Emotionalism: Bad Fuel For The Press

I remember when I first learned to drive I, being a dutiful girl, wished to return my parents car to them with a full gas tank. Being on a tight budget I went to the “cheapcheapcheap” gas guy and filled ‘er up. And by the time I got home the car was hiccupping and behaving strangely. Seems I’d tried to run an 8 cylinder Rambler wagon on “bad gas.”

The problem was not earth shattering; things were easily remedied, but I learned a lesson. You want your car to run smoothly, you don’t buy the “bad gas,” even if it means you drive farther or spend more to get the good stuff.

For the last few days the families and friends of the tragic miners of West Virginia have had to endure an agony that no right-thinking person would ever wish on another – and last night’s “miscommunications” within the press, first announcing that 12 of the 13 miners were alive, only to correct themselves later and declare 12 of 13 dead – well, the face of the anguished young woman heading the Drudge Report, about says it all.

One could almost excuse the press for making this awful mistake, for emotionally going on the air with a weepy Geraldo and an exalted Rita Crosby, to announce the miracle: 12 men alive under dubious circumstances! After all, we ALL wanted the men to be alive, we all WISHED it to be so. Journalists, we are often told, are as “human as anyone else,” and they want to report such an uplifting and even triumphant story. I linked to what we all wanted to believe was “good news” last night, and said prayers of thanksgiving as I went to bed.

So, yes, one could could excuse the press their mistake, and forgive the torturous turnabout which came after, if only they had not – just a few months ago – done precisely the same thing while covering Hurricane Katrina. Recall that back in New Orleans – just as last night – unknown people ran about, shouting unverifiable “news” and the journalists, particularly the always-voracious cable news outlets, latched on to the “news” and emotionally redelivered it, without checking it out, without doing the basic job of journalism which is: if your parents say you’re not adopted, and you look just like your brother, confirm, confirm, confirm.

Journalism used to run on facts. It wasn’t enough to have a rumor, you had to nail it down; it wasn’t enough to suspect something – if you suspected it, you expended the shoe leather to prove it. Now, unfortunately, beginning at least with Mary Mapes’ odd idea that the the standard of journalism precludes proving one’s charge (it is now enough that the charge is made, and the accused must prove a negative), but particularly since Hurricane Katrina, mainstream journalism has decided it doesn’t need to run on facts; emotionalism is the new fuel on which the press is running, and it is a bad, bad gas – it sputters and sprays and belches out errors all over the airways, all through the ink barrels, and once the errors are out there, they become either (in a best-case scenario) tough narratives to reclaim or (in the cruelest case) weapons of devastation and destruction.

In the aftermath of the New Orleans levee breaks, we heard about horrific scenes of murder and rape – unspeakable brutality – and charges of racist disregard. This was a terrible and harmful narrative, the stuff that shakes a nation’s sense of its own strength and goodness, and we got that narrative not from bloggers or talk radio, but from the mainstream, “respectable” deliverers of news. We heard it from news anchors shrieking and bawling on the air. They had not actually checked their facts; but who has time to check facts when such charges are being made? When the water is rising? It was enough that “someone said” something, and the pictures were so dramatic – don’t you see how upset and unshaved I am? Isn’t our moral outrage compelling?

“Dynamic journalism,” it was called. “News with heart. Responsive.” As the press patted themselves on the back for their “great work,” we read that Anderson Cooper’s undetached hyperventilation and advocacy journalism was to be the new model for television journalism.

Except that with all the histrionics, the plain facts were, there were not “numerous rapes and murders”, no babies being subjected to sinful exploitation. When the body counts were done, there was no racist disregard for other-than-whites. In fact, in terms of sheer ratios, the largest percentage of dead were caucasian. More importantly, why should it ever have mattered how many of the dead were black, white, Asian, Hispanic, except to mindsets bent on delivering not “facts,” but explosive scud missiles of raw emotionalism, particularly if all that emotionalism is politically expedient?

“Oops,” said the press, very, very softly. So very softly.

Lately we have watched “the paper of record” and other large papers and talk show hosts do the scream-and-shout, trying to gin up public emotions over a non-scandal, and not caring that they are disrupting valuable national security programs while they do it. Not caring that when all the bloviating is done, there is no story, there. Not a wisp of one.

Last night, while politics seemed far away from the awful scene in West Virginia – and we hope, for once, it remains so – too many members of the fourth estate fueled up, once again, on the bad gas of emotionalism. Last night, in the process of once again jumping the gun, of forfeiting substance for sensationalism, of demonstrating that they simply no longer believe that anything they say actually has to be true as long as it “feels” right, the press threw standards out the door. Last night, hope was shattered, hearts were broken.

“Oops?” The press tries again, softly, grasping. “Wouldja believe miscommunications?”

Trust has been betrayed. The public trust is upended. Whether the press means to destroy their credibility, as when they – incessantly – try to rig up a case for impeachment against a president who seems to be dotting all of his i’s and crossing his t’s, or they do it by accident, as they did last night, it is becoming increasingly difficult to want to go for a ride in the press’ big car. More and more frequently, they seem to be running on the cheapest, and most unstable, flammable sort of gasoline.

More:
Ed Morrissey calls it cruel
Glenn Reynolds wonders about those gatekeepers
John Cole recounts the whole story
Gateway Pundit Kept watch
Sisu likens all of this to watching sausage being made.
Michelle Malkin and Pajamas Media have extensive round-ups
– Michelle’s includes feedback from a newsbiz insider who suggests the situation could not be helped. Perhaps. Easier to believe if the rest of it – Katrina, etc – were not in the history.
Sigmund, in a long post that covers a great deal about today’s news, notes that the Miner story was mistaken without malice and writes: It is time for the media to leave and let the families mourn in peace- and maybe, learn from this lesson and mourn for what they have lost and what they have become.
Live Fire blogs from the site.
Beth gets, umm…mouthy about this story.