A reader left me a comment on the post which I wrote regarding my profound disappointment with the direction and recent track record of the New York Times. I used a recent editorial as an object lesson but tried to comprehend from it, what is causing the decline. That particular editorial was sort of my exhibit A but it could have been any number of a couple of dozen such pieces. Well this well worded comment asked four questions.
"Simple enough," you say, "Answer them."
"Not so fast," I respond. (Lord, can you tell that I've been writing allot of Mystery dialog lately?)
The questions actually reach into the theoretical and philosophical foundations of journalism. Dashing off an answer to this reader would have been a disservice to the care which went into the questions and would not have provided me the opportunity to think deeply enough about a response. In short, this reader deserved a dialog, not an answer.
So, now that both of my regular readers are on the edge of their seats. "What were these profound questions?" they ask. (I have got to cut back on the dialog writing!)
Here they are in the order asked (I have taken the liberty of paraphrasing them without changing either the tone or content):
1) Why did I single out the New York Times and CBS for what I call partisanship and poor quality.
2) Do I see the New York Times and CBS as uniquely partisan, while other media are more 'objective'?
3) How would I describe Fox news in terms of bias or partisanship?
and the best question of all:
4) Do you think its better for readers to have a choice of self-consciously partisan papers, i.e. media who don't 'hide' their politics, or do you think the so called 'objective' media model is better?
Question 1 Poor Quality
I will start with the first question regarding my selection of the New York Times and CBS News. It is not the result of any special animosity toward either organization. I am not a rabid anti-anything-liberal sort of a person. I happen to believe intelligently written commentary and a great work product that is well researched can support either liberal or conservative political positions.
The reason for the New York Times earning the special place of being my Exhibit A, is that I find the difference between my expectations and their results to be the largest gap among the major media outlets. It may well be unfair to the Times to hold them to a lofty standard, but if this is so I would like to hear that from the writers and editors of the Times. This group has the largest ego to talent gap I think I have ever witnessed. It is an indisputable fact that this is an enterprise which has defined the daily news business for over 100 years. The New York Times determined what was newsworthy. If the best writers and editors in the business are no longer employed by the Times, and judging from some recent work product, maybe they aren't; what has caused this to happen?
As for including CBS News into the analogy, this a topical reference which needs to be made today. The journalistic standards and ethics displayed by CBS in the recent election was nothing short of revolting. Not mentioning the CBS News's well publicized Texas Air National Guard misfire would have felt forced and strange. I do not have any special animosity toward the news organization, my emotional state is more profound disappointment; or maybe shock at how low they fell.
When discussing my disappointment with the media, the New York Times definitely has let me down the most, but I think CBS fell the furthest.
Partisanship in the Media
Question 1 referenced partisanship as well as poor quality, and both Questions 2 and 3 deal directly with the issue of partisanship in the media so I am combining them here to avoid repetition. It is very easy to sling the partisan word around without acknowledging that the framework to evaluate partisanship is incredibly subjective. I have been amused in the past by the opinions of people complaining about conservative bias in the media. You see it is often the relative ideological position of the disgruntled customer which is at issue, not really the position or reporting of the news organization. I do acknowledge this. However, in this past election, that handy explanation fails to explain the behavior I know I witnessed. So what got my dander up? You might be surprised.
While it is true that my political philosophy defies easy categorization; I believe there are still issues which can be classified as either true or false, right or wrong or moral, and God protect me from relativists, immoral. Merely by stating this as my guiding philosophy, do I become unfit to comment upon political issues? I certainly hope not. I still do assert, that the purpose of every news organizations is to tell the truth. One of those sad truths is that even hot political issues have moral absolutes. While it is common to point out story selection bias and burying the bad (or good) news, I actually believe this is less of a problem today than the insidious news attempts at that awful thing called 'balance'. The balance problem occurs not just when news organizations slant or select the news, it also occurs when news organizations decide they can not present absolute truths and still be 'balanced'.
Perhaps the most egregious examples of this attempt to balance the news, is Reuters refusal to describe the murdering of civilians as terrorism. This demonstrates rather clearly that Reuters does not recognize what 'balanced' news actually is. Balance is not achieved by telling 'both sides' if one of those sides falls against a moral absolute. The truth will always be opposite of a falsehood, just as right will always be opposite of wrong. Failure to report news which acknowledges this, is the greatest failing in the media today. Truth does exist.
So which outlets are guilty? All of them. Yes even Fox News, that bastion of 'Fair and Balanced'. I believe that Fox News probably does a better job of nailing down the truth from the balance, but when a particular issue is partisan in nature and there is an absolute truth involved which does not agree with a conservative philosophy, I have seen Fox go all wobbly too.
Despite what I believe is a general failing, it is hard to look past the New York Times and paint with a broad brush the media in general. That is far too easy and feels like a complete cop out. For one thing the editorial page of the New York Times is a big fat target rich environment every single day. I know some bloggers who owe their entire success to 'balanced' output of the Times editors. If these folks ever go to New York I hope they buy those guys a round of drinks.
The final question was so incredible that I was frozen at first at my keyboard. I wish I had asked it. It gets to the heart of what journalism is and calls into question the very term. Since I am so long winded I had better repeat it here:
4) Do you think its better for readers to have a choice of self-consciously partisan papers, i.e. media who don't 'hide' their politics, or do you think the so called 'objective' media model is better?
Everyone who is a professional journalist should be forced to consider this question because it is being answered as the public 'votes with their feet'. (Or maybe with their mice) Clearly there is a strong tendency to read what you agree with. This pull toward opinions which validate your own is not always a good thing. Note that my blog roll, I know it is really lame and small, is all over the political map. I am not seeking validation of my opinions and I am not afraid of opinions which disagree with mine. I hope sincerely that I am not unique.
Keeping in mind that more information is always better than less information, knowing that an organization slants their news would seem to me to be a good thing. What I fear from that disclosure is the pull toward validation. If the continued decline of the media into niche markets of ideological purity does not abate, there will be very little difference between a citizen informed by a State run news service controlled by a dictator, and a citizen of a free country who will only consume content which validates his beliefs.
Based upon that point alone, you might think that I will quit blogging since a strong argument could be made that in my minuscule way I am now a part of the problem. This view is far too polarized since each blogger niche often resemble more a hodge podge of belief than the straight liberal and conservative line. Major news organizations seeking market share are a totally different problem. Market share is not achieved in niches, it is achieved in broad swaths of political philosophy. This is partially what is driving some news organizations today.
Offsetting this risk of polarization of belief through validation, is the unhealthy affect news organizations have today when they outwardly protest their fairness but inwardly provide a homo-genus regurgitation of a political philosophy. The impact upon readers is two fold, and not surprisingly that depends often upon their own political philosophy. A conservative watching Fox News Channel receives validation of their beliefs, while a liberal watching the channel wants to shout at the T.V. set. While these two viewers have just had a totally different experience, it is interesting to consider that in both cases the viewer is driven toward their particular ideological direction. One through validation and the other through rejection.
In essence, the impact is identical. Which is better for the public and which is better for journalism? Frankly neither. There is a third way. Newsrooms have placed a very special emphasis upon diversifying their staff culturally, racially and sexually. This is a very good thing to do. The benefit from this is a richer more holistic interpretation of life. Sadly the missing ingredient is ideological diversity. A newsroom which chose to pursue this as a goal would find it a challenging environment to manage but the impact upon consumers would be fantastic to behold.
So is this a sure fire solution? Frankly it may actually be the only solution.
Interesting. I guess it does all boil down to which way you choose to see things. I would have to call myself a conervative so I see things in that slant. Someone who is a liberal would tend to see the news in a more liberal framework, and based upon that framework, decides how they view everything else as well.
I really wish that someone would create a newspaper, newsnetwork, etc that was truly balanced. That would be a unique thing and would offer a perspective that few of us have ever seen. An honest, fair and unbiased reporting of most news. What a concept! Too bad the likelyhood of it ever happening is somewhere between slim and none.
Posted by: Terri | December 01, 2004 at 04:36 PM
Suffice to say, I am floored by your response.
I didn't expect you to have such a well written, intelligently thought and cohesively structured response as what you wrote (my expectations have been sadly lowered by many of the blogs out there, so this isn't personal to you).
Have you taken any mass-media, communications or political science classes? Your response is really quite exceptional and in fact, reflects my own views in key ways.
Especially your digression into philosophy and questions of 'truth'. I hate to say this, but the vast majority of the blogosphere would not make the connections you just did.
I absolutely agree with you about the risk of niches of ideological purity, as well as your political economic criticism of the market as necessarily attempting to broach broud constituencies of political belief in an attempt to build audiences (and of the deleterious consequences of this trend).
I also agree that we need as a society, to engage in a broader debate: "it may actually be the only solution"
Great work! and I invite you to check out my site (I've listed you as one of my typelists...)
Posted by: Peter Konefal | December 01, 2004 at 04:39 PM
You guys might want to read this - an interesting article by an economist, tom velk about bush's visit to canada, and bush's stance on iran, terror.
I vehemently disagree with him, but its still worth reading.
Posted by: Peter Konefal | December 02, 2004 at 11:50 AM
You guys might want to read this - an interesting article by an economist, tom velk about bush's visit to canada, and bush's stance on iran, terror.
I vehemently disagree with him, but its still worth reading.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/continentaldivide/velk041201.html
Posted by: Peter Konefal | December 02, 2004 at 11:50 AM
Thanks for your interest in one of my essays. Here is something you might like, even though it is a bit academic for my regular sources. tom
The War and Big Nurse
Let's get beyond current headlines about Canada's lagging growth numbers, continuing productivity problems, federal/provincial money/flag squabbles and small (relative to other nation's) currency gains against the troubled US dollar. You are right to think these are signs that high taxes, subsidized inefficiency and regulatory overburden cost us plenty. But something more important ought to worry us. It's the constant presence of Big Nurse. ( Rent a copy of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest" if you don't remember her),
The West is now in the midst of a great war. The fight will range over the entire globe, challenge our belief in our selves and our civilization, and threaten our grandchildren's peace and security. The enemy is quite insane, believing God has ordered him to rid the earth of us. Where he rules, women are beheaded, children make themselves into human bombs and men are either beasts or masters. But I do not warn of the external danger he presents, since it is clear enough. We will defeat the madmen if we first win the domestic struggle between our better and worse selves. I believe our better selves are endowed with natural self-reliance and the independent dignity needed to accept the consequences of our own actions. Our worse selves willingly sacrifice these adult virtues in trade for the protected life of a political nursery. I fear the despotism of Big Nurse whose presence allows our worse selves to thrive. She may so weaken us we will lack the courage to defend our civilization. It is a danger faced not only by Canada, but also by all democracies that are tempted by the idea of the benevolent State. Big nurse has been a problem for a long time.
Cato the Younger, accompanied by a few hundred of Rome's last defenders of the Senate and surrounded in Utica by Caesar and his 10,000 legionnaires, fell on his sword rather than give up the fight. His grief-stricken son revived him and told him that Caesar would forgive the republicans if only they surrendered. The disappointed father said he would not give the General the perverted honor of pardoning him, Cato, for the sin of defending Rome against the usurper of her freedom. Cato then ripped open his wound, and died. It's a story every schoolboy used to know.
Maybe one reason they don't know it any more is found in the details of Caesar's politics. He wasn't a simple tyrant, who frightened and oppressed Rome's mob, forcing them to accept his rule. He assuredly was no lunatic who imagined he took murderous orders from a bigoted God. Quite the contrary. He wanted power, and he knew how to buy it. He invented Big Nurse. He seduced the shortsighted Roman majority with veteran's bonuses, public housing, circuses, parades and a "free" corn ration. But like a pact with Satan, the price was Rome's soul. And once the fateful contract was signed, the people of the Empire ever afterward lived like children in the care of a sequence of evil parents, who never refused toys or nourishment, provided their charges never asked for independent adulthood. Cato understood the true nature of the pact, warned against it, warred against its author, only to be defeated by human cupidity - not Caesar's army.
After Cato, Rome appeared to prosper. She gave law, language and civil order to the conquered barbarians. But tax collectors, centurions and census takers became part of Everyman's life. We still live with the consequences. The almighty will of a distant emperor empowered the paranoid fears of an otherwise unimportant Governor of Judea.
Anticipating the advent of the welfare state, De Tocqueville wrote: "Above this race of (our worse selves) stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? … it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. … It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Our worse selves demand more and more from Big Nurse. They are aggrieved if it isn't forthcoming, and they are resentful when asked to pay the taxes and accept the regulatory limits imposed by Big Nurse. These angry, immature, dependent sheep are not the warriors our civilization needs to fight its external war.
Tocqueville thought our better selves, informed by a free press, nurtured by voluntary associations, and instructed by a practical education so as to better find useful employment, have a chance to win the struggle against Big Nurse. Let's hope the added incentive provided by the external threat will tip the balance in favor of our long run survival.
Posted by: tom velk | January 16, 2005 at 08:37 AM
Its not every day a famous economist from McGill university decides to post on one's humble blog. Thanks for the post tom!
Posted by: Peter Konefal | January 16, 2005 at 09:31 AM
Interesting argument also...its going to take me some time to digest the implications and come up with a response. I think tom is taking the right wing view that the welfare state has pernicious affects on the individuals freedom, and on his/her will to be ambitious and succesful. Accustomed to 'hand outs' and a secured, regulated existence, the individual is deprived of an otherwise significant will to personal improvement and achievement.
And then, on the left side of things, people argue that the welfare state has no correlative affect on an individual's success or ambition, and merely helps to shield the socially and economically depressed (disabled, elderly, single mothers, the destitute) from the consequences of laissez faire capitalism. They point to the example of the relatively succesful scandinavian countries as an example of states with huge amounts (comparitively) of public expenditure as a percentage of GDP (64% in Sweden I believe), as compared to (from recolletion, so might be innacurate) 34% approximately, for the US.
Nevertheless, Velk makes a compelling argument, and I haven't captured all the nuances in my response. In any case, this debate rages up in Canada, since that government is decidedly more liberal and tends more towards the welfare-state side of things as compared to the US.
Posted by: Peter Konefal | January 16, 2005 at 09:44 AM
Umm...just wow.
I'm still thinking through the points eraised in the essay.
One of the problems I am currently having is spending the time some of the comments and issues deserve. The choice is either dash off inferior commentary or remain silent. I have chosen silence.
Other writing projects are taking up my time right now, but I am working on a post regarding 'Liberal and Conservatives Playing Gotcha Politics'.
Posted by: Mahatma | January 19, 2005 at 09:07 AM
Wonderful Comments:
This is how I am mentally wrestling with the welfare state...
Rome may be one extreme, but how about an example of a state without any safety net...say England during the Industrial Revolution? Not a very nice place.
Yes we are arguing extremes but where does a welfare state cross the line? Clearly there needs to be some elements of a Big Nurse in society to protect the helpless. Personally I think the safety net partially prevents the total Darwinian nature of natural man from running our society.
That said if we open the door to some elements of the Big Nurse, do we liberate our worse selves and make inevitable the destruction of our human will?
"Our worse selves demand more and more from Big Nurse. They are aggrieved if it isn't forthcoming, and they are resentful when asked to pay the taxes and accept the regulatory limits imposed by Big Nurse."
This is an uncomfortable thought...If we have any safety net do we cause, through the creeping growth of socialism, the reduction of society to a bunch of weak willed sheep?
That may be a stretch too far for me, but I would be delighted to hear why I am wrong. When is some social welfare too much social welfare?
Posted by: Mahatma | January 19, 2005 at 11:08 AM
Man, this guy is eloquent. His criticism of Fox news is hilarious. You did mention that "even Fox news" can become wobbly and bend the truth a little bit. This peice just takes that much-deserved admission a bit further :)
Posted by: Peter Konefal | February 20, 2005 at 01:13 PM
Man, this guy is eloquent. His criticism of Fox news is hilarious. You did mention that "even Fox news" can become wobbly and bend the truth a little bit. This peice just takes that much-deserved admission a bit further :)
http://iheartmaynard.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Peter Konefal | February 20, 2005 at 01:14 PM
I think that guy could use a properly applied cluebat to the head, but your mileage may vary...
His anti-Christian rants are vile and disgusting.
I didn't think Canadians got FOX News? I know that they get al-Jihad, but I thought FNC was too "controversial" for the delicate Canadian audience or somesuch nonsense.
Yeah, I wasn't amused by this guy's "fair and balanced" look at FOX News...I'd say more, but we've beat this dead horse so much that even I'm starting to think about calling PETA...
Posted by: Matt Hurley | February 21, 2005 at 11:56 AM