Media Wars

Why all the social turmoil of late? Obviously there is a holy war taking place between the left and the right ... highlighted by the media excesses. The left has the broadcast news, some cable channels, most of the print media and a good internet representation. The right has a few cable channels, talk radio and a slice of the internet that the Masters of the Universe allow then to enjoy. Does this seem like a fair fight ... particularly since our education, entertainment and sports systems are also players on the left?

Kind reader, is it possible that this turmoil is a result of this Teutonic shift in how the people are staying informed? No longer do they shuffle out front to pick up their morning newspaper. Instead they go on the internet to watch what actually happened yesterday. They are less and less using someone else, like Walter Cronkite, to tell them “that’s the way it is.” And this is because slowly the realization is spreading that there are other ways that it is.

And so what happens? The left media in particular, seeing their influence waning, become even more strident and biased in their reporting ... trying to hold onto their revenue streams by corralling viewership and readership ... and doing a credible, albeit ultimately losing job.

Why ultimately losing? Simple, kind reader, they too often are not being honest with the American people. All it took was an orange-haired president continually pointing out “fake news” for this realization to begin to sink in. When hoaxes turn out to be hoaxes the scales begin to fall from some perceptive eyes.

The right has not won yet ... but right is right...  and eventually the media, which most closely reports the facts, will win.

For sure, the truth will out.


STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Filters

“And that’s the way it is”  Walter Cronkite

Traditional news outlets, radio, TV and newspapers have acted as our information filters to the world. Their value-added has been the collection, collating and prioritizing of supposed facts about what was happening around us  ... for which they were paid, often handsomely. Basically, we consumers of news relied on these filters to present us a consistent and reliable view of things so that we might take action. And, in exchange, we bought and perused their ink or listened to their advertisers. There was a certain comfort in knowing what slant a particular outlet would bring to their reporting ... and this slant or filter often became more important than the facts themselves.

No matter how much such media claim to be fair and balanced, they always slip back into a point of view. And the only way that consumers can get a rounded view of things is to partake of multiple news outlets ... a time taxing task ... one that too few choose.  So we live and have lived on a politically polarized nation. And even more so now that many additional internet news channels, Twitter, Google, Facebook, blogs, etc. have appeared. This seems a good development, not a bad one. Variety is the spice of life. The shortest route to national consensus would be a state-sponsored  media (like PBS or NPR) as the only news filter ... a bad thing.

Our founding fathers designed our government to be inefficient and contain opposing forces. And so constant conflict within our media is also a good thing. The danger posed is that one news filter (like Facebook) becomes so dominant as to overwhelm all others. This  should worry us all.

Changing the Game

I wrote earlier today about the secret society of lefty journalists called Gamechanger Salon (somewhat pretentious name, no? … see: Fletcher's Castoria Blog.) This has got me ruminating on what is occurring in news reporting in general. As I understand it, reporters are meant to provide their audience the essence … the who, what, when, where and how of a news story … preferably early on … but not necessarily the why. Now, often the lede of a news story is the imagined why and one has to sift through many filler paragraphs to find these other facts … if they are there at all. Too often reporters tend to squash other essential and needed facts for the sake of political correctness.

I recall reading a while back a survey done on the entering students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism … and the primary motivation of these tyros was to change society for the better (obviously “better” being a relative term.) In other words, rather than reliably and truthfully reporting the facts of what was occurring in the world, they wanted to change the game. And it appears that Columbia University ... and many other such schools ... do little to change this misguided ambition. I believe that this is a noxious notion of what reporting is supposed to be … and has grown mainly from Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate news reporting which brought down President Nixon.

Every cub reporter now wants to emulate this dynamic duo … and lead our society out of the sewer and into his/her own version of utopia. Such scooping of the world will result in a Pulitzer Prize and then fame and riches beyond imagination. This is a little like a grandstanding playground basketball player imagining himself as the next LeBron James. Instead of pursuing a respectable career within ethical and professional boundaries, many reporters are now trying to become another Walter Cronkite and “making a difference” like this CBS News anchorman did by humiliating LBJ. And so they join the Gamechangers Salon.

Opinion journalists may do this ... but not reporters. There should be an enormous gulf between the two ... which has now been conveniently blurred. And, journalists of any stripe should not be forming cabals.

(I think that H.L. Mencken also said that any newsman who has more than just a handful of mourners at his funeral was not a good journalist.)