Full Court Press
Of all the developments in the past three or four years that have taken place, perhaps the most disappointing to believers in participatory democracy has been the decline of the press. In the past weeks, however, there are signs the tide may be shifting.
Within living memory, we had a mighty press, willing to confront those in power with awkward and embarrassing questions and take the time to explain complex issues so citizens could make informed decisions on critical issues. This was not necessarily a “liberal” press in the partisan sense (there have always been plenty of conservative newspapers, magazines and TV stations), but, as I have argued elsewhere, by its institutional opposition to secrecy and authority, it came squarely into conflict with governing principles favored primarily by political conservatives.
The technocratically-biased national media that emerged in America following World War II came under sustained attack from the far Right starting in the 1980s. In 1991, it acquiesced to restrictions on war coverage imposed by the first Bush Administration and became, in effect, a propaganda arm for the Pentagon. All through the 90s, the induction channels of the national media were systematically and deliberately clogged by a stream of propaganda, innuendo and outright lies offered up by the most hateful and irresponsible ideological extremists. By 2000, important media outlets – under increasingly consolidated corporate ownership – had internalized the spin, debasing their own standards and giving platforms to lazy, incompetent hacks and stooges willing to parrot political talking points from the authoritative positions afforded by their mastheads and bylines.
Then came September 11, which seemed to silence the critical voice of the press for good. Journalists subordinated their professional ethics to a narrow definition of patriotism that precluded raising doubts or questions about the direction set by the leadership. Journalists frankly admitted to being intimidated. Those who failed to toe the line were conspicuously humiliated or denied access. It appeared that corporate “news product” and ideologically-driven political propaganda indistinguishable from the output of “state-run media” in totalitarian regimes would drive independent coverage from the pages and airwaves of the major outlets.
This state of affairs was roundly mocked and criticized by a vocal minority, including Eric Alterman (author of What Liberal Media? and a daily blog, Altercation), the writers of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” the indispensable Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler, and many independent writers and bloggers. In most cases, their criticism was not based primarily on the increasing partisanship of the media but on its lack of professionalism, laziness, cowardliness, and persistent unwillingness to ask the tough questions. Day after day, week after week, a small movement beat the drum constantly in the ear of journalists and editors, challenging their competence and principles and urging them to fulfill their institutional democratic role of holding the powerful to account.
Some might argue that the state of political discourse and reporting is not all the fault of the press. The media, like everything else in our society, is a business, run for profit. Outlets will succeed only to the extent that they offer a product that customers want to buy. If people are not in the mood for aggressive journalism and prefer softball stories, celebrity scandals, and rah-rah features about the success of our military, those are the kinds of stories that will predominate. If we have a conservative country, or an indifferent country, our press will simply and logically reflect those biases. The problem is that the media is not really comparable to other actors in the free market. Unique among businesses, the media’s product today directly influences the public’s future demand for its product. Media outlets can create a self-reinforcing mindset through crafty packaging and repetition; once this takes hold, it provides justification for future coverage in the same vein.
This is bad enough when it is simply the result of a herd mentality. But today, we have organizations like Clear Channel and Fox which produce a product that looks like the output of a news organization (in that it reports on and discusses current events), but is in fact frankly driven by an ideological agenda that precedes the search for truth. Because they are not constrained by the same set of rules and ethics that other media organizations are supposed to follow, they can present a much tidier picture of the world that is, in some ways, more attractive and compelling than the chaotic and complex world we actually live in. Real news can’t compete with a constructed narrative if both are fighting for the same space in the market. Fake news forces a race to the bottom in journalistic standards and practices. The entire process gets corrupted, and the public loses. This is the downward spiral we’ve been stuck in since the late 90s.
What breaks the spiral? The real world. Eventually, constructed narratives get tangled in their own contradictions. What’s reported on the fake news diverges so dramatically from people’s everyday experiences that credibility cracks and even credulous viewers begin to look elsewhere for the truth. The market swings back toward genuine, fact-based investigative reporting and we’re off to the races.
We appear to have reached such an inflection point in the past few weeks. After a slow trickle of reports challenging the honesty and credibility of the Bush Administration, the appalling scandal of the Abu Ghraib prison, reported by 60 Minutes II and Seymour Hersh, may have opened the floodgates. Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate on Monday, offered this observation:
Seymour Hersh seems to be on his hottest roll as an investigative reporter in 30 years, and the editors of every major U.S. daily newspaper aren't going to stand for it. "We're having our lunch handed to us by a weekly magazine!" one can imagine them shouting in their morning meetings. Scoops and counterscoops will be the order of the day.
Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler wrote yesterday:
As the situation in Iraq seems to worsen, mainstream journalists are quite noticeably jumping off the Good Ship Bush. Our guess: Many bigfeet in mainstream press circles have finally decided that Bush has to go. You may see that reflected in future press coverage.
It remains to be seen whether the re-emergence of an adversarial press can be sustained, and whether the tendency to be “adversarial” for its own sake trumps basic professionalism and fact-centered standards of reporting, as it did during the Clinton years. Some people want a “liberal media” because they crave payback against the unaccountable arrogance of the modern Right, symbolized by the Bush gang. I sympathize with that impulse, but what we really need is a return to an ethical, skeptical and independent press first and foremost. Is there room for partisanship? Sure. But keep it separate and separately labeled from the real thing.
9:29:15 AM 
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