The "objective" journalism I was trained in, starting 30 years ago this month, is dead.
The eulogy was delivered yesterday on CNN, by Michael Moore, in the "Situation Room" (better known as the "Wolf Blitzer Panic Room." )
Moore accused CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and medical editor Sanjay Gupta of setting him up with a "fact check" on his movie "Sicko," and then proceeded to let Wolf have it for his years of carrying water for the War in Iraq, dismissing Moore’s "Fahrenheit 911" movie when, it turned out, its version of reality was the correct one.
I was rooting for Moore. He was right. Wolf Blitzer and CNN have been doing the work of the Bush Administration and extreme Likudniks for years, while masquerading as objective journalists. Just as Lou Dobbs (right) has lately been carrying water for populists and nativist cranks (after first carrying it for Wall Street), while Keith Olbermann has been carrying water for liberal bloggers. All these shows have seen strong ratings, while the "objective" shows, the 30 minute news programs on all three major networks, have seen their ratings dry up.
You can argue it was the success of "Fox News," which from the start replaced hard news coverage with a cheaper right-wing talk format, yet won ratings domination when Republicans were riding high, which caused this. Some would go back to Watergate, where The Washington Post helped bring down Nixon and earned the contemptuous hatred of every conservative for their trouble.
I would go further back, to Spiro Agnew (left), and his "nattering nabobs of negativism" (as he called the media) alongside the "effete impudent snobs" (as he called college professors). (Yes, the words were those of William Safire, but they were ordered by Nixon and spoken by Spiro.) By transforming supposedly objective journalism into an enemy, the Nixon Thesis of Conflict began the slide to what we see today.
It is one of history’s greatest ironies that we are most in thrall to a political thesis at precisely the moment when it ceases to be of use. But this has always been true in American history. The FDR Thesis of Unity reached its apex of influence as American unity was disintegrating during the 1960s. The moderate progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt became a nearly-religious belief of the Hoover Administration as it collapsed in 1932. And so on.
This is a natural process. It’s only when a thesis becomes an
ideology, and worthless, that voters see it clearly
enough to reject it. As they’re rejecting Nixonism now. As they
previously rejected the New Deal, and Progressivism, and the Bloody
Shirt, and Jacksonian Democracy, and Jefferson’s idealism. It is part
of the process, part of the cycle, that the institutions pressured at
the start of a thesis collapse at its end, through political wave
action.
What will replace the Old Journalism? I find it heartening that Big
Media is now pushing its reporters to blog. Not because this will toss my blog onto the rubbish heap, and not
because this will prove the right-wing case that journalists are
prejudiced against them.
It’s really a central point of the Internet Thesis, that all media
is a conversation, a two-way street, one we can engage in, and
through which we can force leaders to engage more honestly with us. Through this
process artifice is discovered to be just that — each Bush attempt to
create a new explanation for more war is seen through practically
before it’s presented.
As the idea of "objective journalism" is fading so are the powers of propagandistic power, disappearing even as Bush pulls and pushes on them, like the ghosts
in "Topper."
It’s ironic how spokesman Tony Snow’s cancer is progressing, his hair
whitening every day, his face sagging and falling in on itself,
disappearing before our eyes like the era he represents.
But so it goes. The end of the era of "objective journalism" is taking with it the era of obvious spin. The one was the Anti-Thesis to the other, and both are collapsing together.
What will replace it, hopefully, is credibility earned by every journalist, each time they write, and each time they set out to report a story. You are the brand, not the label on your microphone. If, like Josh Marshall, you do good work which proves out, you gain in credibility. If like Hugh Hewitt time shows you to be a liar and a twit you lose credibility.
Michael Moore was right. Wolf Blitzer was wrong. It matters in fact. It should matter in terms of what we see on the Teevee, and in what we believe.
Until some entrepreneur finds a way to combine the voices which emerge organically into something truly coherent and branded, we’re on our own, boys and girls.
I liked at the very end how Michael Moore made fun of Sanjay Gupta’s name and then Sanjay called him a fat ass. Classic.
I liked at the very end how Michael Moore made fun of Sanjay Gupta’s name and then Sanjay called him a fat ass. Classic.