It seems there is nothing new media loves to harass more than old media, and believe me I get as big a kick out of it as any in the blogging world. Call me biased — as you should know by now, I welcome the charge — but I honestly believe newspapers and magazines do a solid job, for the most part, the obvious exception being the industry-wide carte blanche given to the Bush administration after 9/11 and during the buildup to the Iraq War by every journalist other than those working for Knight Ridder.
Mainstream television journalism, on the other hand, is just awful and by far the most egregious in its tawdry coverage of news events and seeming inability to hire journalists willing and/or able to conduct real interviews and ask real questions. The worst part is that TV journalists know they do bad work. How obvious was their guilt when, in the wake of Scott McClellan’s charges that the media failed the American people before the invasion of Iraq, hacks like NBC News Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory got all twisted up and felt it necessary to defend the work he and his colleagues did at that time, over and over again? I think such defensiveness, and a complete rewriting of history, falls under the Whoever-Denied-It-Supplied-It banner.
However, I’ve had enough of media critics — mostly those who blog — ripping on cable-news pundits like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and, yes, even Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity for not upholding high journalistic standards on their programs. People like Matthews and O’Reilly aren’t newsmen. They’re not even in the business of reporting the news. They are commentators. They comment on the news. Their roles — which I agree are far too big and far too ambiguous — are to offer their opinions on politics and current events. They are allowed to have stupid opinions, to be base and obtuse, to be hardheaded, to be annoying, to be wrong, to be unfair.
The inability of the public to weed through all the hot air emitted by these blowhards is the fault of the public alone. There is real news readily available from multiple sources — those newspapers and magazines mentioned earlier, some websites, etc. The problem is people are either too lazy to look for it or too easily bored because it isn’t presented to them by a screaming maniac surrounded by bright lights and loud noises.
Instead of seeking out the news, most people come home from work, plop down on the couch, turn on Countdown or The O’Reilly Factor and take every word spoken during that hour as infallible, ironclad truth. It’s easier and more entertaining to listen to and then regurgitate whatever Olbermann or O’Reilly says than it is to read the facts of a probably nuanced story and form one’s own opinion. But that’s not Olbermann or O’Reilly’s fault, just as it is not Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert’s fault for being the primary news source of so many young people. It is Stewart and Colbert’s job to tell the joke, not to make sure the audience gets it.
Of course, it is fair to say that Stewart and Colbert admit they are comedians and little else, while those filling up space on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC stand by the assertion that they are actually journalists. But, again, just because they assert something doesn’t mean we, as viewers with brains, eyes, and ears, have to believe it. Yet no one blames the public for being willingly misinformed and easily fooled. Better not to insult your audience, after all.
I suspect the high-and-mighty journalists and bloggers who damn cable-news punditry as the plight of American journalism are just annoyed that the talking heads they hate are more successfully reaching the masses than their dying industry. If they were honest, though, and if they were really interested in telling the truth, they’d point their anger where it belongs and leave those of us able to distinguish news from entertainment alone so that we can not feel guilty for getting a kick out of another Worst Persons in the World segment.