How does the media serve the common good? Not an easy question to answer. But surely, at least in a society that guarantees free speech, it has something to do with being a public watchdog, with keeping those charged with furthering the common good honest. Ideally, the media is a crucial part of a system of checks and balances.
By this yardstick, the US media is a dismal failure. It was not always so. There was a time when the “news” was a serious and sober affair. There was a time when journalists viewed the essence of their job as exposing corruption, hypocrisy and malfeasance on the part of public officials. There was a time when the media took a shears to political spin and obfuscation. True, there were always concerns over how truly “objective” the media was, but everybody knew what its job was supposed to be. But no more. Today, the “news” is about entertainment. It is about what sells, the lowest common denominator, the cheap tawdry thrills of a debased culture. It reverences worthless and amoral celebrities. Instead of serious news, we are treated to inane human interest stories. A once serious network, CNN subjects us to the repulsive Nancy Grace and the obsequious Larry King. And of course, who doesn’t want to hear about the latest missing white girl?
And then we come to politics. Much ink has been spilled on the unwillingness of the press corps to challenge their sources and step outside preconceived partisan notions. There is scant regard for the truth behind the spin, as the media was content to employ a sense of balance, which meant simply providing a platform for spin on both sides. The main reason is that modern journalists, especially prominent ones, have become insiders, part of the system. They are part of the same cozy circle as the people they are supposed to be monitoring. And they are scared. Scared of being called partisan. Scared of being accused of a lack of patriotism for questioning the baseless claims made about the Iraq war. Scared of not being invited to all the good cocktail parties where being “rude” is the ultimate transgression.
It’s not just politicians. Recently, journalist Ken Silverstein went undercover in the murky world of lobbying. He tried to hire lobbyists to clean up the image of Turkenistan, a country he dubs an “ugly, neo-Stalinist regime”. The lobbyists took the bait, promising congressional delegations to Turkmenistan, and op-ed pieces written by think-tank “experts” they would find. When he wrote his article, the lobbying industry was incensed. No surprise there. But the established Washington media sided with the lobbyists. Journalists should not lie, tut-tutted Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. Kurtz should know better, for undercover reporting has a noble history. As far back as the 1880s, Nellie Bly feigned insanity to highlight the atrocious treatment of inmates at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York City. Silverstein himself argues that the decline in investigative journalism reflects the “increasing conservatism and cautiousness of the media, especially the smug, high-end Washington press corps.” But he forgets one thing. Undercover journalism is alive and well in niche areas. Certain news shows run features whereby correspondents pose as young teenagers on the internet to lure pedophiles to visit them for sex, all to be exposed on camera. So, you see, undercover reporting is fine when it is about sex, but a huge problem when it is about the unethical ways of making money.
And so we have the ultimate trade-off. As the media comes more and more under the control of large corporate conglomerates, the public is fed a diet of sex and celebrity gossip. Politics is reduced to shrill talking heads yelling at each other, with no attempt to earnestly assess the issues. All “facts” are created equal, regardless of truth. It is a postmodern world where morality depends on context, where reality can be created, where truth is malleable. Nobody captured this stale set of affairs better than Stephen Colbert, when (at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner ) he mocked the press in a manner typically reserved for politicians:
“The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction! ….. Over the last five years, you people were so good–over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out.”
Colbert was largely panned by the press. He had committed the ultimate crime — he was rude. But this may be a particular American problem. Journalism in other countries is not so deferential to power, not so inclined to bend the knee at court, to offer the ritual proskynesis to whoever happens to hold power. No, it is different in other countries. As James Wood from the New Republic put it:
“To anyone schooled in the Hogarthian brutalities of English journalism, U.S. newspapers have an astounding blandness and a sinister reverence for money, celebrity, and the simple authority of renown. Where is the daily political cartoon, or that hygienic invention of Grub Street, the Parliamentary sketch, in which you get to insult both sides of the aisle? What does it say of a newspaper that its most biting writers are those working in the style sections or reviewing films? It is no wonder that 54,000 people have written to thankyoustephencolbert.org: His routine was a good, savage op-ed piece. But not in the MSM.”
Anybody who wants to see an example of how the press should operate would be well to look to a country like to the UK, or Ireland, and see how prominent journalists address political leaders. Hint: it’s not about reverence and deference. No, it comes from understanding that journalists have an important role in furthering the common good, and that role means they must treat politicians more like hostile witnesses in a court room than their drinking buddy at the other kind of bar.
To see how it’s done, watch the following clip of Irish journalist Carole Coleman interviewing president George Bush in 2004, just before his visit to Ireland. Coleman treated the interview as she would a typical Irish political interview. In other words, she tried to cut through the spin with continual interruption and blunt questions. Let’s see Tim Russert try this style! It would be a breath of fresh air. Then again, after the Coleman interview, the White House complained to the Irish embassy about the “disrespect” and cancelled an interview with Laura Bush. What is the point of free speech if can be used by pornographers but not the guardians of the public interest?
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