“There must be, however, more employment for the press in favor of the government than there has been, or the sour, angry, peevish, fretful, lying paragraphs which assail it on every side will make an impression on many weak and ignorant people.” John Adams, 1793
“News journalism is dead in America” is a refrain voiced with ever increasing frequency, especially from the conservative-minded populous. “Dead” in this context means untrustworthy, devoid of integrity, and driven by greed rather than a goal of honestly informing the reader. In this article, we offer a contrarian view: that News Journalism, like Schrödinger’s cat, is both “dead” and brashly alive, and at its core hasn’t changed much at all since our country was founded. The popular criticism of news articles today is that they contain over-the-top exaggeration, fake news, and increased reliance on anonymous sources (do they actually exist?). However, the historical record going back over 200+ years overflows with examples of the same exact embellishments, bias, and falsehoods that we see today. The John Adams quote headlining this post is testament to his frustration with these very practices. The reality is these methods in news journalism are not new or even out of the ordinary.
Universities that teach Journalism are another target of derision by the “Journalism is Dead” crowd. While those universities may be populated with a disproportionate number of liberal-minded professors and viewpoints, it is unfair to assume their graduates are somehow “brainwashed” into a political bias and/or dishonest purpose. These graduates make their own choices. Educated with the right tools, they thrive in the field of journalism when connected with the right employer. There are plenty of examples of engaging writers, animated broadcasters, and opinion piece provocateurs who attract loyal audiences on both sides of the political spectrum with their talents. Some of the content they produce may be suspect, and possibly even outright false, but the stories are constructed well enough to maintain a readership. Vehemently disagreeing with the content that comes off the pen or out of the mouth of a news journalist shouldn’t be confused with poor skill in presenting that content. If the writing style and/or speaking skills of a news journalist attracts a large and consistent audience and conveys information to them, is that not considered successful?
The big news media outlets are all “for profit” entities that compete with each other. While there is never any shortage of news to report, these companies would nevertheless cease to exist if they didn’t turn the news into cash. There is no law or “obligation” for a news outlet to be accurate, moral, or even truthful. Their number one goal is to remain in business and continue making a profit. A case in point is what occurred recently between Fox News and Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly’s dismissal from Fox News was entirely due to a reduction in profit and had nothing to do with his journalistic skill, style, accuracy or even the size of his audience. His demise was the result of advertisers (and their money) pulling out over accusations of sexual harassment against Mr. O’Reilly. His suddenly decreased ability to generate revenue for the company, with projections of even further decline, led to his ouster. As ugly as allegations of sexual harassment are, we are convinced that had the advertising money continued to flow, Fox News would have not only kept him on, but made a vigorous fight to defend their “cash cow” instead of letting him go for his alleged transgressions.
Is there really anything different today about the believability and accuracy of the news compared with two hundred years ago? With so much technological evolution, particularly in the area of instant communications, one would naturally expect a certain degree of improved accuracy in the news. This has certainly been the case when the reporting is of a public “event” with verifiable observations (an accident, a sporting event, etc.). However, when it comes to political reporting, where there can easily be multiple interpretations of often ambiguous statements and actions of politicians, the situation is different. It is all too easy to play on the emotions and known biases of groups and individuals by sensationalizing headlines to present a clearly one-sided interpretation. The intent is to draw people in who believe their own gut feelings will be validated. The accompanying story or video begins with excitement and innuendo, but without any hard facts. Then, in a vain attempt legitimize the ruse, “sources” (as in “Intelligence” sources, “high ranking officials”, or simply “our” sources) are referenced. By now, the reader has been exposed long enough to the web page, video, live feed, whatever, to have seen or heard some ads. At this point, the business goal has already been achieved and therefore the report is a success. It’s not until the end of the story, where few readers ever arrive, that all the caveats are mentioned (“reports are unconfirmed”, “no evidence at this point”, “sources remain anonymous”, etc.).
The money from advertisers driving this cycle is enormous. This is the biggest difference, as we see it, between news journalism today and its colonial ancestors. Exaggeration and falsehoods existed in news journalism from its inception and have always been an ugly side of the business. The difference is that in early America there simply wasn’t a significant amount of money poured into marketing. The technology didn’t exist to insert ads so invasively into our field of view. Today, a vast supply of cold cash has fueled an advertising monster- one that has metastasized deeply into our daily lives. The age-old game of news agencies embellishing headlines to influence political action by exciting the populous has now been replaced by pure greed. The news industry has become so numb to any notion of reverence to the truth in political reporting, that entire series of stories are now written on contrived narratives. The purpose of these narratives is to carefully control the pace and development of a story to maximize the exposure of its readers to the greatest number of ads, keeping the money flowing. Much actual political news is boring, and by itself would be unlikely to maintain a viewership insatiable enough to justify giant payments from advertisers. However, spice it up with talented writers and broadcasters who are given license to add intrigue and conspiracy, and it pays off handsomely.
Unfortunately, that leaves readers who simply want the truth in a difficult position. Realizing that you won’t find the whole truth in “The Daily News” and need to seek other sources puts you one large step ahead. In the meantime, news organizations will continue adapting their product to satisfy their audiences and make profits with masterful strokes of the pen of capitalism.
4 Responses
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” – Vladimir Lenin, mass murderer.
It’s true, yellow journalism has always existed. However, has it ever been so blatantly partisan before?
“Universities that teach Journalism are another target of derision by the “Journalism is Dead” crowd. While those universities may be populated with a disproportionate number of liberal-minded professors and viewpoints, it is unfair to assume their graduates are somehow “brainwashed” into a political bias and/or dishonest purpose. These graduates make their own choices. Educated with the right tools, they thrive in the field of journalism when connected with the right employer.”
Disproportionate is a kind word. As someone who graduated the UNC system with an undergrad degree in Journalism and Mass Media, I can tell you first hand they absolutely are a control wing of leftist ideology, at least in that particular school system. In this program, I was loudly derided by professors on several occasions if I dared voice an opinion against the liberal status quo. Professor Mark West openly bragged at the start of a level III Media Ethics course (of all places) that he would “Turn all of his students into proud communists by the end of the semester.) On other occasions Professor Alan Hantz (head of the department) gave extra credit for students of a Media Law course for attending various protest rallies around the city. I name these men because they were the heads of the department, and they absolutely did everything possible to “brainwash” their students. Indeed, it worked on many of them. Of the 8 or 9 professors in that department, I never met any whose political views were anywhere to the Right of Chairman Mao. Indeed, using their positions of authority, they made it near impossible to espouse a right wing viewpoint without some form of social or academic retribution. The effect was, the conservative students stayed silent, and the progressives ruled the day.
These people are still employed, still overpaid by our tax dollars, still corrupting generation after generation of journalism students. The end result was that students who were true believers in the leftist ideology only became more zealous, conservatives either converted or remained silent, and in many cases, such as mine, left the field entirely after graduation out of disgust for what it had become.
I can only speak for the University I attended, but I would imagine it is not an outlier in the world of Journalism schools. I think when many people say “Journalism is dead” what they really mean is that the “Spirit” of Journalism is dead. That there simply are no more objectives sources of news anymore. Journalism as propaganda production machine is as alive and potent as any virus. As you aptly point out, the mighty dollar rules the day, but on the flipside of that coin, perhaps it’s “ideology” which rules the night?
Jared – First, I must say that Journalism in this country would benefit from you and others like you “in the game” and balancing the scale. Obviously you weren’t “brainwashed”, and very clearly demonstrated the ability to make your own informed decision after graduating. Your excellent comment could easily be a blog article in its own right. Your question at the end is a very good one. I’ve thought about the ideology factor a lot in considering what it is that propels the “propaganda machine”. I do believe many journalists today have a personal liberal bias which enables them to assign genuine power and emotion to their words in a left leaning article or broadcast. However, I’m not convinced ideology alone can suffice as the only business driver for the news companies they work for. There has to be money coming in from somewhere to pay the bills, and when the accountants for those companies add up the final monthly numbers, they don’t care at all if the journalists who work there are liberal or conservative. All than matters is if the final balance has a plus sign or a minus sign in front. We may be getting part of an answer to this right now in real time with what’s happening at Fox. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe there is a fundamental shift taking place in the “ideology” at Fox. I have to assume there is a reason of profit behind this, or at least a justification to prevent loss. It’s very curious – Fox was already at the top of the heap before this shift started, so they must be convinced there is an even bigger pot of gold to be had by sliding more to the center. We’ll see. (BTW – great turn of phrase in the last sentence of your comment.)
Regarding the shift at Fox, I wonder- is it really shifting toward the center? Or is it shifting further to the right? Notice who took O’reilly’s slot, the razor sharp Tucker Carlson. I think it’s pretty clear that there is an incredible amount of passion on the American Right these days. Much of Trump’s base in the election was made of younger voters who had never taken interest in politics before, disgusted with the warmongering of the Bush era, the social degeneracy of the Obama era, voters who wanted a new voice that represented them, not just in the spectrum of traditional Red vs Blue, but Red Neocon vs Red Nationalist.
It may be that Fox is attempting to shift focus away from their original viewership, Traditional Republicans whose numbers diminish with each passing year. The wave of the future for Right wing politics is forming out of a combination of Millennials and Generation Y thinkers who are finally becoming active in the political sphere. O’Reilly represented the worst of the Neocon generation, and I know many on the young right were happy to see him go. Fox spends hundreds of thousands on market research, they no doubt saw the popularity of Carlson’s program rising while O’Reilly’s was falling.
As far as Hannity is concerned, I believe he stepped on someone’s toes when he started investigating the death of Seth Rich. Just as a quick aside on that topic- supposed robbery, no valuables taken, shot in the back, Assange claims he was the source of emails sent to Wikileaks. So you have motive. Any good student of history should find it within the realm of possibility that there’s blood on Caesar’s hands along his path to power. Even if his name is Clinton. Will be interesting to see if they actually can Hannity over it.
Our perceptions of Fox may be different because of how we experience them these days. Paula and I almost exclusively read their web content and no longer watch the news channel. We’ve yet to see their new “line-up” that’s emerged in the last year. Their written content has definitely shifted tone.