day. That’ll be $50 (payable in silver bullion).

                                   

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

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Talkin’ ‘Bout My G-G-Generation (But Mostly About Yours)*

The polite thing to say is that young people are the future of America, and in a purely biological sense, of course, they are.  But implicit in that statement, like a Chinese fortune fit for a cookie, is a certain amount of hopefulness.  On the basis of the evidence at hand, however, things don’t appear all that rosy.

Not that my own generation, the Boomers, haven’t made a royal mess of things.  We have.  But the errors we made were committed more stylishly.  Consider, for instance, political discourse.

Back in the day, Boomers were shaped by a political and policy class distinguished by persons of erudition such as Wm. F. Buckley, Jr., Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman, and, on the other side of the ideological aisle, John Kenneth Galbraith, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Norman Cousins.

Who are their successors today?  Markos "Koz" Moulitsas and Rachel Maddow?

Even journalism’s most redoubtable outposts can’t be relied upon.  Writing from their sandbox at The Washington Post, the exorbitantly youthful Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent pontificate as if in a coffee klatch, with their most frequently used pronoun being “I.”  Reading them, you sometimes get the uncomfortable feeling that you’re peering, against your will and better judgment, into their diary.

Or what about pop culture, music especially.  The Boomers perfected rock and roll.  What have the newer generations perfected?  Rap?

Never mind that, as a group, the Boomers are the most selfish, self-centered, and overrated people in the history of the world (can you just imagine how much the young must hate us now – and how much more they’ll hate us in the future?), the inescapable truth is that the younger generations are not sufficiently endowed intellectually even for their own good, much less to outclass their elders.

Whether you blame this state of affairs on the collapse of the family, the public education system, the rise of political correctness, or other things entirely, it is what it is. Relatively speaking, not only are the Boomers world-class wordslingers, we have bent pop culture, and even sciences like Freudian psychology, to our generational benefit.

So what, you might ask, does this portend for the future?  Well, like Gertrude Stein’s query, “What is the answer?” it depends on the question.

If the question is what the future looks like for the Boomers, things look pretty good, provided we all develop thick skins and live in gated communities.  If the question is what the future holds for the young, the answer is a life of greatly reduced expectations, partly as a consequence of their own shortcomings and partly as a result of the mess we’ve left them.

If, however, the question is what it means for America, the answer is positively grim.  Put it this way: In a world shrink wrapped by trade and technology, who do you think is going to ascend – the children of those nations who are pushed from birth to excel, or those, like our own, whose entire vocabulary of wonder is the word “awesome”?

Uh huh, I think you’re right.

*with apologies to The Who

                                   

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