Journalists as Cheerleaders

LGF posts an article about audience reaction to Norman Mailer's address of Harvard journalism conference attended by writers, editors and other media professionals. An obvious truth wilfully ignored by many is getting more and more difficult to ignore:

It's hardly a shocker that Norman Mailer could show up at a place like Cambridge, Mass., and win big applause with a speech attacking President Bush. After all, employees of Harvard University gave more money to John Kerry's presidential campaign than people who work anywhere else (except the University of California). What made the standing ovation for the novelist so disappointing, though, was that it came from a great big pack of journalists.

I have fairly limited journalism experience, but the people I met in in that business, and those I met in journalism school at two different universities, were nearly 100% liberal democrats. I happened to find a former schoolmate's blog not long ago and exchanged emails, he's a programmer and journalist with a neat blog here, and I was reminded of how even though I was the only conservative in the Journalism department, I got along very well with everyone else even though we frequently argued political and social issues en masse as part of newspaper policy in editorial board meetings. And it's not like I'm a tactful or even somewhat reasonable debater, on the contrary I can be extraordinarily cruel when I think I understand things better than other people, but no matter how hostile it got in ed board, it never spilled over in to real life. Or at least I never noticed, which is entirely possible.

But regardless, I guess I never thought of any of those people as the kind of people who would let their biases color their duty to The News. We were all schooled by the same crusty old newsmen, men from the age of lead type who believed that the reporter was never part of the story, and that conclusions came after research. Men who didn't fuck around, men who would have taken a flame thrower to that Harvard media conference when Norman Mailer got his first standing ovation. I like to think the training those men gave us is incontrovertable, and that my former classmates will pass it on.

I also like to think that none of them would have stood up and applauded Mailer during the conference, not because they didn't agree with him but because it is a betrayal of the sacred office of the journalist to put your personal beliefs above your duty to see the world clearly and without debilitating bias, and because giving the impression of taking sides is as bad as doing it.

Admittedly, some of the attendees were academics, publicists and students, so it's hard to say who was laughing at which remark. But the thousand-member audience was dominated by freelance writers and editors and reporters from nearly every major paper in the country. None of the dozen people who stood up to question Mailer challenged any of his political assertions. And only a few failed to stand and applaud at the end of a speech that had characterized Bush as "lord of the quagmire" in Iraq.

"I'm a newspaperman - these people don't seem to understand what their role in society is," said Jack Hart, managing editor of the Portland Oregonian, which cosponsored the conference along with the Boston Globe and the Poynter Institute (which owns the St. Petersburg Times and Governing magazine, where I work). "It makes me very uncomfortable."

With good reason. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a widely touted study in June that found that the audience for news is increasingly fragmenting along partisan lines. In other words, large numbers of readers and viewers are turning to media outlets that reinforce their previously held convictions, and tuning out those in which they detect a disagreeable bias.

Major news outlets routinely have their reports and credibility questioned nowadays because of perceptions of bias. Just before the election, stories in the New York Times and on CBS stating that tons of explosives were missing in Iraq were loudly dismissed in some quarters with the taunt that these "liberal" outlets were trying to turn voters against Bush. The same held true when the Los Angeles Times reported on Arnold Schwarzenegger's past sexual aggression in the days leading up to California's gubernatorial recall last year.

The level of public distrust evoked by partisan leanings - real or perceived - did not stop the reporters at the Nieman conference from applauding frequent left-leaning sentiments. Although most of the sessions were dedicated to nuts-and-bolts instruction on journalism, such as interviewing techniques and tips on how to create a sense of place, Mailer was far from the only speaker to touch directly on politics. Seymour Hersh, the author and investigative reporter for the New Yorker, gave a talk that equaled Mailer's in its anti-Bush venom.

"I was surprised when Hersh used his keynote address to give us his rewrite of Fahrenheit 9/11," said Rick Whittle, a military reporter with the Dallas Morning News.

Got that? The Pew poll clearly shows that the mainstream media is totally busted. We know they're biased and not telling us the truth, and we have acted accordingly. And from what I can tell, they don't see any reason to change. Sy Fucking Hersh, who should at least know better, can't elevate his game above Michael Moore level. Nick Coleman and other sad old jerkoffs keep doing the wounded elephant routine, bellowing about how evil blogs are and thrashing around incoherently and not understanding that the thrashing is making it worse, that they're hurting themselves. And they lose miserably every time in the eyes of the public while proclaiming victory, which is even more pathetic. Worst of all, the criticism of these and other absurdities in the mainstream press has rarely come from within, even when they have the most to lose when journalistic ethics are ignored or abused.

But what standard is upheld for journalists to follow these days? Who is the ethical conscience of Journalism? Katie Couric? The one guy who could lay claim to the crown of Edward R. Murrow, Bill Moyers, has gone loopy himself with Bush Derangement Syndrome. When Keith Olbermann and the formerly sensible but now thoroughly deranged Chris Matthews take a big dump on on-air news analyst credibility for months like they have recently, it's hard for the others, no more talented but less suicidal professionally, to make up for it, but frankly they don't really have to. That's how little we expect from journalists these days. Thank God that when Dan Rather cheats and lies as nakedly as he did over the TANG memos, it's a disaster for the entirety of the mainstream media, and rightfully so. He's been doing the same thing for decades, playing fast and loose with the news and being a celebrity himself above all else, but he's always had enough power and influence that his detractors could never get sufficient traction to make a dent in his facade. That time is over.

And people in the news industry should be more excited about that than anyone else. This is an unheard-of opportunity in an established industry, a cleanish slate and the power and resources to do it right from the ground up. And that's what it's going to take, a top-to-bottom redo of the whole mess. Respect is earned, not given freely, and when you've failed as spectacularly as the US press has in the last decade, you've got a long road ahead. Let's not make it an easy one, they won't learn a damn thing if we do.