A Point Of Clarification For A Friend

ER often chastises me for going after "journalists" as a group. He is correct to do so. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of good folk doing the basic grunt-work of journalism out there, from local weeklies and dailies to the big national and international papers like the New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor. My complaints are focused on what some bloggers call "the Village" (a term of art I avoid using because it smacks of the same kind of insiderism that is under a critical eye). Those Washington-based national journalists - the White House Press Corps, national correspondents, Washington-based pundits whose mugs appear far too often on the television, and of course our TV newsers - far too often exist in an odd, somewhat sick-making co-dependency with their sources. This situation, described without any hint of self-consciousness as to the inherent dangers of it, became the source of a spat among Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, Glenn Greenwald (whose position on journalism I actually take with a grain of salt), Paul Krugman, and FireDogLake blogger emptywheel.

While this little internet dust-up is fun to watch, I think there are other ways to look at the question of journalistic responsibility, especially in the face of very real questions of accountability and journalistic ethics. Related to these questions is the ongoing "death of the newspaper" and the increasing lack of credibility many of our journalistic organs are undergoing. This situation was highlighted today in a post at TAPPED by Tim Fernholz:

The next time some wild misinformation spreads about a public-policy issue, Kurtz will wring his hands about how no one trusts the press, and that's because the press is content to trust liars.

It is one thing to argue that something said by someone in the public eye, or in a position of public responsibility is potentially worthy of citation. It is another thing altogether actually to cite it; and to do so without any note that the statement might actually be factually inaccurate.

Now, obviously, this lies behind the spat amongst Ambinder, Krugman, et. al., but also behind Kurtz' nonsensical bewilderment at our general national distrust of the press. Yet, I think there is more than simple asymmetry of information at work. When I read Ambinder's original piece (linked above), what I find is not just a willingness to trust his "official" sources", but an almost religious commitment to getting information to the public without context. The entire journalistic enterprise, at least at an elite level, seems less about getting the "who, what, where, and when" of an event, and more about ensuring the public has access to as much information as possible as quickly as possible. From the welter of quotes, official statements, press releases, Congressional studies and testimonies, and whatnot else that appears, it seems that it is up to us as readers to weigh all this in the balance, all of it being of equal import, and come to our own conclusions.

Except without any sort of context, without any sort of vetting, without any sort of actual work done by our information gate-keepers, this is impossible. How is it possible for an individual to discern that, for example, a person appearing on a Sunday news talk show may be spreading lies for no other reason than he has a vested interest in the success of those lies? How is it possible to conclude that a United States Senator is talking out of his ass when he says a bill before Congress includes a provision for euthanasia? He's a Senator on the panel responsible for writing the thing, so he should know what he's talking about, right?

When Chris Matthews gets all hot and sweaty over the thought that bloggers might be a source of news because bloggers don't fact check, and can be called on it quite easily, I say it is time to start thinking seriously about this issue in a new, different way. The credibility gap between what journalists, at least our elite print and television journalists, provide as news to us and the actual contextual worthiness of that news has to be narrowed. This is not just about fact checking; it is about providing a narrative format, in some limited way, that helps us make sense of the sheer mass of words that floods over us each and every day.

When a right-wing radio talk show host claims that Pres. Obama is a racist, or is leading the country down the path to socialism, or is a liar, each of these statements can be checked easily enough. While that checking is, indeed, done (Media Matters for America, while certainly progressive in its intent, is thoroughly fact-based in its content-analysis), it is not available immediately alongside these reports. When Sen. Grassley says that health care reform includes a proposal to "pull the plug on grandma," it might be nice to note, not the next day, or within a week, but immediately, that this is false.

It might also be a good idea not only to call these folks on their nonsense. Accountability might include not inviting Grassley on any more Sunday chat shows; or Newt Gingrich (whose history of fabulism is both deep and wide); or Sarah Palin. Accountability might also include noting that many Americans are wary of tea-baggers bringing guns to those town halls because there is a long history, right up to the present day, of politically-inspired violence in the United States.

Finally, it might be nice to hear an elite journalist admit, in public, that they aren't trusted because they aren't trustworthy.