Media Criticsm Thread

[Sci-2]

The View from Nowhere: Questions and Answers

Q. You are very critical of the View from Nowhere in journalism. It’s almost a derisive term for you. #

A. That’s true. I let my disdain for it show.

Q. Why?

A. Because it has unearned authority in the American press. If in doing the serious work of journalism–digging, reporting, verification, mastering a beat–you develop a view, expressing that view does not diminish your authority. It may even add to it. The View from Nowhere doesn’t know from this. It also encourages journalists to develop bad habits. Like: criticism from both sides is a sign that you’re doing something right, when you could be doing everything wrong.

When MSNBC suspends Keith Olbermann for donating without company permission to candidates he supports– that’s dumb. When NPR forbids its “news analysts” from expressing a view on matters they are empowered to analyze– that’s dumb. When reporters have to “launder” their views by putting them in the mouths of think tank experts: dumb. When editors at the Washington Post decline even to investigate whether the size of rallies on the Mall can be reliably estimated because they want to avoid charges of “leaning one way or the other,” as one of them recently put it, that is dumb. When CNN thinks that, because it’s not MSNBC and it’s not Fox, it’s the only the “real news network” on cable, CNN is being dumb about itself.

In fact, American journalism is dumber than most journalists, who often share my sense of absurdity about these practices. A major reason we have a practice less intelligent than its practitioners is the prestige that the View from Nowhere still claims in American newsrooms. You asked me why I am derisive toward it. That’s why.

I recall thinking about this when NPR terminated Juan Williams contract. I could see both sides of this, as Williams expressed a personal belief yet definitely seemed to be fueling a paranoia about Muslims with his comments.

Perhaps the issue is, as this interview suggests, we expect "impartial" journalism which leads to journalism that accords with our biases. Maybe the solution is allow our journalists to engage with society in an open dialogue about their own thinking processes rather than offer swift silencing of controversial opinions?

Of course the counter argument to that is opening the door to granting legitimacy to every ignorant notion going on in someone's head, but honestly it seems to me a free press needs to have some freedom of expression as well rather than holding to an illusory objectivity.

[Inigima]

Unequivocally yes.

[Sparrowyn]

I'm currently reading, Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries... Jon is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and seems to balance opinion and in-depth reporting very well. What kills me is when journalists take on a story with the idea that they could ever be objective and completely fair... all it does is turn it into mush. You get quite a bit of it on NPR these days.

[1918me]

I'm always annoyed by the false equivalence seen so often in American journalism, particularly political journalism, and View from Nowhere seems to be playing a substantial role in that phenomenon. As such, I can definitely see where the derision for it is coming from.

[Castel]

Perhaps the issue is, as this interview suggests, we expect "impartial" journalism which leads to journalism that accords with our biases. Maybe the solution is allow our journalists to engage with society in an open dialogue about their own thinking processes rather than offer swift silencing of controversial opinions?

Of course the counter argument to that is opening the door to granting legitimacy to every ignorant notion going on in someone's head, but honestly it seems to me a free press needs to have some freedom of expression as well rather than holding to an illusory objectivity.

How far would we take this? Because it seems to me that this collapses immediately when these "ignorant notions" show up and I find that a lot of people have no problem with this in theory so it's a bit impossible to create this in this day and age of swift punishment for falling on the wrong side of the tracks.

As for the view from nowhere:yes, dumb. But -if I may take a fatalistic approach- I think the people make the press and the press make the people. I imagine that, after the first unpalatable opinion, the cries of bias will come thick and fast.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sci,

Objectivity is a goal for fact based journalism. It's not a panecea. That said when reading or listening to opinion peices or op-eds it would be nice if such peices were clearly marked ti distinguish them from fact based jouralism. If companies would prefer to have more opinion based peices I have no problem with that. However, I do think that bluring the lines between opinion and fact based journalism is a poor idea.

Again, objectivity is a goal, not a panecea.

[DanteGabriel]

Hunter S. Thompson was pretty down on the concept of objective journalism:

So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

I don't know about history. I don't get any satisfaction out of the old traditional journalist's view -- "I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view." Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon. How can you be objective about Clinton?

If you consider the great journalists in history, you don't see too many objective journalists on that list. H. L. Mencken was not objective. Mike Royko, who just died. I. F. Stone was not objective. Mark Twain was not objective. I don't quite understand this worship of objectivity in journalism. Now, just flat-out lying is different from being subjective.

[sologdin]

sci--

you might appreciate bagdikian's the media monopoly and mcchesney's rich media, poor democracy. along the same lines, there's the project censored annual volume of censored news and of course chomsky's manufacturing consent.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

I agree with criticism of 'objective' journalism, which I think does produce a lot of fake-fair bullshit. I don't think that it's really the biggest problem with American media, though. We have lots of unabashedly biased media outlets, and they pretty much suck, because it's not about journalism it's about viewers and clickers. We watch dumb shit, we click dumb links. Dumb is the product that makes money, so it's what they produce.

[All-for-Joffrey]

See, I don't think it's wrong for Williams to advertise his political beliefs (I mean, even if a network or publication prohibits a contributor from doing so, it doesn't change the fact that they have them in the first place) so long as they don't interfere with his reporting (well, to the greatest extent possible, technically it's not completely possible to be bias-free when reporting as you have to make choices about who you interview, contact, etc). However, I think NPR was certainly within the right to fire him for saying bigoted things on air -- same way that the NBA has the right to get rid of Sterling for saying racist things. And no, saying "I'm not a bigot but...[insert something bigotted here]" doesn't make you any less of a bigot than when you say "I'm not racist but...[insert something racist here]"

[sologdin]

better to know the politics of the organ and its writers than to have a bunch of allegedly neutral losers running around like baldrick:

What we need is an utter unknown yet someone over whom we have complete power. A man with no mind, with no ideas of his own. One might almost say a man with no brain.

cappy journalism firms don't want to alienate advertisers by criticizing the cappy system or particular cappies, nor do they want strident politics to alienate audience, which is the only item that interests advertisers, other than not offending cappies. better to focus on dumb faux political items on which hardly anyone disagrees, such as kidnapped children and whatnot.

[Shryke]

Sci,

Objectivity is a goal for fact based journalism. It's not a panecea. That said when reading or listening to opinion peices or op-eds it would be nice if such peices were clearly marked ti distinguish them from fact based jouralism. If companies would prefer to have more opinion based peices I have no problem with that. However, I do think that bluring the lines between opinion and fact based journalism is a poor idea.

Again, objectivity is a goal, not a panecea.

Yeah, objectivity is not necessarily achievable, but one should strive for it.

The problem with american journalism is not a objectivity, it's centrism and fear.

They have to always pull the "here's what all the press releases say, we refuse to take a position based on facts" out of stupidity or fear of reprisal or a whole host of other things.

American Journalism is terrified of being seen to take a position they might get attacked for by certain parties.

[Phaing]

Just because a pretentious old radical like Hunter couldn't be objective does not mean other people can't be, and its not about that anyway.

Journalism is about digging for the truth, and they just aren't doing that anymore except on a few Online places which get mocked fro being so "fringe" by the media mega-corps... the same ones that let go of most of their reporters to save money!

its all a crock.

I think we should start a site of our own, bloggers telling each other what they have seen with their own eyes. It would take less than 500 to cover the whole country.

Sound like a good idea?

[Inigima]

Your view of journalism is, as ever, juvenile.

EDIT: That's a bit low-content, I suppose. First, your MEDIA ARE LIARS posture is tinfoil hat nuttery, particularly because your preference is for whackjobs and hacks. You attempt to inoculate yourself against this criticism by claiming that your whackjobs are called whackjobs by more mainstream media, but they are called whackjobs and hacks because, well, they're whackjobs and hacks. You have no particular basis for objection except that you believe what they say because they say what you want to believe.

Second, objectivity is virtually impossible. There are the obvious ways to lose objectivity, like putting a favorable or unfavorable spin on people you like or don't. There's also the subjectivity of choosing coverage -- you choose whether to report on something because you believe it's true or false, important or unimportant. These decisions cannot be made objective because the subjectivity is in the choice. And there's the "false equivalence" fallacy, where you give airtime to horseshit -- that's the one that gets a lot of attention in media criticism lately. If one party says something, and the other party responds with something that's obviously nonsense, reporting uncritically on both sides as "xyz said," that amounts to a failure to do your job properly, dressed up as an embarrassingly facile attempt to appear "objective."

[DanteGabriel]

Just because a pretentious old radical like Hunter couldn't be objective does not mean other people can't be, and its not about that anyway.

I'm a little surprised you think of HST as a "pretentious old radical" -- he was a rabid civil liberties libertarian before libertarianism got co-opted by billionaires looking for low taxes and cheap, unprotected labor. But your total incomprehension is not at all surprising.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Just because a pretentious old radical like Hunter couldn't be objective does not mean other people can't be, and its not about that anyway.

Journalism is about digging for the truth, and they just aren't doing that anymore except on a few Online places which get mocked fro being so "fringe" by the media mega-corps... the same ones that let go of most of their reporters to save money!

its all a crock.

I think we should start a site of our own, bloggers telling each other what they have seen with their own eyes. It would take less than 500 to cover the whole country.

Sound like a good idea?

This is a joke, right?

Just out of curiosity who would be an example of a journalist you admire, or even just a competent one?

[Sci-2]

I'm currently reading, Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries... Jon is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and seems to balance opinion and in-depth reporting very well. What kills me is when journalists take on a story with the idea that they could ever be objective and completely fair... all it does is turn it into mush. You get quite a bit of it on NPR these days.

Press Think was really hard on NPR after Juan Williams' dismissal. You can see the Notes mentioning Rosen's criticisms of Fox News, I'm assuming due to backlash about the bias slant people felt Press Think was perpetuating.

Sci,

Objectivity is a goal for fact based journalism. It's not a panecea. That said when reading or listening to opinion peices or op-eds it would be nice if such peices were clearly marked ti distinguish them from fact based jouralism. If companies would prefer to have more opinion based peices I have no problem with that. However, I do think that bluring the lines between opinion and fact based journalism is a poor idea.

Again, objectivity is a goal, not a panecea.

Blurring the lines is bad, but I think there's a desire to avoid certain conversations. So you have two polarized segments of the country who think even bringing up any hint of dissent from the litmus test is bad. Yet people have doubts, uncomfortable doubts about all sorts of things.

It irritated me that Juan Williams felt that traditional Muslim garb was a sign of potential disloyalty to America. I mean does this guy even know the difference between a Muslim or a Sikh? But it seems like having this conversation out in the open might be better than simply shutting people off and threatening them to keep quiet.

OTOH:

How far would we take this? Because it seems to me that this collapses immediately when these "ignorant notions" show up and I find that a lot of people have no problem with this in theory so it's a bit impossible to create this in this day and age of swift punishment for falling on the wrong side of the tracks.

As for the view from nowhere:yes, dumb. But -if I may take a fatalistic approach- I think the people make the press and the press make the people. I imagine that, after the first unpalatable opinion, the cries of bias will come thick and fast.

Yeah, I don't know how deep the well of ignorance goes. But we already have anti-vaxer Bill Maher on the airwaves being a complete idiot so it's hard to see anything worse than that unless someone thinks we need to root out Muslims from their homes and question them all.

I guess part of the problem is right now we have bias but this bias is sort of hidden to us. Might be nice to know where journalists stand so we can have that added info when we read their reports.

sci--

you might appreciate bagdikian's the media monopoly and mcchesney's rich media, poor democracy. along the same lines, there's the project censored annual volume of censored news and of course chomsky's manufacturing consent.

Ah, good stuff. Thanks! You know I'm always down for some Chomsky. :-)

I'm a little surprised you think of HST as a "pretentious old radical" -- he was a rabid civil liberties libertarian before libertarianism got co-opted by billionaires looking for low taxes and cheap, unprotected labor. But your total incomprehension is not at all surprising.

It's kind of amazing to see how lefty the libertarian label used to be - HST, Moorcock, Robert Anton Wilson, I think maybe even Alan Moore...

I think we should start a site of our own, bloggers telling each other what they have seen with their own eyes. It would take less than 500 to cover the whole country.

Sound like a good idea?

Start local. That's always the best strategy IMO for anyone who wants to do community journalism. That and think long & hard about taking on any dangerous assignments. I think a good deal of awareness and change can happen without putting one's self in a dangerous position.

[Phaing]

I'm a little surprised you think of HST as a "pretentious old radical" -- he was a rabid civil liberties libertarian before libertarianism got co-opted by billionaires looking for low taxes and cheap, unprotected labor...

Oh, you mean the ones that support unrestricted illegal immigration, that source of cheap, unprotected labor?

Hunter was many things, and a lot of his writings were admirable, but a lot of it was also drivel. He had his good days and bad ones, just like all of us... and from the 90s on, it was almost all bad.

This is a joke, right?

Just out of curiosity who would be an example of a journalist you admire, or even just a competent one?

Woodward & Bernstien come to mind, until the later was slapped down by the white House and went dark.

Start local. That's always the best strategy IMO for anyone who wants to do community journalism. That and think long & hard about taking on any dangerous assignments. I think a good deal of awareness and change can happen without putting one's self in a dangerous position.

Of course, but I was thinking more like a network of local people.... sure would be hard to keep the Trolls out, but it might work.

Its just a way to fight the disinformation explosion, but the establishment would go all-out to sabotage it, and if that didn't work we'd be sued to death if anyone made a dime off it.

How do you keep good people working for free on something like that?

[Sci-2]

Of course, but I was thinking more like a network of local people.... sure would be hard to keep the Trolls out, but it might work.

Its just a way to fight the disinformation explosion, but the establishment would go all-out to sabotage it, and if that didn't work we'd be sued to death if anyone made a dime off it.

How do you keep good people working for free on something like that?

How do you keep it from being biased is another question. I recall after 9/11 protest numbers went down. I was a street medic for protests in DC before and after 9/11/2001 and you could see a huge drop yet I recall going to an alternative new site where people were acting as if number held or even increased, and the "Man" was going to fall soon.

People have really large goals for media startups, but there are already a lot of places to get alternative news. At least you could cover your county, or maybe your state, but that's better than trying to create something nationwide from the outset that will almost certainly dissolve if it ever got made.

Most people hate hearing this though, as it negates the high level adventure inducing macro level change they were taking journalism to be.

[Phaing]

People have really large goals for media startups, but there are already a lot of places to get alternative news. At least you could cover your county, or maybe your state, but that's better than trying to create something nationwide from the outset that will almost certainly dissolve if it ever got made.

Right.... oh.

Most people will actually be surprised by that kind of thing, won't they?

And they will be demoralized.

Well, there goes another idea dead before its born.