The Media We Deserve
Feeling: 
Wednesday, Apr. 09, 2008, 3:36 pm
We had to read this article for my politics class, and I actually enjoyed it, and thought it was a really good article. It is a long article, but I think it's worth reading; I took the time to copy it and paste it in here, so please take the time to at least skim it. Let me know what you thought about it, too! ~Amy
The Media We Deserve
by Mark Blitz
The media in the United States have been under close scrutiny since at least the Vietnam War. People began to notice that journalists did not merely report events, but shaped them and our attitude toward them. Television was especially praised or blamed for galvanizing opposition to the war. It was then that Vice President Spiro Agnew began the conservative attack on the press, which made his eventual downfall such a pleasure for liberal journalists everywhere. And the problem of media bias has not gone away with time. Charges were made after the 2000 presidential race that television networks prematurely declared their favorite--Al Gore--the winner. During the 2004 campaign, CBS anchor Dan Rather gave air time to obviously concocted documents that were meant to harm President Bush's campaign. Today, three quarters of Americans say that reporters show political bias: 50 percent believe it to be a liberal bias, 25 percent a conservative one.
If the media do not merely report but also mold public opinion and even shape events, we inevitably begin to wonder how they should exercise their influence properly. The question of their public responsibility becomes an important and pressing one. Because that question is both so broad and so vague, it can be hard to know where to begin. Perhaps it is best to start by considering our current views of, and expectations for, the media. From there, one can consider wider issues of the media's role in our liberal democracy and journalists' responsibilities.
The new class
The scrutiny the media have undergone for the past generation has lead to a number of propositions--or discoveries, one could say--about it. Taken together these beliefs form the backdrop of how we think about the media and its place in our public life.
One prominent discovery is that, in the United States at least, elite journalists belong to what passes these days for an intellectual class. They resemble novelists, professors, and consultants. The typical journalist of 50 to 100 years ago was more likely to resemble a private detective, often a dishonest private detective, than an academic who loves to bury himself in research warrens. Back then, one thought of journalists as hard-boiled, part of the lower- and lower-middle-class culture of local politicians, prostitutes, and policemen. These days, the typical national journalist is likely to convey the mushy concerns of upper-middle-class angst: "Hard boiled" is about the last thing one would think of calling the pampered products of our suburban high schools and pastoral colleges. Today's journalists may be a bit more cynical and shameless than their other well educated friends, but they are basically nice guys, not toughs.
Where they differ from lawyers, physicians, and bankers, and resemble professors, not only in their work but also in their views, is in their politics, which are to the left of other Americans, even well educated ones. Polls show regularly that national journalists identify themselves as liberals more frequently than do members of the general public (34 percent to 20 percent in Pew's latest survey), and much less frequently as conservatives (7 percent to 33 percent in the same poll). They also have views on "value" issues to the left of, or at least more secular than, most Americans. Fifty-eight percent of the general public, but only 6 percent of national journalists in the Pew survey, think that it is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral. Finding a God-fearing conservative in a national newsroom would be nearly as unlikely as locating one in an Ivy League faculty club.
Debates rage about whether these facts lead to bias in reporting. Looking from the right, the bias is clear, especially when one considers the sneering tones of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the three major networks, and National Public Radio, a special bete noir of conservatives. This evidence is not limited to impressions, or to books such as Bernard Goldberg's Bias and Arrogance. David Brady and Jonathan Ma of Stanford, for example, have shown that from 1990 to 2002 the New York Times and Washington Post labeled the ten most conservative senators as "conservative" two to three times more often than they designated the most liberal ones as "liberal." These papers frequently called the conservatives "belligerent" and "unyielding," while the liberals were generally described as "icons," "stalwarts," and "party spokesmen." Those on the Left take a different view, pointing out how journalists more or less fell in line with the Bush administration after September 11, 2001. Liberals also make the point that journalists work for publishers and owners more conservative than they. In any event, whatever the truth about media bias generally (and conservatives for now have the better empirical evidence), most agree about the pervasive liberalism of elite American journalists.
A finding related to the discovery of a new class of leading journalists is that Washington-based television reporters form a class of their own. They tend to come from better schools and make more money than their fellows. The Poynter Institute reports that while only 58 percent of journalists in 1971 had graduated from college, nearly 90 percent of them in 2002 had college degrees. Everyone in the media these days seems to be becoming the liberal intellectual type, but the Washington reporter even more so.
That's entertainment?
If journalists form a new class that closely resembles our academic elite, they are also different in several key respects. To begin with, today's media share increasingly close ties to the entertainment industry. Television anchors and major reporters are stars who are paid huge salaries and attract the attention of gossips. Their personal lives are scrutinized constantly. Their professional lives are governed by popularity and likeability, not authority and respectability. They host and appear on shows the purpose of which is less to report the news than to make it. They write and edit in ways that merge the techniques of fiction with reporting, and of upscale cinema with prosaic newsreels. The news and entertainment divisions of the major networks increasingly are intermingled; sometimes they are run by the same executives, often working on the same stories or products. The gulf between serious journalism and frivolous trash is now crossed with surprising ease. What started as a glorification of Woodward and Bernstein's reporting on Watergate has resulted in the increasing identification of the National Enquirer and the New York Times.
The media's link to entertainment reminds us that it is a business, and like any business its most basic motive is profit. Many in the media, of course, lament this fact. Not a day used to go by in the United States without some graybeard lamenting the disappearing local newspapers or praising a responsible old hanger-on in Florida or Arkansas. Hardly a day goes by today without hand-wringing about media conglomerates. Afternoon newspapers in America are increasingly rare because they do not make a profit and because national chains (and national newspapers) are replacing them. The result, so the proposition goes, is that bland information displaces both charming idiosyncrasy and careful attention to local political events. This, for instance, was former Chicago Tribune editor James Squires's point in his book Read All About It.
As it happens, "the media" is also a business in tremendous flux. Despite media conglomerates and the decline in the influence of print, news outlets as a whole are increasing. Cable television, talk radio, and Internet websites allow people constant access to more and more sources. Perhaps this leads to welcome variety. Perhaps instead, it allows us to concentrate only on narrow concerns and points of view. Conventional wisdom leans toward the second view, but no one is as yet certain. In any event, although television and its images remain powerful, and although the effect of the Internet as a medium is still undetermined, choices are increasing, and the dominance of the three networks is declining.
But if the media are a business primarily, they are also a rather peculiar one, guided by their own internal demands and codes of conduct. For example, whatever their politics (or their business interests in the most narrow sense), reporters and editors are likely to let the imperatives of an interesting story govern their selection and presentation of facts. They remain passionately interested in "scoops." They cannot wait for an election to end before announcing the winner--hence, they have invented "exit polls." They cannot cover stories, especially political stories, except by reporting who is winning and who is losing, who is up and who is down. They are unable to sniff political rumors without soon sneezing uncontrollably into print. This proclivity often overcomes the media's generally liberal views and allegiances. President Bill Clinton did not receive the unreservedly negative coverage the Right believed he deserved, but he hardly received the unvarnished praise he coveted.
The serious media also consider themselves to be "adversarial," always on the lookout for failure and corruption, always ready to defend citizens from their own representatives. The media are not part of "the team"; they see themselves as outsiders. When a television network or newspaper departs from this adversarial posture (as many did during the Gulf and Iraq wars) media watch-dogs will be sure to condemn the offending party. The media may even condemn itself. CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, for example, has claimed that the press muzzled itself in Iraq, and her claim has been widely discussed by her peers. The New York Times, last May, critically examined what it now believes to be its overly credulous reporting about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the years immediately preceding the 2003 Iraq war.
Media ethics
In these ways the media act more as a "profession," if a rather undefined one, than as a mere business. And thus questions of responsibility and ethics are not ignored.
Most major newspapers have ombudsmen; even the New York Times has one now. Indeed, the American press has become the greatest set of self-flagellants since the heyday of monasticism. No convention of Freudians can rival its orgies of self-analysis. Each time the press revealed something in the ongoing Clinton scandals that Bill Clinton would have preferred remain hidden, for example, it doubled its pleasure by telling on itself. Clearly, many in the media elite liked (and still like) Clinton, in whom they recognized themselves. Clearly as well, most decry the blurring of the difference between serious newspapers and scandal sheets, and the endless televised repetition of petty but "symbolic" events that has fueled political coverage from Edmund Muskie's teardrop in 1972 (or was it a snowdrop melting on his cheek?) through Howard Dean's Iowa rant of 2004 (or was it only an effort to reinvigorate his losing team?). Most of all, everyone seems to believe that the media are discharging poorly their responsibility to help the electorate choose intelligently. Politicians, after all, can talk to the people only through the media, and whether this is good (because it sometimes deflects demagogic immediacy) or bad (because it allows any Perotian, Sharptonesque, or Buchananoid demagogue to bypass constitutional forms), it means that the media are politically important.
Despite all their analyses, however, today's media masters do not know what their responsibility is or how to live up to it. In fact, their understanding usually is still couched in terms of the people's "right to know," so that discussions of privacy and publicity that arise about politicians such as Gary Condit are little different from those one hears about Michael Jackson. But we at least have discovered the media think that they should be responsible, whatever this may mean to them.
Postmodern problems
A few further observations should be made about today's media. As Marshall McLuhan observed, the medium may indeed sometimes be the message. Although we talk of "the media," we believe television affects us one way, but radio and print another--and the Internet still another. Whether we are dealing with news or commentary, print clearly allows stories to be conveyed through reasoned reflection more easily than does television. The drumbeat of repetition that elevates one kidnapping, murder, or even contested presidential election to the status of national obsession can more easily be avoided in print than on the screen. The notion that what counts is what is said and how well it is said, but not the mechanism through which it is said, seems oddly quaint nowadays. What in fact counts is what makes an impact, and whatever makes an impact gets through in the same way--the jarring repeated image and its associated "sound bite"--whatever its real meaning or truth. Even when television attempts discussion, short bursts of clashing opinion end up drowning out reflective conversation.
The opinion that the medium often is the message is connected to another proposition, that there is no objective truth to be reported in any event, or that as a practical matter it is impossible to discern even if it exists. It is said that all but the simplest facts make sense only within a context, and that this context is created by the questions editors and reporters choose to emphasize. The result determines not only the meaning of facts, but even which items in the passing flow can be recognized as facts in the first place. This notion of the relativity of facts is so powerful that even federal district judges in the case of Masson v. New Yorker Magazine seriously entertained the view that putting quotation marks around statements that were not actually said can add to the truth of a story, not detract from it.
The free press
It may seem heretical to ask, but why do we allow such a flawed private institution as the media such immense power to shape public opinion? Why are the media so little regulated? This leeway is unusual in most other countries, even in the democratic West. The answer, in America at least, is our wish to develop and preserve large areas of private or social power. Government is not constrained by individuals alone but by a flourishing business sector and a strong press. But why do we want government to be constrained? We desire this in order to preserve our freedom.
Such freedom depends on several conditions, including sufficient wealth, education, and enlightenment. But also not to be overlooked is the place of responsibility. We understand responsibility today in terms of guilt and accountability. But the term, first used in the modern sense toward the end of the eighteenth century, more fundamentally means something else. It is primarily a disposition or virtue. It reminds us of duty, but is not in fact quite the same. Duties are given and defined by faith, family, and tradition; responsibilities are tasks we take on freely. Responsibility is the disposition to execute effectively the tasks one takes on, now that so much that we do is voluntary. Because liberty cannot be successfully secured or exercised without it, cultivating responsibility is a basic goal of liberal democracy.
The control of possibly oppressive government, however, cannot occur only through isolated individual actions. Certain structures and institutions are needed as well. One mechanism is free elections; another is competition, not just within government but in most areas of life. Constructing and forming competitive businesses and institutions affords an important scope for responsible freedom.
Seen in this light, concentration of media ownership and homogeneity of reporters and editors is indeed undesirable, not just because it restricts political debate but primarily because concentration limits competition and the freedom that is its by-product. The chief way in which the media check political power is less through what they say and more by providing a place for the exercise of responsibility. Thus, whatever enhances innovative entrepreneurship in the media is good. But there is more to the media's political responsibility than each outlet's doing its job effectively. A responsible media is one that fulfills common tasks that they no more than others are obliged to undertake; such an ideal media would freely assume responsibility for the community as a whole. To put it simply: They take it upon themselves to act in the public interest.
The price of influence
Is there any capacity for some in the media to assume such a large responsibility? To begin with, we should recognize that anyone can attempt to make a living by selling to others what purports to be news. There is no reason to restrict these opportunities, given that control of government requires more dispersion of power, not less. Who could say with certainty that things would be better without talk radio? Some might complain it contributes to hysteria and incivility; but perhaps it also calls to account politicians whom others in the media do not want to call to account.
One might argue that thinking about the press as a business inevitably means that everyone will seek the lowest common denominator in order to make the most money. But, in fact, some always choose to sell to an exclusive clientele. Perhaps it is easier to profit from this clientele once one gets the hang of it. More to the point, not everyone seeks to sell as much as possible to the widest possible audience, because it is not profit alone but also power and control--freedom and responsibility--that motivate free men in a free society. As long as some see that speaking to intelligent citizens and owning and operating institutions that influence these citizens gives one special significance, there is no need to decry each and every vulgarity in the media business.
It is primarily the "significant" media--those who seek influence with wealthy, powerful, and educated citizens, papers such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal--that attempt to exercise responsibility beyond simply running their own business. As we often say, such papers try to set the tone. This means that they limit what they might otherwise do in the light of considerations that are not instant and immediate. They try to shape what counts as news generally by choosing what is fit to print in their own papers. Obviously, they do not do this in a vacuum, because they take some guidance from their audience. But they still need to decide for themselves. By choosing to emphasize some things--say, national affairs and high culture--and ignoring or downplaying others--say, rumors about the sex lives of political candidates--they seek to define, at least for a while, what counts as respectable.
A cynic might say that in doing this they preserve their business franchise, by, as it were, inducing others who wish to influence an exclusive audience to play a game with rules they do not control. But they also forego the pleasures and profit that come from being less serious. They choose to be responsible in the wide sense by placing themselves within, and paying attention to, broad civic concerns.
The true journalistic art
If it is possible for the significant media (or others) to be responsible in the way I am suggesting--and the current state of our media certainly leaves plenty of room for skepticism--how should they exercise this responsibility? The media's unique responsibility involves the fact that citizens and politicians need knowledge of affairs in order to do their jobs well. The job of a representative is to deliberate about the common good and seek to bring it about, within the competitive, entrepreneurial atmosphere of American politics. Informed and reflective public opinion guides both representatives' deliberation and citizens' thoughts about who deserves their vote. The media's fullest responsibility is to provide the kind of knowledge, the "news," we need for deliberation. The public job of the media is not only to convey the information that a particular audience seems to want but to provide knowledge that appeals as much as possible to the head, not the heart.
To perform this task, a responsible journalist should set things in context and explain them intelligently, so that, for example, he describes today's bombing in Israel or Iraq in light of an increasing or decreasing movement toward safety and stability, or looks at the importance of "values" in the recent election in light of a thoughtful sense of the current status of Americans' religious beliefs. The responsible journalist should attempt to transform the reader's immediate response into a pattern of thoughtful consideration, rather than the pattern devised by Republican or Democratic talking points.
That a responsible journalist must decide what is important and put things in context is not a license to engage in eccentric interpretation, or a demonstration of the impossibility of objectivity. Instead, it is merely a reason to observe the ordinary injunction in practical affairs to know something of background and motives in order to comprehend a particular event. Indeed, one can often enough assume a shared context (a journalist does not need to tell us why destroying the World Trade Center is horrible) or provide context merely by reporting the speeches or other explanations of officials and participants. Paying attention to these explanations is part of what separates responsible journalists from others. None-theless, one sometimes must go beyond what is said and implicitly assumed: Merely to convey and never to reflect is the way of Pravda or the house journal of the plastics industry.
The need for reflection also means that the responsible media err when they consider it their proper task to be government's adversary. Rather, the media belong to the mechanisms that keep the people and the government at a proper distance from each other. To set in context, to decline to take at face value what obviously is not given at face value, and to provide time for deliberation are all ways that the media help to secure the common good. A responsible journalist should question much that a government official tells him about how and why a decision is made. But to distrust, often on principle, is to mistake the media's necessary role in questioning for mere adversarial criticism. A responsible journalist should not decide too quickly that the government's stated reasons for going to war are a lie (or decide too quickly that even sincere reasons are well-founded.) The danger in being merely adversarial is that the media exacerbate popular contempt for government (and for themselves) and do not think through the consequences of this contempt. This is the height of irresponsibility, not responsibility.
Aristocracy in a democracy
Some in the media do sometimes exercise this broader responsibility, if not nearly as often and as consistently as they should. But why is it necessary that anyone take such responsibility upon himself? And if it is necessary, what conditions make such public responsibility most likely?
If robust competition in the media were sufficient, the explicit assumption of public responsibility would be unnecessary. However, it is naive to assume that the accidents of competition will usually prove so benign. We make no such assumption about other professions, such as the law, which could not be useful without judges; or about individuals, whose economic and other competition is bounded by rules and regulations. We recognize generally that some citizens must be explicitly responsible for common interests, because even a responsible private life does not automatically guarantee public benefits.
There is no reason to think that things are different with the media, and that their public responsibility will be met sufficiently when each outlet seeks the greatest profit in a minimally law-abiding way. Reporters, editors, and publishers usually attempt to satisfy only the immediate political concerns of their audiences, and therefore fall short because their political coverage is meager or their need to be narrow and partisan makes it difficult for them to be thoughtful and reflective. In too many cases, there is a disjunction between a media outlet's political task and its financial or entrepreneurial success. A rough balance among competing views that interpret the facts tendentiously, moreover, is not the same as looking at matters rationally and deliberately.
Not everyone in the media can or should accept public responsibility to the same degree; to demand as much would be to level responsibility by treating it as something that everyone can accomplish more or less easily. But some should accept it fully. We cannot guarantee that anyone will do this, however, because such a guarantee would detract from the whole notion of what it means to be responsible. Nor can we be certain that to accept responsibility means to exercise it well. Institutions such as the New York Times are in an especially good position to assume public responsibilities, because of their self-interest in dealing with an influential audience and the habits they have acquired over the years in taking the long view. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal are, in a sense, quasi-aristocratic institutions. The ever present possibility of falling short, however, is why we are so concerned when such papers renege on their responsibility.
Anyone, of course, is free to ignore the example set by such quasi-aristocratic institutions, although their professional influence and important audience might shame others into following them. And, of course, anyone is free to try to supplement or supplant them. It is precisely those in the media who wish to take on such public responsibility who begin to define themselves as serious. If they are successful, they are able to break what might seem to be the irritating monopoly of the elect.
I may sum up my argument by saying that politically responsible journalism means asking: What does a practically intelligent legislator or executive who is engaged in deliberation about ways and means--not a curious gossip--need to know? By seeing things from the public-spirited point of view, the media would go a long way toward ameliorating many of its more harmful excesses. The most politically responsible in the media, those who establish this horizon of public responsibility, will also stand a good chance of being financially responsible, because they will win and hold an influential audience. Anyone is free to join their ranks, or to expose their partisanship masquerading as responsibility, or to compete by being politically one-sided. Still others can follow their lead by addressing important political stories to the most thoughtful in their standard audience, in this way elevating their entire audience. Competition is crucial, of course. But unless certain media institutions take it upon themselves to be politically responsible, our public life will be diminished.
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