At GlennReynolds.com, Glenn comments on recent stories on objectivity and the media:
Elsewhere on this site today, Howard Fineman announces the death of the mainstream media as a political entity. He calls it “The American Mainstream Media Party,” and says it began when Walter Cronkite spoke out against the Vietnam War, and ended in 2004, when people quit trusting the mainstream media.
I think there’s a connection, of course: Political parties aren’t noted for their honesty or lack of bias, and when the media became a sort of political party (which it denied for years, but which is now so obvious that Fineman can pronounce its death) it became less honest, though it’s not clear that the press was ever as disinterested as it sometimes pretended. That’s why when Fineman writes, “Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto,” I think he’s wrong.
The reality of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press would be worth holding onto — if it had ever existed. But it didn’t. What Fineman identifies as a golden age of neutrality was really a sham, and an artifact of two short-lived phenomena: First, Democratic/liberal political dominance so widespread at the time, at least among politicians and the press, that there weren’t a lot of things to fight about; and, second, the inability of people who noticed bias and dishonesty to get the word out.
Neither situation obtains today. And rather than talk about the demise of neutrality and objectivity in news reporting, it might be better to note that CBS’s problems, and the problems with Big Media in general, stem from an obvious and heavy-handed lack of neutrality and objectivity, coupled with a dishonest — and increasingly lame and obvious — effort to pretend otherwise.
Earlier this month, “CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, . . . met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.”
While as an interim strategy, bending over backwards to be fair to those one opposes politically is reasonable for CBS, the longterm solution is to have about as many conservative producers and executives as liberals. If I were a CBS executive, I would go to a young, connected journalist like James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal and hire him or get ideas from him on whom to hire.
There are interesting stories out there that just don’t get covered much by the MSM. It may be too late for the MSM to begin covering UNSCAM vigorously or the successes in Afghanistan. But there are other, newer stories: In the last few weeks, Diplomad has been detailing UN efforts to take credit for US and Australian relief efforts in Asia, and the UN’s remarkable ineffectiveness in Aceh. What a natural for a big 60 Minutes or other newsmagazine story, sorting out to what extent these charges are or are not true! The point of fair reporting is not for CBS or other organs of the MSM to blunt criticisms of Bush, but just to report the interesting true stories, many of which will be embarrassing to the President, some of which won’t.
For example, if you report the ultimately unsubstantiated suggestions that Bush might have been AWOL 30-35 years ago, as CBS did repeatedly, then report the substantiated reports that Kerry did not spend Christmas in Cambodia 36 years ago. Or reject both stories as too old to be relevant.
If last spring you report a letter signed by former military people that Bush is unfit to be Commander in Chief, then report the similar letter available at roughly the same time signed by nearly every person in the chain of command above Kerry in Vietnam saying that he was unfit to be Commander in Chief. Or reject both stories as probably partisan political moves cooked up for an election.
My point is that, with a politically diverse staff, being roughly fair will be much easier and will be a normal outcome of the process of choosing, reporting, producing, and vetting the stories. And the TV news will be more interesting, more true, and more trusted.
Fairness is not a special sauce that you pour over a story while you are editing it for broadcast.
UPDATE: Betsy Newmark comments insightfully on the same Howad Fineman column, particularly on GW Bush’s efforts to bypass the press. She concludes:
This is a new world. And like all people in a trade that is growing obsolete from blacksmiths to telephone operators, Fineman is fighting against the tide. As Dylan would say, “The times, they are a-changing.” If he doesn’t want to sink like a stone, he’ll change his ways.
Every time I pick up the New York Times, I am reminded both why the MSM will not die any time soon (there is an awful lot of great reporting in it) and why the MSM is likely to weaken as internet alternatives get stronger.
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