It is not possible to make good decisions without good information.
In a well functioning society, the media would be part of that system by providing accurate, useful information to the public.
That isn’t the media we have. Strictly speaking, we’ve never had that media, though some periods were better than others.
Let’s run through a few of the issues:
Man Bites Dog; If It Bleeds It Leads
The more we see something, the more of it we think exists. But the routine and normal doesn’t make sensational news.
The truth is that violent crime is at multi-generational lows, but most people don’t think that.
The truth is that the person who will hurt or molest your child is almost certainly not a stranger, but a family member, friend, or other trusted adult.
The truth is that terrorism is not a significant threat to Americans. You’re more likely to get hurt when you slip in your tub.
In almost all advanced, industrial societies, the greatest threat to your well-being, with very rare exceptions, comes from your own politicians and business leaders. They are the people who will hurt and kill you, and that’s simply the case. Even in times of war, this is true, because leaders usually caused the war.
The media does not reflect these facts and other similar ones. As such, it gives people an inaccurate picture of the world, which they then act upon and get disastrous results.
Fake News
There’s a lot of hysteria about fake news lately, but it’s about fake news from non-approved people.
It’s not that the media doesn’t lie its ass off, it’s that “OMG, other people are able to get their lies believed.” 72 percent of Americans didn’t think Saddam was behind 9/11 because the media didn’t lie. And who was one of the worst offenders? The New York Times, the apex of the establishment press.
So, yeah, when the media lies, or passes on what they know or suspect are lies, people get hurt, and badly.
Class Interests
Journalists at elite institutions used to be mostly working class. Now they are mostly university graduates, with a high concentration of Ivy League grads. The more senior you are, the more likely you went to an elite college.
You lunch with politicians and business leaders. You went to school with them. They are your friends. They are your people. You understand them.
Speaking from experience, it’s hard to write something mean about someone who’s really nice to you. People who want good press can be amazingly nice. Heck, there’s an entire industry of public relations people whose job it is to make people in the media like them. Some of them are very, very good at their jobs.
This gets even harder when you come from the same group and share the same experiences and beliefs.
This is part (but only part) of why Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn gets lied about over three-quarters of the time in the press, per academic studies. The people reporting on him, and especially the editors and producers, genuinely despise his politics and think they are wrong, even evil. They want him destroyed. To them he’s practically Stalin or Hitler, and anything they do is justified in the name of defeating him.
A shared world view is a powerful thing. You don’t have to censor people who genuinely believe the same thing as their leaders.
Horse Race vs. Policy
Writing about who can win, rather than analyzing who would do what if they won, guts Democratic decision making. The media should support people choosing who would do those things they agree with, not simply act as if voting is a sport.
He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules/Freedom of the Press Belongs to Those Who Own Won
If someone hires you to do something, they expect to get more from you doing it than they pay you. This is fundamental: You have a job because you are of benefit the person who controls the money. That is ALL.
Media conglomerates (and remember, they are very, very concentrated) are run by people who expect a return for their money. That doesn’t always mean direct cash. Robert Murdoch loves owning newspapers because newspapers control the news cycle: What newspapers write in the morning is what TV news discusses in the evening.
What is controlling the media cycle worth? Who cares if the newspaper doesn’t make much directly, anyone with other interests knows it’s just a loss leader.
Murdoch also used his newspapers as intelligence operations. He would have phone calls with beat reporters which went on for hours, learning everything they knew about their beats.
The ability to control, or at least strongly influence the public and to decide who gets publicity and who doesn’t, is valuable even when it doesn’t make a lot of money. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t buy the Washington Post out of public spiritedness.
So even when the journalists, editors, and columnists resist what the publisher wants, the publisher gets their way. It’s just that simple. Those pundits and journalists who wrote against the Iraq war in the run-up to war lost their jobs or had their careers stall out. Phil Donahue had his show shut down, and his show had excellent ratings. It wasn’t about how much money Phil was making them directly: They wanted war, and he was in the way.
You don’t get to use the platform to attack the perceived interests of the people who control the platform.
This should be dead obvious.
The people who control the media have interests. They use media to promote those interests. They are all part of one big club, and while there is elite infighting, they are agreed on most fundamentals. To them, a Corbyn or Sanders is a far greater threat than a Trump or Boris Johnson. Heck, Trump gave them a huge tax cut. Johnson will gut worker’s rights.
They’re basically okay with both, they just find them distasteful people.
The Media Is Part of the Enemy
Perhaps that sounds harsh, but what can be said about an industry which helped ensure the Iraq war happened? An industry which covered for banker bailouts?
Yeah, they’re gushing money because the internet destroyed their business model. Yeah, that may lead to an even worse future (sure as hell Facebook and Google are pure evil), but they were never the good guys.
The media was the least malfeasant, and did some good when they were broken up into many pieces, when the American elite was much larger and less concentrated and had more internal differences, and when journalism was a working class job and most editors and reporters hated the people they reported on, rather than thinking they were part of the club.
Something similar could be done today. It would require legislation and some technological fixes, but it could be done. We could also impose rules that require context to deal with the problem of sensationalism, which would be an issue even with the best will in the world.
But none of this will happen unless it is forced, and it will only be forced if current elites are broken of their power.
Nothing lasts forever. Every elite falls. There will be chances.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Herman
Ian,
I agree with some of your contentions, particularly about how the media overstates certain dangers, but I have some disagreements. First, I think there is actually more transparency now than in the past. Yes, many journalists have cozy relationships with political and business leaders but generally it is much more likely for dirt and scandals to surface today than in the past. Sex scandals, for example, were rarely reported in the past because they were considered private matters and not newsworthy but now they are quite common. Financial corruption was a different story but I still think that it is much harder to get away with outright corruption today than in the past.
Second, I don’t think it is necessarily the fault of the media that people don’t care about policy. Sure, the media reports politics like a horse race but that is actually how many people follow politics anyway. Many people view politics as “my team vs the other team” based on identities and other non-policy related factors. Even many of the best informed people are hardcore partisans and use information not to become more erudite but to gain ammunition to combat the other side, hence the popularity of media outlets that cater to different ideological groups.
Third, as bad as the mainstream media is I am not sure that alternative media is much better. Just because the New York Times and Washington Post have biases doesn’t mean that we should trust alternative media either. I am not saying that you suffer from this problem but I know many people who will believe any crank on the Internet as long as they have “outsider” credentials and say things that they like. This is how people are swayed from good sources and analysis toward conspiracy theorists. Just to use a personal anecdote, as bad as Fox News is, seeing some of my relatives dump Fox for Alex Jones is not a positive in my book.
Finally, I generally think that the media is probably not as important a factor in our problems as many people believe. A large number of people consume almost no news at all and the news that they do consume is not “hard” news like economics and foreign affairs but stuff like sports and celebrity gossip. In fact, it has become easier than ever to avoid news if you want to. If you really wanted to you could avoid news altogether thanks to the many options given to people by modern technology.
We are no longer living in the days where a handful of powerful print publications and radio and TV companies dominate the flow of information. However, instead of producing a flowering of informed, democratic citizenship people use this technology for entertainment/distraction or to engage in partisan and ideological warfare with little regard for the truth. This is why I don’t think the information problem is solely the fault of the elites. Ordinary people are part of the problem as well.
450.org
Speaking from experience, it’s hard to write something mean about someone who’s really nice to you. People who want good press can be amazingly nice. Heck, there’s an entire industry of public relations people whose job it is to make people in the media like them. Some of them are very very good at their jobs.
This is why I have no friends and/or acquaintances and never will. People ruin everything, most especially your objective independence. Writers become captive to their friends and fans and ultimately to their self-aggrandized bloated egos.
Walter Savage Landor comes to mind. This passage inspires me sans the art. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate art, but artists suffer from the same malignancy writers suffer from — they too become captive to their sponsors and fans. Plus, nature is art in its own right and there is no singular artist to take credit or to be held captive.
That list of mine, the sheet still empty, might have contained Bernie but alas it is not meant to be. Bernie’s catering to pop culture, i.e. his meeting with the dumb-them-down imbecilic Cardi B, ensures, sealed the deal actually, Bernie never makes it to the list. Pop culture is a large part of the problem. It’s part of the chains that bind. It’s anti-evolutionary.
450.org
Herman, you’re using the same argument I’ve seen used about the popularity of SUVs. The argument goes, the auto manufacturers gave the people what they wanted, what they demanded, SUVs. That is a lie. SUVs were not popular for a long time. It’s not until the auto manufacturers created the demand, that SUVs became popular and as more people bought them, pack animals that humans are, other people said I should have one too if they have one.
In the beginning, 2015 to be precise, no one wanted to see 24/7 news coverage of Trump and his machinations. The media, mainstream and alternative, created the demand through repetition. They have shoved Trump down the throats of the easily manipulated sheep to the point that most people now must have their Trump fix every hour on the hour. Sure, the people are partly to blame for not seeing it for what it is (the education system can be blamed for this and once again the people are partly responsible for not seeing it for what it is), but they didn’t start it or clamor for it initially, those who endeavor to manage perceptions and cash in on the spectacle and sensationalization are the ones who set that ball in motion just as the auto manufacturers set the SUV craze ball in motion.
Ché Pasa
I’m so old I remember such classic online media critics as Media Whores Online (MWO, The Horse) and Take Back the Media. Good times and heady days when it was sincerely believed that the destruction of the Legacy Media would bring about the return of some imagined glory days when media wasn’t the plaything of the advertisers and funders, the rich and well-connected, when the People were supreme and when media told The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth.
But guess what? There wasn’t any such Golden Age. Ever. And the wholesale consolidation, uprooting and destruction of Legacy Media, particularly local newspapers and television news, has been a disaster for the People who are now more ignorant of what’s really going on than ever.
The proliferation of online news sources more nearly resembles the cacophony of media outlets that once characterized newspapers and magazines, but just like they used to be during the print era, the online news sources these days are just as much the playthings of their advertisers, funders, the rich and well-connected as at any time in the past. Perhaps most reporters were working class back in the day (though I’d question the premise), but they’re not so elite now as we sometimes believe they are.
Many voices, narrow tailored news, lots of pretend and fabricated hoo-hah, and entertainment above all (aka Clickbait) characterizes media now just as it did a century ago or more. It seemed to me that many of the media critics of yore either had never studied media at all, or had no memories of what it was like even as recently as the 1950s and 60s. They had an image of media Truth Telling, a mythology of What Used To Be, and an unrealistic belief in What Ought To Be.
Thankfully, Ian isn’t trapped in that primal fiction. He’s seen too much and knows too much. But I question whether the media can be forced to be something it’s never been.
The disappointment at what has happened to mainstream and alternative media since the advent of online competition and media consolidation is very real. The media landscape has not materially improved. In many ways it’s deteriorated to the point where it’s essentially useless to understanding what’s really going on. A case can be made that it’s always been that way, but its uselessness now, in the face of so many looming catastrophes (which some believe are media creations themselves — and thus “fake”) is appalling.
My great-grandfather was a newspaper publisher after the Civil War and up to about 1880 when he sold the paper and moved to the big city. I think when he was publishing, he tried to do his best, and I have in-laws today who formerly published newspapers who likewise tried to do their best. They always had critics of course, and they always had financial constraints that restricted what they could do and say. It’s not that different today. Except, of course, local press has largely disappeared to be replaced by… nothing, really. The dearth of local news has created a vacuum filled by ignorance that leads to some of the bizarre fantasies, obsessions and superstitions we see spreading today.
When people don’t know what’s going on and it’s difficult or impossible to find out, then pretty much everything is a mystery — to be explained and understood solely through faith.
Willy
Ian forgot the Page 3 girls. The media is about observing what direction the mob is headed in, then jumping in front and saying “Read, watch, and listen to us!”
Maybe I paraphrased that from the old folk wisdom about leadership, but it still seems to apply.
450.org
The final scene from one of my all-time favorite movies is pertinent: Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford & Faye Dunaway and directed by Sydney Pollack who played Jeffrey Epstein in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut which turns out to be more a documentary than a silly fiction.
Higgins says, “how do you know they’ll print it?” Turner says, “they’ll print it.” Turner is standing in front of the NYT building.
The tragedy is, they did print it and much more and no one cares or gives a shit and here we are. Inured. Desensitized. Paralyzed. F*cked, effectively. The sheeple are so impotently pathetic, this malevolent carnage done in their name can be hidden in plain sight (printed & aired) and they’re so numb, they can’t see it let alone feel it and fathom the depravity of it.
Three Days of the Condor – Final Scene
Ten Bears
Characteristic #6 of the 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, and pandering, is very common; and #11 Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
ponderer
Ian is correct. I’m not sure what we have can even be called Media anymore, it’s just propaganda disguised as entertainment. There probably hasn’t been an effective media for the last hundred years, maybe more. I’ve been reading Ron Unz series on American Pravda and its shocking just how tightly controller our media is. Even if we ignored the CIA programs to coopt the media, or the elites buying it, they are far too differential to power. We really seem to be living in a Fascist state, but its a “Velvet Fascism” that has slowly crushed our freedom and hope with very few the wiser. We have become free-range slaves convinced that we make our own choices that there is some self determination left or that at least in large numbers that we aren’t powerless. In fact its the opposite. Every movement has been co-opted and scripted by some faction of the oligarchy. The media which is really Hollywood, a few Billionairs, and Big Tech are just PR for the Elites.
Eric Anderson
The whole mess is substantially fixed by a voluntary association of journalists who are willing to submit to the same standards the the rest of the professional world is.
Anyone care to imagine lawyers without a State Bar policing them?
Doctor’s without the AMA? But journalists get a free pass in the name of the 1st Amendment.
If you voluntarily join and submit yourself to sanctions before your peers, you get to earn the title professional journalist. If not, you’re a blogger and your product will be viewed wit the skepticism it deserves.
No offense, Ian. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t one of the good ones.
Herman
@Ché Pasa,
Your point about the cacophony of media outlets is a good one and the problem doesn’t just involve outlets owned by elites but also smaller outlets, even individuals. I do not agree with the idea that our media is tightly controlled if we use the most expansive definition of media to include the Internet, for example. You can find a huge amount of information now so much that it is like wading through a garbage dump trying to find the few good objects that are worth something. Most people deal with this problem of information overload by limiting what they read, usually to what they find entertaining or to what they already agree with. This proliferation of information has actually made our media environment worse
450.org
Ian said the following on Twitter.
Exactly. The enablers. The sycophants. Applying it to that clip above I provided, it’s the Higgins of the world and the thugs in the Grand Torino, Higgins’ muscle, Higgins waves ahead after Turner tells him he has a gun in his pocket. It’s the owners and editors of the New York Times and all news outlets for that matter and many more to be identified and listed in the book.
Remember how, historically, scoundrels were tarred & feathered? I think we should bring that back. All these scoundrels, the Praetorian Guard of you will, need to tarred & feathered versus put before a firing squad. Tarred & feathered is a horrible, humiliating way to die but it’s most appropriate for these scoundrels who have been torturing humanity for what seems forever now for their lords & masters.
There can be no mercy when that time comes. There can be no progress without justice. The scoundrels must be held to account. They must pay the price.
The Praetorians’ Comeuppance
Tom
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/02/record-heatwave-made-much-more-likely-by-human-impact-on-climate
Its not even an El Nino Year. Having seen the shops during July, they got slammed hard to the point they had no water, Gatorade, or pop left to sell and were waiting on the DCs to send them more.
anon y'mouse
the professionalization recommended above has been pointed to as part of the problem. not that a set of standards shouldn’t be adhered to, but that it becomes about credentialing.
and we all know who is able to get themselves credentialed. in other words, it exacerbates the trend rather than reversing it.
in what way has professionalization helped lawyers or doctors? yes, ok–drumming out absolute dangerous quacks. serving as a substitute for unions among people who can’t see themselves unionizing, i guess.
the recommendation is basically a personal solution rather than a systemic one about who owns and controls. the workers in this case do not own or control. making them adhere to “more professional standards” just brings about the negatives associated with guilds. look at the current problems with academia to see that this does not actually help. who is doing the teaching? yet, who dictates what is taught? textbook and materials producers, academic journals and essentially tenured profs as part of the system. very occasionally, you get a critical instructor but most times it is “just get through the material”. and the material has been prepped mostly by someone else, and the list of what should be there set by yet another (standards! professionalism! really, just making sure the dispenser of such is a cog in the machine, doing a mildly technical task of getting it into brains and before eyeballs sitting in seats). parallel to the media, and probably parallel to all info-spreading systems.
professionalization legitimizes the idea that an expert, who has digested all relevant materials (ha!) will regurgitate back to you the correct answer that you need to pay attention to because modern life is too specialized for you to have the time or energy to figure it out for yourself. then the problem becomes about which experts do you trust? fox, or cnn/msnbc, or alex jones?
one thing i always found amazing about undergraduate college work was that the goal was largely to become a giant walking meat-based hard drive, and to trust that this “work” had been done before your instructor wrote the knowledge to you (and that the real problem was retention, and thus faulty units). and yet whenever they seem to interview instructors about the goal of that level of education, they all say “critical thinking!”
sorry to drive the conversation towards education. i just see them as parallel. there’s something really amiss when everyone who uses and is involved with the thing keeps crying out for the existing system to give them what they believe it needs, while that very system embodies something that is incapable of doing it. it is why i did not choose to go into teaching–banging my head against a wall happens all too regularly as-is.
450.org
If Bernie really wants to connect with the Cardi B demographic, perhaps he can hold a rally before one of her concerts and drink his pee and kiss Cardi B’s eyeball.
We don’t have a prayer of a chance. The irony is, when the fresh water taps out, we really will be forced to drink our pee.
I wonder how pee taste like ?
Note that Cardi B gets the Twitter blue check seal of approval but Ian doesn’t. That blue check means you’re an official mainstream gatekeeper whether you like it or not.
KT Chong
I have finally figured out why so many leftists and progressives are turned off by Tulsi Gabbard. She has hurt and sabotaged herself by going onto Fox News and Tucker Carlson too often.
First of all, who is Tulsi trying to appeal to when she keeps going onto Fox News? People who watch Fox News may say they “like Tulsi”, but let’s be honest here: if Tulsi faces Trump in the general election, all those Fox News viewers will vote for Trump over Tulsi. So the “support” from Fox News viewers is ultimately meaningless and useless for her (or any Democrats) in the practical terms.
On the other hand, leftists and progressives are hostile to Fox News. We do not watch Fox News, and we instinctively distrust anyone or anyone who appears too often on Fox News. When Tulsi keeps going onto Fox News, she actually alienates leftists and progressives, and undermines her own credibility among the leftists and progressives.
The Young Turk, which pretty much support EVERY progressive candidates – Bernie, Warren, Yang, Marianne, Castro – has been very hostile to Tulsi. For the longest time, TYT viewers keep asking why Ana and Cenk seem to hate Tulsi. Then finally, they finally slipped: “she is too cozy with the right-wing media.”
It is okay to go onto Fox News to do an interview or townhall once or twice, but Tulsi has been on Fox News and Tucker Carlson like, every fucking week or every other day. Even Andrew Yang has the good sense to limit his appearances on Fox News and turn down several opportunities to appear on Fox News.
Here is what going on right now: I met with a friend and wanted to show him Tulsi. So I seartch for Tulsi on YouTube… the top search results are her multiple appearances on Fox News and Tucker Carlson. He immediately went, “Why is she on Fox News and Tucker Carlson so much??” I could already see he became instinctively hostile to her. That’s when I realized, that by itself immediately undermined her among leftists and progressives. All her google and YouTube hits are not gonna help her when people search for her and see that she is a Fox News darling. I think she may have already done irreparable to her own campaign at this point.
KT Chong
It is “MEDIA TRIBALISM” (which is a real thing) – and it is hurting Tulsi for her to keep running to the other tribe, i.e., Fox News and Tucker Carlson.
nihil obstet
A large part of the problem is that our mental framework now pictures each of us sitting alone in a room judiciously judging bits of information and its sources to reach the correct decision. We (that is, those who aren’t in the elite) used to understand better that politics is about power. Dealing with information means selecting the facts that lead to action which will advance your well-being. “The ACA reduces the number of uninsured Americans” focuses on something different than “The ACA leaves significant numbers of Americans uninsured.”
Prior to the era of self-styled objective reporting, a significant proportion of newspapers were published for a group. You read the newspaper that was aimed at you and if it was relevant enough, talked about it to others at your bar, union hall, religious group, whatever. Not to romanticize the past, but when the home wasn’t a standalone entertainment center with individuals receiving the TV, there was more of a group test of what the media owners were trying to convince everyone — what do those supposed facts do for me? Some of the results were perfectly awful — same violence against the weak as now. But they kept alive the dissenters, the labor movement, the civil rights movement.
A lot of the issue with the bias of the newspapers is that we’ve been convinced that there is such a thing as objectivity and the reporting part of the newspapers should observe it. Never happened. Won’t happen now. As Ian points out, the publishers decide what the news is. We should choose the news that benefits us.
And another chance to recommend Century of the Self again, about the conscious shift from public communication supposedly based on rational thought and public communication as propaganda.
Hugh
A few add-ons:
Re terrorism, most is perpetrated by white supremacists.
It isn’t just that today’s journalists went to elite schools. It is that they often come from celebrity/elite families. On Morning Joe, for example, Mika Brzezinski is the daughter of Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser and famed Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski. Willy Geist is the son of CBS correspondent Bill Geist. Security expert David Ignatius is the son of a former Navy Secretary. Joe Scarborough’s parents ran national teen beauty pageants. Commentator Donny Deutsch’s dad ran an advertising agency in New York. Pretty much none of them came from a working class or lower middle class background. You can apply this model to any cable or network news channel.
And now many of these people have celebrity and million or millions plural annual salaries. So when they talk about what “Americans” or “the majority” want, they have no idea because they wouldn’t know an ordinary American if they ran over one.
Print journalism, on the other hand, is mostly a dead man walking. Even the Gray Lady needed a cash infusion from Carlos Slim, and the WaPo, as Ian says, was bought by zillionaire oligarch Jeff Bezos. Gannett and the other big chains are losing subscribers like crazy. They cut staff, stack what’s left of their newsrooms with younger hires and stringers because they are cheaper, and what’s really killing them keep reducing the content of their papers even as they relentlessly raise their prices. They have priced themselves out of most of their market. Even those who can afford it are dropping the paper because it’s just not worth it to them. Meanwhile they have trained a generation or two not to need the paper. Advertisers are fleeing because they can see subscription numbers falling. And the chains blame all this on the rise of the internet. Well, that’s certainly been a factor, but again a lot of people would have stayed with papers if said papers had made the slightest effort to keep them.
Finally, it isn’t just whose fake news. Many stories don’t get published at all. The most egregious examples are David J. Pecker paying hush money to kill negative stories on Donald Trump but then you have only to see the deafening non-coverage of Bernie Sanders by the MSM for the more common form. There are candidates who are polling at one or two percent who get more and more favorable coverage than he does.
Hugh
One more thing, it used to be a cardinal rule of journalism that the first paragraph, indeed the first sentences should answer the questions who, what, where, when. Now these pieces of information are often randomly distributed in an article or left out entirely.
Eric Anderson
Hugh:
That’s still the first rule in legal writing. See, professional standards and ethics. Roger Stone may get off Scott free. But you know what? He’ll no longer have the power conferred to a judicial officer to do so. The bar will pull his license.
Perhaps my idea above has not caught on for the same reason anon y’mous doesn’t get it. Until you do a job that carries sanctions for f@cking up, you’ll never know the burden of responsibility that comes with it. You do the work to ensure you’re doing the job to the absolute best of your ability, and then you still lay awake all night wondering if you did something wrong. Guy I practice with calls it “a cold shot of piss to the heart.” That feeling when you realize … OH SHIT.
When you have a code of ethics that everyone else in your profession knows need be adhered to, and for some reason you don’t, and that other lawyer slaps a motion with sanctions on you??? You know you’re in fight for life.
Trust me. There is a reason professionals bill the way they do. It’s called risk. And there is none in journalism for being an unethical bought off corporate piece of shit. Journalists have a duty to the public just like a doctor or lawyer. They need to figure out a way to do that job ethically because, right now … they ain’t.
Stirling S Newberry
I pull my subscription to cable… I suggest you do likewise.
Z
One of the biggest lies from demozombies is that Ronald Reagan was our most influential president in the past 50 years and that he set this country on a course that even when he was dead that living presidents could not somehow steer us out of. Reagan changed America!
But our most influential president by far of the past 50 years, the piece of trash that has did the most long-term damage to this country and the world, is the big corporate lapdog Billy Clinton.
He played a very large role in corporately corrupting the democratic party and setting up the revolving back door bribe with Rahm Emanuel as the coordinator. Ever since he was in office we haven’t had a decent democratic president nominee to vote for who gave two shits for the working class. He tore apart Wall Street regulation. Passed NAFTA. Passed legislation which grew the corporate concentration of our media. Empowered China, and the corporations who sent off our jobs there, which has had a large part to do with the climate issues we are experiencing and the air, land, and sea pollution. Increased H1-B visas after saying he wouldn’t, which has depressed tech wages. Incentivized the burgeoning police state we live in with legislation (I think the prison population doubled in his 8 years). Frayed the safety net. And I’m sure there is plenty more that doesn’t immediately come to mind.
Reagan had nowhere near the impact that our nation’s most hedonistic president had. Clinton was the first one who used the office as a platform for his own interests to that level, well to any level. Just basically put the country up for sale to the highest bidders. Look at how much money he made when he left office.
Clinton apologists will point out that there were veto proof majorities in Congress for some of this legislation, but the Clinton Administration basically wrote a lot of that Wall Street friendly legislation with his pal Rubin with the pen in his hand. It’s hard to imagine they couldn’t have prevented that veto proof majority if they wanted to.
Yet they can’t understand how anyone could have voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. They must all be misogynist racists. That’s the only reasonable explanation.
Z
Eric Anderson
Stirling:
What is this “cable” thing of which you speak?
nihil obstet
Eric Anderson,
Licensing is about knowledge of and use of specialized information. You license people who have demonstrated knowledge of the law as lawyers, of medicine as doctors, because ignorance would result in their harming their customers. It’s not primarily about ethics and standards, although those are necessary to justify the licensing.
You license beauticians because they use chemicals on customers that might be harmful. You don’t license ornithologists, because they do not use their specialized knowledge for customers in a way that might harm the customers.
I have no problem with organizations of journalists establishing professional ethics and standards, but only as a fraternal club. I do have a serious problem with the implication that it would be licensing or credentials for any serious purpose. Remember, Judith Miller is supposedly a serious, professional journalist, while Julian Assange is supposedly something else, something awful. And who more accurately gave the public facts on the war in Iran?
someofparts
This is an email I sent to the local CBS affiliate half an hour ago.
“This is why I take cartoons more seriously than your miserable propaganda pretending to be legitimate news coverage.
Mike Pence is in town on the same weekend that a national socialist organization is holding their meeting here. So you give us full coverage of Pence speaking and then offer no information at all from the socialist side.
Good to know we can count on CBS to show complete contempt for your responsibility to the public. Somebody needs to yank your miserable license to be on the air.”
Hugh
Curiously kind of on-topic for once. There is whole narrative in the media about how well the economy is doing, despite a Fed interest rate cut (a sign of a weak economy) and Trump’s ramping up the trade war with China (at Americans expense). Then there is the ongoing story of the jobs numbers. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report covering July, the private sector gained 130,000 jobs seasonally unadjusted. July is always a slow month because employers have pretty much hired everybody they are going to hire until the build toward the Christmas shopping season kicks in. So the July number is in range, but the net job creation this year (the Jan-July increase minus the Dec-Jan end of last year drop off) is 1.563 million. This is 92,000 fewer than in 2016 which was a bad year for job creation and 479,000 fewer than 2014 which was a solid if unspectacular year of job growth.
Looking at Total Nonfarm (private and public sectors combined), it is important to remember that July is the month where most of the job losses (state and local) in education related to the end of the school year show up. So overall 1.059 million jobs were lost in July. This is in range, but looking at the net, in 2014, there was still a net growth of 453,000 jobs to this point. Even in 2014, there were 185,000. While in 2019, we are sitting at -20,000.
These numbers completely contradict the Establishment and media narrative. And as always, nothing in any of these numbers measures in any significant way the quality of the jobs created.
Eric Anderson
Eric said:
“Trust me. There is a reason professionals bill the way they do. It’s called risk.”
Thanks nihil, your examples just described risk.
Ask yourself, what happens to people’s ethics and morals when they are sticking their necks out in risky situations to help others …. hmmmm? They cut corners. Or, they’re easily bought. Or, they profit from inside info. Or, their interests become conflicted. Or, they just can’t handle the pressure and crack … leaving a train wreck in their wake. I’m sure I could name at least ten other examples if I were to dwell on it or open my ethics code book — which I generally consult at least once a week due to some tricky situation or another.
None of this flies without the threat of fear inducing sanctions. Not to mention the fact that journalists don’t even take a test of minimal competency. These are not professionals. They’re cocky kids playing with weapons of mass destruction, the almighty pen being greater than the sword.
So, I said above: wtf is the press doing if not providing a service to the public, the risk to whom need be minimized to, oh I don’t know, maybe not get another country bombed into oblivion? Thanks Judith Miller.
Paraphrasing:
“Licensing is about ethically wielding knowledge of and use of specialized information to reduce risk to those that don’t have it.” Sounds like journos fit comfortably within that definition.
And consider, if the trend remains the same, someone will do it for them if they can’t do it themselves, and that someone is likely to be even less competent than they are.
bruce wilder
the evolution of news media into a televised medium was unfortunate. most people born after about 1960 are apparently illiterate. i think it is hard to be a critical viewer when the pace is controlled by the flow of images and noise. ( i think it must be hard sometimes, too, for the creators of video content to edit for close accuracy of factual statements)
the feature story, with its emphasis on finding a narrative line, a script on which to hang “the story” played into the rise of spin doctors and access journalism.(Hugh noted the decline of the who, what, where lede)
somewhere a few years ago i seem to remember some factoid that claimed the ratio of PR hacks to journalists working for news organizations had increased substantially and the PR hacks were paid better
centralization and homogenization are both huge problems. if all politics is local and no news media is — it is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.
when newspapers were owned by local real estate developers, sure it was the view of very rich people, but they were also very rich people deeply invested (literally) in the local economy. that wasn’t always a good thing, but it was different from the globalized, centralized corporate media
trying to make a career in a journalistic ecology dominated by billionaire hobbyists and giant media conglomerates has to be hell on the soul, and the only alternative seems to be to be an underpaid crank the culture of journalism is ugly today — terribly irresponsible
Eric Anderson
nihil:
“Remember, Judith Miller is supposedly a serious, professional journalist, while Julian Assange is supposedly something else, something awful. And who more accurately gave the public facts on the war in Iran?”
But she’s not actually, is she? And perhaps the process would have weeded her out just like the LSAT, Bar Exam, and MPRE (all required to pass for a lawyer prior to licensing) weed out people like these fellows: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-pontifex-maximus-and-his-lawyer.html
Didn’t know Ezra Klein was disbarred, did you. Or, that the white supremacist he was representing was not accepted to the Bar in Illinois, thereby setting the lawsuit into action.
Nice try. But you built a straw man argument.
Hugh
Correction on my comment above: “Even in 2016, there were 185,000.”
Andy Sprott
I would be greatly heartened if all this were true. Were this truly the situation, it could be remedied with a fairly simple set of policy interventions. Unfortunately, it isn\’t.
The key driver here is that people, alone, in isolation with their phones, trend heavily towards identitarian, lowest common denominator, drek. In face to face groups, they\’re great – pretty frequently rising to the occasion (unsurprising as this is the median evolutionary case). Alone, one tweet, comment, or facebook post at a time and lacking a social governor, all the native cognitive biases work against them. Monetization of this tendency is what has significantly damaged large scale communal print media (and the free riding enterprise that is broadcast media), largely destroying its principal revenue source, corrupting the information collection function, and warping the output function as they chase an ever more cognitively damaged audience.
All of the forces highlighted above – they exist, but with the exception of the relative ease of getting fake news planted into the environment, the present situation is nowhere near as different from the past as commonly believed. He who owns the press has always played a significant role in determining what gets covered and elite journalism has been firmly dominated by educational / social elites for at least two generations. What\’s changed, more than anything, is the ability of any individual to easily shout their hot takes into the din and get a validating echo back. Add the self-selection that social revenue models depend on and here we are.
nihil obstet
Eric,
The paraphrase would more accurately read, ““Licensing is about the government passing and enforcing laws to restrict commercial activity to those who should be ethically wielding knowledge of and use of specialized information to reduce risk to those that don’t have it.”
What is the specialized information that the journalist has? Do we restrict reporting on the Middle East, say, to those who have passed a test on the history and culture of the country being reported on, along with a test on the current treaties and international law? Would journalism be like private universities, where entry into the field is controlled by a group like AAUP which would set requirements for a real journalist? Would there be tenure so that after a certain time a journalist would receive freedom of speech protections, or would a committee review each report to see that it still meets the ethics or standards that they all agree on?
I don’t think “straw man” means what you seem to think it means, so for clarity how about some explanation instead of labels?
450.org
Eric, perhaps the intrepid Neiwert can grow a pair and do some in-depth investigative reporting related to Israel’s courting of the evangelicals and the far right to include these white nationalist groups. I have brought Kunstler to the attention of the SPLC several times over the years and they have yet to expose him and his filthy, racist website. From that, I assume they’re all good with it or they’ve been told, like Acosta was told, to keep far afield because it’s above their pay grade. If these far right racist groups didn’t exist, Israel would have to invent them because they’re perfect foils for what Israel wants to accomplish.
What do Epstein and Dees have in common? Much more than a penchant for pubescent pussy, apparently.
Morris Dees — Child Molester, Pervert, and Liar?
bruce wilder
I know I have mentioned the minor Rob Reiner film, “Shock and Awe” before. Not a particularly good film, but on topic: it tries to explore how the McClatchey (former Knight-Ridder) Washington Bureau consistently got the runup to the Invasion of Iraq right while the NY Times and the establishment media were passing on lies (Judith Miller) and cheerleading the Administration’s “narratives”.
The mechanics of journalism — seeking out multiple mid-level or low-level sources of information whose motives were not aligned with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — were touched on in the film. But, Reiner’s leftish righteousness and hackish sense of the dramatics likely to appeal to an audience obscures more than it reveals. Still, there are interesting vignettes, like the struggle the Bureau chief had with Editors at the major McClatchey dailies, who did not want to publish or feature these important stories.
Reiner, a long-time activist, went on to full-on Russia,Russia,Russia hysteria, co-founding the Committee to Investigate Russia.
Herman, in the first comment on this thread, claims in his usual complacency promoting mode, “it is much harder to get away with outright corruption today than in the past.”
I suppose “outright corruption” may be doing a lot of unexpected work to make that absurd claim seem plausible in Herman’s happy world. Did Bush II and their friends at Halliburton, KKR, Blackwater et cetera “get away” with the the conduct of the Iraq War and Reconstruction? Did their supporters in the Media (other than the hapless Judith Miller) pay a price?
How did the Clinton Foundation fare in the Media?
Was the two-year pursuit of Trump for “collusion with Russia” a triumph of modern journalism?
The “Trump colluded with Russia, film at eleven” seems to me like an illustration of how bad it has gotten. Lots of normative speculation, few facts, completely fractured perspectives on proportion and precedent, a dramatic script plot plagiarized from Watergate.
It is horrifying to think back on how we got from Walter Cronkite and Drew Pearson to Rachel Maddow and Tom Friedman.
Medicare for All is not surviving this mess and that is by design.
bruce wilder
AAUP is basically a labor union. It barely functions at all at anti-union private universities.
Eric Anderson
nihil obstet,
“Licensing is about the government passing and enforcing laws to restrict commercial activity …”
That’s just plain wrong. All of the State Bar associations are self regulating. So is the AMA. But please, do go on.
StewartM
Ian doesn’t explicitly mention this, but a big problem was the Right being allowed to set up its own cheerleading squad-media, largely in part by the tax cuts, starting in 1964 but continuing after that. I’d estimate that about 40 % of what you hear, see, and read is part of the noise machine, and if nothing else the noise machine does make its own “news”.
Having not been in a bookstore in a while, I was rather astonished to see all the shelves of rightwing garbage being published, often by people who absolutely no credentials in the subject matter. It’s a shame so many trees had to die to publish that trash.
A similar situation arose in the antebellum South before the Civil War, where Southern newspapers could and did post the most outrageous lies (Abraham Lincoln was campaigning on a platform in 1860 of freeing all the slaves and having them marry white women, for instance) with no rebuttal. I believe that was a big part of why the South went hysterical in 1860.
nihil obstet
Eric,
OK, we’re past the point of usefulness on this interchange. There are civil and criminal penalties for practicing law or medicine without a license. Neither the State Bar nor the AMA can sentence people to prison. And many doctors do not belong to the AMA.
Basically, my point is that we need a free press, whatever its flaws. An establishment organization with power to restrict the reporting of news to an approved few will inevitably be corrupt.
anon y'mouse
perhaps instructive, perhaps not:
https://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/article/viewFile/108/62
Eric Anderson
Nihil said:
“An establishment organization with power to restrict the reporting of news to an approved few will inevitably be corrupt.”
Yes. It would. Good thing the only place that was ever advocated was in your straw man argument.
Good lord, I must be an idiot to try and make a logical argument with a climate change denier.
nihil obstet
Eric, I don’t have a clue what you think you’re saying, and while I may think that someone is arguing in bad faith, I’m usually able not to respond in kind, in case I’m wrong. But you’re being dishonest. This is not acceptable.
Jack Parsons
But in the meantime, we are spared a war with Iran, because they no longer have the media power to orchestrate support. They keep trying, but they’re lost in the noise.
Also lost in the noise is Iran’s demonstrating to us that we have no chance in a war with Iran.
Hugh
Iran has many domestic problems. Further, there is no need for a war with Iran because it is being crippled by the current sanctions regime. If the US as hegemon wishes to crush a country this is the way to do it. What makes no sense is that in the great scheme of things the KSA is a far more dangerous and dangerous actor in the region, and while we have differences with Iran, none justify what we are doing to Iran at the moment.
450.org
That wouldn’t be the reason for a war with Iran. It’s not the reason for any war when you get right down to it.
One wonders, how many (Oil-For-Food)esque scams are being conducted with these sanctions. Crooks on all sides of the same coin love sanctions because it allows for all manner of black market schemes. Saddam made billions when America and the West sanctioned him before the invasion & occupation. The sanctions didn’t work then and they’re not working now, or certainly not working as their official stated intent.
US says Iraq Made $21 Billion On UN Oil-For-Food Programme Scam
I worked for a company, AGCO, after the fact, that was one of many American companies that was a part of this. They got a slap on the wrist as did all the players. They’re crooks and traitors, all of them. Needless to say, my assignment with AGCO didn’t last long. I wasn’t their type.
Steve Ruis
Re “He Has The Gold Makes The Rules/Freedom of the Press Belongs To Those Who Own Won”
The missing “Who” after He appears on the website version, but the final word “Won” should be “One.” Two typos in one header … egad!