I think the anger toward the media rises out of the fact that the national media has so clearly, and clearly intentionally, attempted to gaslight the American public over the last eight years for sure, but going back to the 1990s as well.
I remember in the early 1990s, the LA Times assigned one of their investigative A-1 teams to do a story on the Times' own coverage surrounding abortion.
The resulting coverage was a multipart article that ran over the course of several days - and included a pretty in-depth survey of Times subscribers and former subscribers.
What I recall as being telling was that those who described themselves as "pro-choice" felt that public figures who they sympathized with were by and large presented in a fair manner by the Times. On the other side, however, those who self-described as "pro-life" felt that public officials they agreed with were portrayed as two-dimensional stereotypes.
At the conclusion of the series, the Times ran an editorial in which the top editors pointed out that the sign of a nonpartisan newspaper, one that truly represents a first draft of history, is one in which all readers recognize themselves and feel that they and their community are treated fairly.
By that standard - and I think it's a good one, albeit one the Times has long since abandoned - most of the national media fails on a daily basis.
Thus, the anger: When you are constantly misrepresented, your views distorted, your values openly mocked, anger is, I think, a natural reaction.
When I was on staff at National Geographic, I spent a summer on a fellowship at Northwestern University to study how journalists cover religion. Short version: Very badly. Your story about the LA Times & abortion is a perfect example. The “pro-choice” side is portrayed favorably; the “pro-life” side, which is most often religious, is portrayed as a mob of ignorant yahoos.
At National Geographic, the rule was: If you can’t take a picture of it, then it isn’t a story. … Which means that any serious treatment of religion or faith was not a story because at the center was something that couldn’t be captured on film… or, for that matter, in words. The best we could do would be to publish pictures of, say, a Catholic priest leading a Mass, or hundreds of Muslims prostrating themselves in prayer. Great photos, maybe, but they're the beginning of the story, not its end point.
You write: “When you are constantly misrepresented, your views distorted, your values openly mocked, anger is, I think, a natural reaction.”
No wonder Trump gets away with saying the press is “the enemy of the people.” No one likes to be mocked.
HIs views on the media are, as with nearly all of his views, over the top - but there's a kernel there that voters reacted to.
Another thing I think that drives anger toward the media is the way the media - the national media, anyway - explains away attacks on press freedom by elected and appointed Democrats, but then goes full on apocalyptic hyperbole when Trump, as you point out, calls the media "the enemy."
Well, yeah, he says mean things.
But he never moved to limit the rights of the media. Didn't, as Obama did, move to pull the White House credentials of reporters or outlets he dislikes. Never called senior editors to ask them to spike stories. Didn't have White House staff pressure Google and Apple to remove an app from the stores, the way Parler was removed after pressure from the Biden Administration. Hell, Trump gives more interviews to the left-wing media than Biden and Harris combined!
So when the media consistently claims Trump is a greater threat to free speech and press freedoms than the Democrats, well, readers and viewers aren't stupid.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold. The last decade, I've referred to the media landscape as "post-journalism media."
The ProPublica nonsense with the DoD nominee did nothing to change my mind.
I only see (the "paradox" of) different (sorts of) people/ "groups" never wanting to listen and having any horror towards thinking and listening carefully, and/but always accusing "the others" of not listening although just this will always be the last thing they´d do themselves. And the whole thing gets named (something like) "democracy".
With great respect to you and your apparently storied career at National Geographic, back when it was good, I would have to say our seemingly interchangeable mainstream media types almost could not be further out of touch. Except some of this almost would have to be an act. For they could hardly have reason to push the absurd causes (men menstruate, et al) they do unless they were already convinced their narrative is not yet accepted in the hinterlands. We’re told a lot of fresh faces show up at journalism school every year saying they “want to make a difference.” Accurate reporting on events doesn’t do that. What does is collectively putting their thumb on the scale of moral, cultural discernment, distorting not only perceptions of events, but, crucially in a democracy, perceptions of what others are thinking.
The historian Paul Johnson warned in his book Intellectuals that certain secular, utopian thinkers,
“…far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behaviour. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value. That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action..."
Journalist Eric Alterman wrote a whole book, What Liberal Media? He’d have to be blind, or pretending to be blind, and in either case is no benefit to journalism. For we can see the distortions on every side.
On the theme of journalism being the first draft of history, David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart were interviewed together by Mary Louise Kelly on NPR November 6, 2020 about what the Presidential election meant.
•••••••••••••••••••••••
Brooks:
“...in the first part of the 21st century, America divided into two equal, non-overlapping camps. And for a time, people in both these camps thought they could win some miracle election victory and make the other side disappear. In 2020, they realized the other side is not going away, and we just have to find a way to live together...if ever there was going to be a landslide election, I thought this would be it....Donald Trump is, in my view, a morally corrupt person who's been an incompetent president. And so I expected a 10-point Biden win. It didn't come. The electorate surprised us in all sorts of ways - Republicans picking up seats in the House, Trump getting more non-white voters than any Republican in 60 years, gay voter - the gay vote for Trump or for Republicans doubling. So people it's - I guess it's taught a little humility about making generalizations...”
Capehart:
“I...still believe that this election is not just a choice between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, but it's a choice between American democracy and white supremacy.”
NBC has made organized, systematic lying something of a specialty over the years.
1993:
NBC Admits It Rigged Crash, Settles GM Suit
In an extraordinary public apology, NBC said Tuesday night that it erred in staging a fiery test crash of a General Motors pickup truck for its “Dateline NBC” news program and agreed to settle a defamation suit filed by the auto maker.
“We deeply regret we included the inappropriate demonstration in our ‘Dateline’ report,” said a statement read by NBC News co-anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips Tuesday night. “We apologize to our viewers and to General Motors. We have also concluded that unscientific demonstrations should have no place in hard news stories at NBC. That’s our new policy.”
The apology, still being negotiated within five minutes of air time, was part of a settlement of a lawsuit GM filed Monday over film used in a Nov. 17 segment of “Dateline.”
In its apology, NBC admitted that it had used incendiary devices to ensure that a fire would erupt if gasoline leaked from the truck being hit by a test car...
“During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.”
That apology addresses the “Today” show’s failure to abridge accurately the conversation between Zimmerman and the dispatcher in this high-profile case. This is how the program portrayed a segment of that conversation:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
And here is how it actually went down:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
So much I agree with here, Dan, but there's one whopper I gotta correct: "your apparently storied career at National Geographic..." :-) It was breathtakingly average, I'm afraid. Fun, interesting, challenging... but average.
One other point of disagreement: The media may have a liberal bias, but that's dwarfed by their desire for stories. For drama. Narrative that keeps you reading because the story continues to change. So if liberal means a (blind, value-free) progression towards whatever is new, then yes, the media has a liberal bias. But if liberal means a commitment to individual rights and the rule of law and an aversion to, say, authoritarianism, then no -- the media is not liberal.
It's no longer news that the New York Times *loves* the Trump storyline. Dean Baquet's famous response to Trump's 2016 nomination -- "What a story! What a f***ing story!" -- says the quiet part out loud. (I also recall Baquet saying something like "nothing is better than a good story.") ... As I've said before: Journalists don't want to cover Infrastructure Week; they want to cover The End of Democracy As We Know It.
Put another way, the media bias isn't ideological; it's just business. This explains "NBC Admits It Rigged Crash, Settles GM Suit." They had a story to tell, and they needed visuals to tell it. So, they added some explosives to the props to make the cars go boom.
To be fair, I think we can all cherry-pick stories that are factually incorrect not because journalists are corrupt but because they're working fast and doing their best to come up with their first draft of history. But their dream is not to report the facts as much as to "control the narrative." Exhibit A: Bob Woodward --> https://towers.substack.com/p/bob-woodward-storyteller
All that said, I think we agree more than we disagree re: the media. Something is badly broken in what gets served up by legacy media and by most algorithms. We'll need to find our North Star somewhere else.
Sorry, glitched my reply. We’re agreed more than you generously allow here. But Conservative complaints about “liberal” media were never about a blind value free progression to the latest thing. Rather, (as in Dan) the objections registered by the likes of the Media Research Center had to do with what was perceived as a quite conscious bias toward collectivism, government regulation and against capitalism, against freedom, patriotism, the military. Yes, mainstream media consists of mega corporations like Disney and GE (NBC), but the vaunted journalistic independence means that the profit-minded CEO doesn’t get to meddle in the newsroom.
A local example, from my town. In the first instance, a car cut across the path of a semi rig. In the second, a municipal bus driving on the wrong side of the road kills a lady.
The headlines:
“Truck Rams Car, Bursts into Flames”
“Woman, 29, Dies as Car, Bus Collide”
The innocent capitalist truck is blamed, but when it comes to irresponsibly driven yet progressive public transit vehicles, suddenly they go passive voice, stuff just happened
Re: "the vaunted journalistic independence means that the profit-minded CEO doesn’t get to meddle in the newsroom" -- do you really believe that? I don't. The recent intervention of Bezos at the Post and the craziness at the LA Times -- media barons don't buy those newspapers because they value the independence of the Fourth Estate. And they don't have to intervene on a day-to-day basis. When the editor-in-chief gets hired, he has already internalized the POV of the Boss. Editors know what they need to do without ever being told to do it.
Well, to our NBC example of the GM pickups, no doubt the CEO of GE wouldn’t want to alienate a major advertiser, not for one story, but this is not the reporters’ problem as they see it.
As someone who spent more than three decades in daily journalism, I disagree that it's "stories" today's journalists seek. They did - WE did - back when you and I were younger.
Today, so many who go into journalism do so not to tell stories but to advocate for a partisan worldview. They see themselves as members of the ruling class, there to defend it.
I know - I worked with them the last decade of my career. I had them as students in my university classes.
The NYT, WaPo, CBS, ABC, etc., no longer seek drama or compelling stories over actual news, many of them no longer know what actual news is, have no idea how to tell a story, and are far more interested in - passionate about - reinforcing their narrative, putting the "bad" people in their place, and gaslighting their readers / viewers about what's going on.
I don't disagree. And you clearly have a better view than I do of the young people who are now becoming journalists. But these kids didn't come from nowhere. We planted the seeds, and we reap what we sow.
Once upon a time, reporters were tradesmen. Journalism was a working-class job. But at some point, publishing "just the facts" was not enough; we demanded a story. Why? My little theory is: We gave up on grand narratives to explain the world and ourselves -- the sort of narrative you might have heard at church. But since we still need a story, some story, to make sense of life, we fell back on personal narratives. And so a tsunami of individual stories engulfed us. Lacking any narrative center, our communal lives have fallen apart. Without a Story to bind us, all that remains is Power. Young people got the message, and now fill newsrooms to flex their post-modern muscles.
My favorite example of this transition from reporter to storyteller is Bob Woodward. He became famous because he was willing to do the grunt work of a Metro reporter, digging up facts, details, and evidence of wrongdoing without having a clear sense of what all those facts ultimately meant or where they might lead. He just did the work and left the storytelling to others. ... But why be a grunt when you can be a star? Why just deliver facts when you can become a high priest... or the Pope?
I think the anger toward the media rises out of the fact that the national media has so clearly, and clearly intentionally, attempted to gaslight the American public over the last eight years for sure, but going back to the 1990s as well.
I remember in the early 1990s, the LA Times assigned one of their investigative A-1 teams to do a story on the Times' own coverage surrounding abortion.
The resulting coverage was a multipart article that ran over the course of several days - and included a pretty in-depth survey of Times subscribers and former subscribers.
What I recall as being telling was that those who described themselves as "pro-choice" felt that public figures who they sympathized with were by and large presented in a fair manner by the Times. On the other side, however, those who self-described as "pro-life" felt that public officials they agreed with were portrayed as two-dimensional stereotypes.
At the conclusion of the series, the Times ran an editorial in which the top editors pointed out that the sign of a nonpartisan newspaper, one that truly represents a first draft of history, is one in which all readers recognize themselves and feel that they and their community are treated fairly.
By that standard - and I think it's a good one, albeit one the Times has long since abandoned - most of the national media fails on a daily basis.
Thus, the anger: When you are constantly misrepresented, your views distorted, your values openly mocked, anger is, I think, a natural reaction.
Yes, indeed, Jim. Totally agree.
When I was on staff at National Geographic, I spent a summer on a fellowship at Northwestern University to study how journalists cover religion. Short version: Very badly. Your story about the LA Times & abortion is a perfect example. The “pro-choice” side is portrayed favorably; the “pro-life” side, which is most often religious, is portrayed as a mob of ignorant yahoos.
At National Geographic, the rule was: If you can’t take a picture of it, then it isn’t a story. … Which means that any serious treatment of religion or faith was not a story because at the center was something that couldn’t be captured on film… or, for that matter, in words. The best we could do would be to publish pictures of, say, a Catholic priest leading a Mass, or hundreds of Muslims prostrating themselves in prayer. Great photos, maybe, but they're the beginning of the story, not its end point.
You write: “When you are constantly misrepresented, your views distorted, your values openly mocked, anger is, I think, a natural reaction.”
No wonder Trump gets away with saying the press is “the enemy of the people.” No one likes to be mocked.
HIs views on the media are, as with nearly all of his views, over the top - but there's a kernel there that voters reacted to.
Another thing I think that drives anger toward the media is the way the media - the national media, anyway - explains away attacks on press freedom by elected and appointed Democrats, but then goes full on apocalyptic hyperbole when Trump, as you point out, calls the media "the enemy."
Well, yeah, he says mean things.
But he never moved to limit the rights of the media. Didn't, as Obama did, move to pull the White House credentials of reporters or outlets he dislikes. Never called senior editors to ask them to spike stories. Didn't have White House staff pressure Google and Apple to remove an app from the stores, the way Parler was removed after pressure from the Biden Administration. Hell, Trump gives more interviews to the left-wing media than Biden and Harris combined!
So when the media consistently claims Trump is a greater threat to free speech and press freedoms than the Democrats, well, readers and viewers aren't stupid.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold. The last decade, I've referred to the media landscape as "post-journalism media."
The ProPublica nonsense with the DoD nominee did nothing to change my mind.
I only see (the "paradox" of) different (sorts of) people/ "groups" never wanting to listen and having any horror towards thinking and listening carefully, and/but always accusing "the others" of not listening although just this will always be the last thing they´d do themselves. And the whole thing gets named (something like) "democracy".
What's that old saying? "The opposite of talking isn't listening, it's waiting." 😊
With great respect to you and your apparently storied career at National Geographic, back when it was good, I would have to say our seemingly interchangeable mainstream media types almost could not be further out of touch. Except some of this almost would have to be an act. For they could hardly have reason to push the absurd causes (men menstruate, et al) they do unless they were already convinced their narrative is not yet accepted in the hinterlands. We’re told a lot of fresh faces show up at journalism school every year saying they “want to make a difference.” Accurate reporting on events doesn’t do that. What does is collectively putting their thumb on the scale of moral, cultural discernment, distorting not only perceptions of events, but, crucially in a democracy, perceptions of what others are thinking.
The historian Paul Johnson warned in his book Intellectuals that certain secular, utopian thinkers,
“…far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behaviour. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value. That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action..."
Journalist Eric Alterman wrote a whole book, What Liberal Media? He’d have to be blind, or pretending to be blind, and in either case is no benefit to journalism. For we can see the distortions on every side.
On the theme of journalism being the first draft of history, David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart were interviewed together by Mary Louise Kelly on NPR November 6, 2020 about what the Presidential election meant.
•••••••••••••••••••••••
Brooks:
“...in the first part of the 21st century, America divided into two equal, non-overlapping camps. And for a time, people in both these camps thought they could win some miracle election victory and make the other side disappear. In 2020, they realized the other side is not going away, and we just have to find a way to live together...if ever there was going to be a landslide election, I thought this would be it....Donald Trump is, in my view, a morally corrupt person who's been an incompetent president. And so I expected a 10-point Biden win. It didn't come. The electorate surprised us in all sorts of ways - Republicans picking up seats in the House, Trump getting more non-white voters than any Republican in 60 years, gay voter - the gay vote for Trump or for Republicans doubling. So people it's - I guess it's taught a little humility about making generalizations...”
Capehart:
“I...still believe that this election is not just a choice between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, but it's a choice between American democracy and white supremacy.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/932214960/week-in-politics-what-the-presidential-election-is-saying-about-u-s-democracy
••••••••••••••••••••••
Really Mr. Alternan, it’s not hard to find!
NBC has made organized, systematic lying something of a specialty over the years.
1993:
NBC Admits It Rigged Crash, Settles GM Suit
In an extraordinary public apology, NBC said Tuesday night that it erred in staging a fiery test crash of a General Motors pickup truck for its “Dateline NBC” news program and agreed to settle a defamation suit filed by the auto maker.
“We deeply regret we included the inappropriate demonstration in our ‘Dateline’ report,” said a statement read by NBC News co-anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips Tuesday night. “We apologize to our viewers and to General Motors. We have also concluded that unscientific demonstrations should have no place in hard news stories at NBC. That’s our new policy.”
The apology, still being negotiated within five minutes of air time, was part of a settlement of a lawsuit GM filed Monday over film used in a Nov. 17 segment of “Dateline.”
In its apology, NBC admitted that it had used incendiary devices to ensure that a fire would erupt if gasoline leaked from the truck being hit by a test car...
www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-02-10-mn-1335-story.html
2012:
NBC issues apology on Zimmerman tape screw-up
“During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.”
That apology addresses the “Today” show’s failure to abridge accurately the conversation between Zimmerman and the dispatcher in this high-profile case. This is how the program portrayed a segment of that conversation:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
And here is how it actually went down:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/nbc-issues-apology-on-zimmerman-tape-screw-up/2012/04/03/gIQA8m5jtS_blog.html
2015:
NBC suspends Brian Williams for six months over Iraq helicopter story
Network says actions of TV news anchor were ‘wrong and completely inappropriate’ and he is being taken off-air without pay
theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/11/brian-williams-nbc-suspends-news-anchor-for-six-months-over-helicopter-story
(Yet Mr Williams was employed by NBC until sometime in 2021.)
So much I agree with here, Dan, but there's one whopper I gotta correct: "your apparently storied career at National Geographic..." :-) It was breathtakingly average, I'm afraid. Fun, interesting, challenging... but average.
One other point of disagreement: The media may have a liberal bias, but that's dwarfed by their desire for stories. For drama. Narrative that keeps you reading because the story continues to change. So if liberal means a (blind, value-free) progression towards whatever is new, then yes, the media has a liberal bias. But if liberal means a commitment to individual rights and the rule of law and an aversion to, say, authoritarianism, then no -- the media is not liberal.
It's no longer news that the New York Times *loves* the Trump storyline. Dean Baquet's famous response to Trump's 2016 nomination -- "What a story! What a f***ing story!" -- says the quiet part out loud. (I also recall Baquet saying something like "nothing is better than a good story.") ... As I've said before: Journalists don't want to cover Infrastructure Week; they want to cover The End of Democracy As We Know It.
Put another way, the media bias isn't ideological; it's just business. This explains "NBC Admits It Rigged Crash, Settles GM Suit." They had a story to tell, and they needed visuals to tell it. So, they added some explosives to the props to make the cars go boom.
To be fair, I think we can all cherry-pick stories that are factually incorrect not because journalists are corrupt but because they're working fast and doing their best to come up with their first draft of history. But their dream is not to report the facts as much as to "control the narrative." Exhibit A: Bob Woodward --> https://towers.substack.com/p/bob-woodward-storyteller
All that said, I think we agree more than we disagree re: the media. Something is badly broken in what gets served up by legacy media and by most algorithms. We'll need to find our North Star somewhere else.
Sorry, glitched my reply. We’re agreed more than you generously allow here. But Conservative complaints about “liberal” media were never about a blind value free progression to the latest thing. Rather, (as in Dan) the objections registered by the likes of the Media Research Center had to do with what was perceived as a quite conscious bias toward collectivism, government regulation and against capitalism, against freedom, patriotism, the military. Yes, mainstream media consists of mega corporations like Disney and GE (NBC), but the vaunted journalistic independence means that the profit-minded CEO doesn’t get to meddle in the newsroom.
A local example, from my town. In the first instance, a car cut across the path of a semi rig. In the second, a municipal bus driving on the wrong side of the road kills a lady.
The headlines:
“Truck Rams Car, Bursts into Flames”
“Woman, 29, Dies as Car, Bus Collide”
The innocent capitalist truck is blamed, but when it comes to irresponsibly driven yet progressive public transit vehicles, suddenly they go passive voice, stuff just happened
Those headlines tell their own story, don't they?
Re: "the vaunted journalistic independence means that the profit-minded CEO doesn’t get to meddle in the newsroom" -- do you really believe that? I don't. The recent intervention of Bezos at the Post and the craziness at the LA Times -- media barons don't buy those newspapers because they value the independence of the Fourth Estate. And they don't have to intervene on a day-to-day basis. When the editor-in-chief gets hired, he has already internalized the POV of the Boss. Editors know what they need to do without ever being told to do it.
Well, to our NBC example of the GM pickups, no doubt the CEO of GE wouldn’t want to alienate a major advertiser, not for one story, but this is not the reporters’ problem as they see it.
True. The reporter and CEO don't have exactly the same incentives.
As someone who spent more than three decades in daily journalism, I disagree that it's "stories" today's journalists seek. They did - WE did - back when you and I were younger.
Today, so many who go into journalism do so not to tell stories but to advocate for a partisan worldview. They see themselves as members of the ruling class, there to defend it.
I know - I worked with them the last decade of my career. I had them as students in my university classes.
The NYT, WaPo, CBS, ABC, etc., no longer seek drama or compelling stories over actual news, many of them no longer know what actual news is, have no idea how to tell a story, and are far more interested in - passionate about - reinforcing their narrative, putting the "bad" people in their place, and gaslighting their readers / viewers about what's going on.
I don't disagree. And you clearly have a better view than I do of the young people who are now becoming journalists. But these kids didn't come from nowhere. We planted the seeds, and we reap what we sow.
Once upon a time, reporters were tradesmen. Journalism was a working-class job. But at some point, publishing "just the facts" was not enough; we demanded a story. Why? My little theory is: We gave up on grand narratives to explain the world and ourselves -- the sort of narrative you might have heard at church. But since we still need a story, some story, to make sense of life, we fell back on personal narratives. And so a tsunami of individual stories engulfed us. Lacking any narrative center, our communal lives have fallen apart. Without a Story to bind us, all that remains is Power. Young people got the message, and now fill newsrooms to flex their post-modern muscles.
My favorite example of this transition from reporter to storyteller is Bob Woodward. He became famous because he was willing to do the grunt work of a Metro reporter, digging up facts, details, and evidence of wrongdoing without having a clear sense of what all those facts ultimately meant or where they might lead. He just did the work and left the storytelling to others. ... But why be a grunt when you can be a star? Why just deliver facts when you can become a high priest... or the Pope?
https://towers.substack.com/p/bob-woodward-storyteller
Worst thing that ever happened to journalism was requiring a college degree for what was, as you point out, an honorable trade.
So yes, they’re looking for stories, compelling ones. But these all need to teach the same (often immoral) moral lessons.
We’re agreed even more than you generously allow here. Complete