A Journalist Looks at Media Bias
[Guest post by DRJ]
Journalist Michael S. Malone ponders why media bias is so pronounced this election season and concludes the blame lies with mainstream media editors:
“Picture yourself [as a mainstream media editor] in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.
In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway – all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.
And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.
And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country…”
It’s a powerful article. I hope you will read the whole thing.
EDIT: The Instapundit is “getting email from journalists that suggests quite a few feel like Malone does.”
— DRJ
That was a very good article. It makes me wonder what will happen if McCain/Palin win on
Nov. 4.
Will the militant liberals riot?
ML (14488c) — 10/25/2008 @ 10:33 amGod, more “we’re victims” drivel.
In 1980, the media was setting up Reagan as the change agent who “offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong.”
Build ’em to tear ’em down. It’s the only rule.
steve (0d07e5) — 10/25/2008 @ 10:34 amThey are determined to kill off alternative media if Obama gets in. The answer may be a surge in satellite radio. It is also an opportunity for satellite radio that the AM stations should be aware of. The Democrats may be able to enforce a Fairness Doctrine on broadcast radio using the commerce clause and the fact that the AM band is public property but I don’t see how they can shut down satellite radio. It might be an interesting lesson in tyranny.
Mike K (2cf494) — 10/25/2008 @ 10:36 amGood article you linked to DRJ.
Couple of thoughts from my view:
1. Regardless of who is elected many of the editors and senior journalists will be retiring and with them the “sixties liberalism” they were by and large so enamored of. The “young turks” who take their place may have a different agenda – I don’t know.
2. Getting Obama elected will not save the industry in its current state. 4 years of feel good stories about the Obama administration will be the coup de grace.
3. What is on satellite and the internet is only in its infancy. Eventually it will produce credible, objective and reliable sources of news. Blogs will continue their competition and the really good ones will attract a large following for opinions and the smaller ones will fade.
4. I think what cannot be predicted with much accuracy is how it will be used for politics. Obama has used it very well and McCain not so much. But like Rove’s successes in 2000 & 2004 with GOTV efforts Obama’s (if he wins of course) model will be used again but someone else will have perfected and improved it and he will be at a disadvantage.
What I would like to see are more independents who use the internet and satellite to form. Pick the 3-5 most important points of their reason to run and start working on the house seats. An independent caucus with even 50 representatives could really shake up Washington.
voiceofreason2 (10af7e) — 10/25/2008 @ 11:14 amPeople really are tired of the excesses of the left and right bases (see Rick Moran’s site for a much better series of articles on this).
Congress could deny US airspace for satellite launches (repair and replacements). Then again, this would make foreign airspace permission an interesting proposition ($$$). Or, even launching comsats in International waters and airspace from ships. This all gives a new dimension to: “the shot heard ’round the World”.
C. Norris (c4095e) — 10/25/2008 @ 11:38 amSo, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a
“journalist”, you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.
Has Malone been employed in a newsroom at any point during the election campaign? A freelance tech writer is entitled to wail and gnash at political biases he perceives. But he should be upfront about editors pulling reporters off stories he can’t document.
Malone prefers bloggers, in any event:
steve (0d07e5) — 10/25/2008 @ 11:38 amThere is no such thing as media bias, except on Fox. Heh!
daleyrocks (60704b) — 10/25/2008 @ 1:24 pmThe Instapundit is “getting email from journalists that suggests quite a few feel like Malone does.”
Such as? I could say I’ve talked to airline pilots who say flying isn’t safe, but I’d post a couple.
steve (0d07e5) — 10/25/2008 @ 1:44 pmAsk him, steve. I’m interested in that, too.
DRJ (c953ab) — 10/25/2008 @ 1:58 pmMy take on the article is at my name’s link. Beware false saviors.
My take (f8a9c3) — 10/25/2008 @ 2:08 pmDid you see Mark Steyn’s post at The Corner on NRO? Talk about media bias. Whenever I read this sort of thing my first inclination is to say “Good riddance to that rag of a newspaper,” but then I stop and realize all the people in production, sales, manufacturing, and delivery who would be affected by the Times collapse and how they would lose their jobs too. I couldn’t care less about the self-satisfied editorial department, but I don’t want to see the little guy put out of work over it.
JVW (0b8f3d) — 10/25/2008 @ 2:12 pmTo my mind the article should go in the circular file with most conspiracy theories.
What is clear to me that the business of providing news to the public is always prone in periods of intense competition to sensationalizing the news. We are in such a period now.
This was true late in the 19th Century when the many newspapers then fought for market share with yellow journalism and muckracking. That led to reforms in the 20th Century and the creation of journalism schools at many universities that attempted to turn the business into a “profession” with generally accepted standards of conduct, impartiality and objectivity.
I would argue that this was generally successful in the middle of the 20th Century, but began to break down with the advent of the 24hr cable news format and then the Internet.
A 24 hour news format by its very nature requires filling a lot of dead time. 30 Minute headline news is easy, but how do you keep people watching for extended periods of time? What we’ve seen is the growth of more emotional news presenters who make their opinions obvious. Think of the difference between Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite and the typical news presenter on cable television today.
We’ve also seen the creation of a huge class of “talking head” pundits whose job is to fill that dead air, and, of course, you don’t keep the job if you’re boring, the more outrageous the better. During the few hours I spend in a week watching cable news on the treadmill at the gym I am continually amazed at how much attention and false passion is being spent on relatively small stories.
Closer to home, as local news programs lost out to cable, we got the birth of the Action News format. No more reporting on issues facing the state or local government, just the latest car chase or drive by shooting, fire, freeway crash, you name it.
Consider some of the lines from Don Henley’s great 80’s song, Dirty Laundry:
“I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry
Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I dont have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry
Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry”
I don’t see this trend doing anything but getting worse over the foreseeable future, the sources of news keep proliferating and sensationalism is the easiest way to gain market share and advertising revenue.
I’m an aging dinosaur. Each day I get the LA Times (liberal), the WSJ (conservative), the OC Register (libertarian) and the Financial Times (world perspective) delivered to my door. I watch almost no television news, don’t get cable TV, but do get a lot of information on the Internet.
I pretty much despair at the quality of the information the typical voter gets in this country, and as an independent, that seems to be true no matter what political brand applies – rampant demagoguery or just cynical exploitation on all sides as far as I can see.
Peccator Dubius (0a6237) — 10/25/2008 @ 11:00 pm